LCA 2010: Tridge and the art of education

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 20 January 2010 22:42

Opinion and Analysis

It takes a lot of courage to set out on an unexplored course, especially when it comes to academia. There is nothing to compare with the withering scorn that one earns from this community if one sets out on an ambitious course - and then fails miserably.


But free software luminary Andrew Tridgell is used to exploring uncharted waters. Along with Bob Edwards, a professor at the school of computer science at the Australian National University in Canberra, Tridgell taught a course in development of free and open source software at the ANU last year, a notable first.

The university, a hallowed institution of learning in Australia, was happy to open its doors to Tridgell who was given leave by his employer, IBM, to run the course along with Edwards.

The ANU was also extremely accommodating in changing the terms of the agreements so that the principles of FOSS could be followed in toto.

Yesterday, at the 11th Australian national Linux conference, both Tridgell (seen on the right of the pic) and Edwards (on the left) reported that their experiment had been a resounding success.

There is no authorised textbook for such a course, no furrowed path to follow. Yet for someone like Tridgell, who is known to have an open and curious mind - that's the only way one can account for software like Samba and rsync which he has fathered - it was an adventure that had to be experienced.

He told the conference yesterday that the course was not about programming or how to use Linux.

"It was about teaching students about the FOSS culture," Tridgell said. "FOSS development is about working with others, both on a technical and social level; learning how to submit patches, report bugs, and teaching people how to get on with other FOSS developers."

When Tridgell spoke to iTWire about the course at the LCA in Hobart last year, it was clear that it meant as much, or even more, to him as his own software projects do.

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