- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a></div>
- <div class="date">25th December 2013</div>
- <div class="body"><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
-was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
-up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
-successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
-to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
-George</a>.</p>
-
-<!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
-life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
-student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
-Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
-voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
-a bit vacant right now however.</p>
-
-<p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
-(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
-around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
-it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
-network of that school together with a team of very interested and
-talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
-learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
-to help building another school's informational education concept from
-scratch.</p>
-
-<p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
-and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
-ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
-
-<p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
-and cycling.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
-<a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
-booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
-have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
-own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
-"out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
-
-<p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
-<a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
-BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
-really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
-ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
-a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
-guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
-small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
-seemed rather uninterested.</p>
-
-<p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
-mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
-reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
-basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
-works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
-in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
-without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
-from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
-have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
-and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
-server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
-notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
-and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
-it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
-tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
-that it rocks!</p>
-
-<p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
-politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
-operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
-will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
-school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
-this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
-too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
-answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
-other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
-can list a few points about that:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
- <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
- <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
-all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
-year.</p>
-
-<p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
-run text tools. I use
-<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
-<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
-text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
-based full-featured student management software with the two),
-<a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
-<a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
-coloured world called the WWW, I use
-<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
-(Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
-e-mail.</p>
-
-<p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
-are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
-least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
-kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
-which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
-Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
-Facebook now ;).</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
-side is what I have experienced.</p>
-
-<p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
-that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
-grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
-to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
-see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
-students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
-desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
-they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
-that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
-software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
-networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
-not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
-already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
-if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
-that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
-plain criminal.</p>
-
-<p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
-method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
-founded an association named
-<a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
-just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
-area of free and open source software, for example the
-<a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
-Teckids and are the youth programme of
-<a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
-Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
-- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
-aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
-and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
-of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
-
-<p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
-the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
-their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
-Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
-clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
-it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
-who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
-We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
-open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
-software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
-group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
-Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
-
-<p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
-being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
-that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
-but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
-
-<!--
-
-> * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
-
-That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
-community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
-
- <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
- free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
- of the decision makers above;
- <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
- knowledge about free software
-
-If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
-
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