blog/data/2012-04-15-skolelinux-andreas-mundth.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2012-04-15 12:10
   4
   5 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
   6 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
   7 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
   8 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
   9 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
  10 up in the recently released
  11 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
  12 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
  13
  14 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  15
  16 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
  17 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
  18 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
  19 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
  20 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
  21 information technology and science/technology.</p>
  22
  23 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
  24 project?</strong></p>
  25
  26 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
  27 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
  28 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
  29 contributing.</p>
  30
  31 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  32 Edu?</strong></p>
  33
  34 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
  35 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
  36 Debian Project!</p>
  37
  38 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  39 Edu?</strong></p>
  40
  41 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
  42 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
  43 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
  44 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
  45 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
  46 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
  47 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
  48
  49 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
  50 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
  51
  52 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
  53
  54 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
  55 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
  56 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
  57 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
  58
  59 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
  60 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
  61
  62 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
  63 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
  64 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
  65 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
  66 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
  67 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
  68 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
  69
  70 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
  71 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
  72 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
  73 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
  74 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
  75 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
  76 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
  77 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>