ubuntu-scientists team mailing list archive

["A. Mani" <a.mani.cms@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 1:59 AM, Bruce.Chastain
<Bruce.Chastain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuScientists
>
>
> Help scientists find FLOSS alternatives I like this as a goal but I think
> before we can help them find alternatives we need to be able to explain why
> we are suggesting FLOSS alternatives. Imagine a scientists using matlab for
> example, why would he or she want to switch to an FLOSS alternative? And
> actually this is a hard one I think.

I don't allow people in research to use Matlab and ask for revision of
papers if they do.

Various courses in software carpentry are happening

>
> Of course there are a lot of scientific software packages out there and it
> seems to me that ideally we should have an expert on each of the FLOSS
> alternatives, to show how they can stack up aginst the proprietary stuff out
> there.
>
> Get universities to teach FLOSS instead of proprietary software. (or at
> least mention/show it...)Functionally I think how to do this is very similar
> to the first goal.


What we need to do is to provide customized meta packages for
different course types..
It has to go all the way to the classrooms and textbooks.

This is lot of work and needs sustained campaigning. Free software
groups are already active in all parts of the world.
In India we have already made free software compulsory in schools
falling under CBSE. But lobbying and corruption does not permit any
transformation  of technical colleges and Universities.
In India, for example, we have already demonstrated that entire
courses and ranges of textbooks can be fully supported by free
software.

*buntu and related organizations probably should be thinking big in these areas.
It does not - that is a problem.

>
> Get scientists to be more involved in UbuntuI don't think it will be easy to
> get scientists who are not involved with FLOSS to be involved, first we have
> to just get them at the users level. Better if we can find the scientists
> among our community to fill the roles.
>
> Try to convince scientist to make a career in FLOSS development This one I
> don't think is realistic for us to do generally. If one already has a career
> as a scientist I think it will be difficult to push them into a career in
> FLOSS development.
>


Various courses in software carpentry are happening. Yes scientists
are unlikely to shift to development and few of them can really handle
specifications. But almost everybody in subjects like machine learning
can code from scratch.


> Ensure there is a visible and transparent communication path between
> scientists and FLOSS development teams.
> The reason I suggest this one is because it's a great thing if you can make
> the end user feel like they are part of the continuous improvement process.
> They, the end users are the ones who really have the vision of how they need
> their tool to work and if we can make it easy enough for them to get
> involved some of the above goals, I think, might be easier to achieve.
>

There are not many problems of this type.
Many are plain ignorant and need a strong push to change.

> Brand Ubuntu and FLOSS as cool for the science community! With everything
> branding and the soft skill are very powerful. We need show how FLOSS is the
> cutting edge, not just struggling out there making copies of proprietary
> software. To achieve this goal I think has a lot to do with marketing and
> visuals.
>

who will do the ground work?
we need a supporting team.
Already a lot of work has been done by others.
I think the initiatives to capitalize on them are not in place.



Best

A. Mani



A. Mani
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