[Server-devel] RACHEL, another developing world server project, would like to have a discussion with XS

[Dennis Nguyen]

Hi again Martin,

Good point -- that is important! Content licensing should be under a
> well known liberal license (GPL, GFDL, some of the Creative
> Commons...), otherwise even RACHEL will have problems with it.
>

Right now our content has a melange of licenses, with the majority being CC.
Of course we do request permission from all of our content holders before
packaging anything, which gets us past a few issues, but I suppose inclusion
in derivative work (including RACHEL in XS) remains sketchy... this will
require deeper study.

Well, a bare HTML index *is* a perfectly valid index :-) and it beats
> the performance and portability of any other solutions. How do you
> maintain it? Is there any metadata around (dublin core or otherwise)?
>

Ha :-) AFAIK we have no metadata so far, above or beyond that provided by
the filesystem, and we maintain and list the content by simply adding links
on the index page when we acquire, package, and verify the new content.
Search and flexible indexing will be challenges in the near future. Thanks
for pointing me at DC!

> This project has a voracious appetite for content, and as such we'd rather
> > stuff the project with content first regardless of compatibility with
> open
> > projects like Gnash.
> That is a reasonable approach I guess for your project. At the same
> time, it limits its usability to OLPC and to low-cost netbooks.
>

Great point made! I'll put this on the list for things to look into. Is
there a set of compatibility guidelines we should look at, or is there a
checker tool so we won't have to bother the content providers as much?

On another note, I just took a look through the XO content library at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Library_grid and to my delight discovered that
everything was a self-contained website in a .zip file! This is a great
thing. Perhaps we could work something out whereby on our content hunting we
could package some content for you folks, permissions and licenses
permitting.

Dennis Nguyen


On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com
> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:13 AM, Dennis Nguyen
> <denniskdnguyen at alumni.duke.edu> wrote:
> > Hi Martin, thanks for the warm welcome!
>
> My pleasure!
>
> > We would definitely welcome re-use of the content, but since I'm
> relatively
> > new to this particular project I don't have an expert sense of the
> > particular permissions we have with the content providers as is. I will
> look
> > into it.
>
> Good point -- that is important! Content licensing should be under a
> well known liberal license (GPL, GFDL, some of the Creative
> Commons...), otherwise even RACHEL will have problems with it.
>
> > Indexing: none! All of the content is currently listed on the index page
> > with bare HTML. In our defense, this is a relatively new and shorthanded
>
> Well, a bare HTML index *is* a perfectly valid index :-) and it beats
> the performance and portability of any other solutions. How do you
> maintain it? Is there any metadata around (dublin core or otherwise)?
>
> > The wikislice we're using for the moment is the 2008/9 Wikipedia
> Selection
> > for schools, which is handpicked front-to-back to fit the UK national
> > curriculum. The website with details for that is at
> > http://schools-wikipedia.org/
>
> Wasn't aware it existed. Interesting. Still, of limited use to us,
> being English only.
>
> > what we can get away with as we go. We have English and Spanish content
> so
> > far.
>
> That's a good start.
>
> > This project has a voracious appetite for content, and as such we'd
> rather
> > stuff the project with content first regardless of compatibility with
> open
> > projects like Gnash.
>
> That is a reasonable approach I guess for your project. At the same
> time, it limits its usability to OLPC and to low-cost netbooks.
>
>
> > You can probably tell from this that this project is in a very early
> stage
> > as far as maturity of the platform is concerned. I'm working to engage
> you
> > folks at an early stage in case you have something grand to teach us :-)
>
> I wish :-) -- all I can point to is the work and evolution of Linux
> "distributions" (such as Debian, RH, SuSE, Ubuntu). They take software
> developed by other projects, add a tiny bit of metadata, wrap it in an
> installable package.
>
> We are needing the same for content ATM, and the time is ripe for it.
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>
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