Interview: Bringing a community together with free software
Feb 22, 2009, 06:01 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Ryan Cartwright)
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[ Thanks to steve
hill for this link. ]
"CK: I suggested at a tenants meeting on our estate
that if anyone wanted to start an IT project, I would contribute
6hrs of my time a week. Over 50% of the estate had no web access at
that time and the project could be a good way for tenants to come
together. What I didn't expect was to find myself the only person
from the estate working on the project! People at the meeting
immediately started coming up with notions of running training
schemes to get people into work etc.
"Having attended some of those type of courses I was very wary
about this option. Providing good training is never as simple as
most folks assume and neither was I trying to create a job for
myself. I am partially disabled and was only prepared to make a
lightweight commitment. This commitment level and the fact that I
was moving towards GNU/Linux at home convinced me that it would be
better to have a more adaptable software environment and certainly
one that would be more "mischief proof". I had visions of spending
all six hours just keeping a Windows network running. I thought
that if I used GNU/Linux, I could run older and cheaper machines. I
would have the ability to download free software if users wanted to
get into other disciplines and most of all I could run it on a
"suck it and see" basis. I could build it cheaply and if it bombed
I didn't have to account for wedges of cash and write masses of
reports.
"I have very much tried to put in place something that will be
of most use to the most people on the estate."
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