blog/data/2012-06-02-skolelinux-mike-gabriel.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2012-06-02 14:30
   4
   5 <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the <a
   6 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
   7 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
   8 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
   9 Debian Edu Squeeze version.</p>
  10
  11 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  12
  13 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
  14 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
  15 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
  16 by Angela).</p>
  17
  18 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
  19 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
  20 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
  21 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
  22 becoming an osteopath.</p>
  23
  24 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
  25 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
  26 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
  27 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
  28 skills with communication skills.</p>
  29
  30 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
  31 project?</strong></p>
  32
  33 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
  34 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
  35 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
  36 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
  37 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
  38
  39 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
  40 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
  41 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
  42 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
  43 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
  44 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
  45 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
  46 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
  47 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
  48
  49 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
  50 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
  51 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
  52
  53 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
  54
  55 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
  56 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
  57 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
  58 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
  59 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
  60 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
  61 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
  62 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
  63 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
  64 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
  65 point.</p>
  66
  67 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
  68 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
  69 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
  70 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
  71 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
  72 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
  73
  74 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
  75 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
  76 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
  77 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
  78 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
  79 spare time.</p>
  80
  81 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
  82 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
  83 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
  84 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
  85 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
  86
  87 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
  88 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
  89 avoidance do exist.</p>
  90
  91 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
  92 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
  93 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
  94 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
  95 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
  96 at schools, an approach that includes the people at place, will be new
  97 and probably a gain for all.</p>
  98
  99 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 100 Edu?</strong></p>
 101
 102 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
 103 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
 104 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
 105 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the tralnsparency within
 106 project communication, honest communication within the group of
 107 developers, etc.</p>
 108
 109 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 110 Edu?</strong></p>
 111
 112 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
 113
 114 <p>Technically: <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
 115 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
 116 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
 117 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
 118 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
 119 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
 120 contribute).</p>
 121
 122 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
 123 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
 124 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
 125 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
 126 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
 127 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
 128 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
 129 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
 130 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
 131 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
 132
 133 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 134
 135 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
 136
 137 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
 138 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
 139 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
 140
 141 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
 142 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
 143 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
 144 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
 145
 146 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
 147 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
 148 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
 149 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
 150 whiteboard.</p>
 151
 152 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
 153
 154 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 155 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 156
 157 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
 158 enrol people.</p>