Upside: Open-source university teaches ways of the Web

“When MIT computer science instructor Philip Greenspun founded
ArsDigita Inc., an open-source software company specializing in the
development of Web-based applications and utilities, he viewed it
as a chance to get away from the intense environs of the MIT
campus….”

“In the course of creating the site, Greenspun developed and
fine-tuned many of the features that would become the nucleus of
the ArsDigita Community System, the GPL (Gnu Public
License)-compliant module of Internet utilities, site-management
tools and enterprise applications marketed by ArsDigita….”

“Although the program isn’t accredited and offers no degrees —
yet — Greenspun sees it as a way to get traditional engineering
principles out of the classroom and into the minds of as many Web
developers as possible.”

“We think that a lot of the ad hoc, nasty Perl code out
there wouldn’t have been written or would have been written in a
better way if people had access to this training,” Greenspun
says.”

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