Boy Scouts and Open Source?
I was never a member of the Boy Scouts myself, so my understanding of what they’re about is limited to what’s seeped in from popular culture, but this looks like a winning idea:
Friday May 9, 2008
The Boy Scouts have joined the Open Source Community.
The Boy Scouts of America National Council in Irving, TX has announced the release of their Open Source Initiative. The OSI Project represents a significant commitment by the Boy Scouts of America to the Open Source Community.
This project represents a “complete embrace of Open Source by the Boy Scouts”, says Greg Edwards, OSI Project Manager. Through the OSS Website (http://opensource.scouting.org) the Boy Scouts are not only committed to becoming users of Open Source Software, but teachers, producers, and advocates as well.
(See Greg Edwards’ open letter for more.)
If this means actual scouts are going to be encouraged to get involved in open source projects — say, it will be considered an official scouting activity that you can (I guess) earn merit badges for — then it seems like a great chance for a lot of kids to experience the open source process.
(Er, I guess that should say “boys”, not “kids”. Why aren’t the Girl Scouts doing the same thing? Why weren’t they doing it first, actually?)
Of course, only a small percentage of scouts will flourish in open source, in the sense of having the temperament and discipline to make useful contributions to the projects they participate in. But that’s okay: that ratio is the norm in open source projects. There’s no reason to expect more or less from Boy Scouts. What’s more important is that all the scouts who participate will be exposed to the cultural norms of the open source community: sharing, respectful technical discussions, taking the time to express oneself clearly in writing, fixing things instead of complaining that they’re broken, etc. For every Boy Scout who gets involved in open source, or who hears his friends talking about their projects, that’s one more person who understands what open source is all about. (I’m using “open source” synonymously with “free software” here.)
I’ll close with this beautiful story from Jim Blandy:
Back in 1993, I was working for the Free Software Foundation, and we were beta-testing version 19 of GNU Emacs. We’d make a beta release every week or so, and people would try it out and send us bug reports. There was this one guy whom none of us had met in person but who did great work: his bug reports were always clear and led us straight to the problem, and when he provided a fix himself, it was almost always right. He was top-notch.
Now, before the FSF can use code written by someone else, we have them do some legal paperwork to assign their copyright interest to that code to the FSF. Just taking code from complete strangers and dropping it in is a recipe for legal disaster.
So I emailed the guy the forms, saying, “Here’s some paperwork we need, here’s what it means, you sign this one, have your employer sign that one, and then we can start putting in your fixes. Thanks very much.”
He sent me back a message saying, “I don’t have an employer.”
So I said, “Okay, that’s fine, just have your university sign it and send it back.”
After a bit, he wrote me back again, and said, “Well, actually… I’m thirteen years old and I live with my parents.”
May 9th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
When the Boy Scouts approached me about this project I was very excited. As a long time (I used the early versions of emacs) advocate of Open Source I envisioned a real win-win opportunity for both the Boy Scouts and the Open Source Community.
The OSI project is not a merit badge program. This is a full fledged strategic plan to apply the Open Source process to the organization as a whole. As far as I know this is the first project of its kind. We all know about Open Source efforts by companies from the technology sector. Most of those projects are self serving and are methods to enhance their market share.
For the most part non profit organizations have a difficult time finding software that can help them run their operations. The Boy Scouts and other non profit groups like little leagues, community theatres, art centers, Girl Scouts, churches, and even the Red Cross face the same issues. Generally these groups don’t have any options when it comes to software.
I like to use the analogy of running a fund raiser. We all get the knocks on the door from a kid asking for money to support the team. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Boy Scouts or a church youth group, it costs money to plan and go on a camping trip. Most of the time whoever is running the fund raising campaign is living a nightmare, simply because there isn’t any good software to help them. There are allot of people that have knowledge about doing fund raisers. Put them together with people that can build the software based on their input, and everyone wins.
I have been disappointed about the lack of progress that we’ve made in getting the general user community to embrace and use OSS solutions. Beyond a couple exceptions such as OpenOffice and Mozilla we have not been able to get the message across. In the server arena and among technology professionals we have made headway.
To me this seemed like a true Golden opportunity to reach a very large number of every day computer users. The number of volunteers that the Boy Scouts have supporting their kids is huge. Add to that the number of volunteers from other non profit groups that could get involved in the projects hosted by the Boy Scouts. And as we all know parent volunteers can be a very powerful force. Even if only a small percentage of these volunteers get directly involved, everyone in their organization will hear about how Open Source helped the cause.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Thanks for correcting my take on this, Greg. But, I do hope that part of it involves getting the Scouts themselves involved, as it sounds like it does… Of course, I don’t really care whether merit badges are involved (heck, I admit I don’t really know what a merit badge is), the main thing is that the members of the organization are free to become participants in the maintenance and development of its infrastructure. And, of course, all the volunteers associated with the organization will be exposed to open source software…
Good luck!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Yes too all of your hopes. One of the stated opportunities that the project was intended to meet was to expand on the Boy Scouts “Learning for Life” mission. The E-Learning section of the website is targeted at teaching all users about Open Source. My plan for this area is to have the Open Source Community build a comprehensive reference to answer the question “What is Open Source?”. I think the interesting challenge for many of us technical types will be to build out a path that is written for non technical readers. The plan is to have 3 parallel paths, a technical path, a non technical path, and a humorous path, like the dummies books.
My hope is that this approach will reach all audiences, scouts, their parents, and maybe even their grandparents. The technical side my be a repetition of what is already available, but I think the other areas will be unique.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:31 am
This sounds great and I wholeheartedly support it, but remember the OSI is not the only organization with an interest in the (young, developing minds of the) Boy Scouts. Wearers of this patch might be experiencing some cognitive dissonance in the open-source program: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061020-8044.html
“But troop leader, I thought sharing with others was stealing!”
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Progress update.
The OSS Website has been gaining. However, the site needs writers with Open Source expertize to expand the E-Learning section. This is being built as a teaching platform, and it needs teachers so it can grow.
The About OSS section is built on MediaWiki. So if you can give a little time, come and help educate future Open Source advocates.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:07 am
I just discovered this program. Having written about Free Software and Scouting years ago on Linux Journal (see http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7533 and http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7813 ) I am very happy to hear about it and I will add it to the Scouting section of my “How to turn into Free Software supporters people who couldn’t care less” page at http://digifreedom.net/node/103