Education and science are central issues for Free Software. So when
Free Software
Foundation Europe was approached by Wouter Tebbens from the Internet Society in the
Netherlands for a project on education in and about Free Software
and Open Standards, I was immediately happy to help with the project
draft and consortium assembly. This was almost one year ago.
Today Jonas Öberg and I are representing FSFE at the SELF
kick-off conference in The Hague, NL. Even though I am still
suffering from a flu I picked up at the WIPO PCDA, this is a
positively exciting event.
SELF stands for ''Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom''
and will be working the next two years with funding by the European
Commission to build a Free Software portal and platform with Free
educational material on Free Software and Open Standards.
As a first step, we will work to identify what already exists and
is available under Free licenses. Secondly we will identify the gaps
to then work to fill them with courses and documents that can be used
by teachers, professors and students around the world.
The ISOC is recording the entire conference, although I do not yet
know where and how they will be putting it online afterwards. You
might want to check out thee SELF project page for more information.
