Forum OpenACS Q&A: OACS and .LRN

Collapse
10: OACS and .LRN (response to 1)
Posted by Caroline Meeks on
I actually think there is very little that can be done for the education market that doesn't have applicability in other markets.

Take for instance the little Homework Drop-Box Package.  All it is file-storage with specific permissions and flow so that students can upload homework, but can't see other's homework and teachers can download homework and upload comments/graded papers.  Seems pretty education specific?

Commonly in manufacturing facilities production workers are encourage to submit suggestions and if those suggestions save the company money they get a percentage of the savings.  Seems like pretty much the same code to me!

Now try to go into a big manufacturing company and tell them you can solve their problems because you have a "Homework Drop-Box".

Good programming sees the similarities between problems. Good sales tells the customer they are special and you understand their problems.

They are 180 degrees apart.  No wonder sometimes the "Tone" of marketing material rubs the technical people the wrong way.

From a technical point of view we absolutely have to be sure .LRN and OACS are compatible, hopefully to the point of being almost the same thing. But please be tolerant of the fact that we will be trying to create a separate image that says education.  This .LRN centric language will probably get worse not better in the next year or two. This separation does not mean that technically we don't consider ourselves part of the community.

I personally am committed to reducing duplication of work and keeping people informed.  I've been emailing all the people doing any work for educational institutions. I attended the last OpenACS social.  I have visited the Open Force and Ybos offies and I spent a bunch of time with the Musea people at the social.  I've been AIMing the engineering team at AD.  I'm having lunch with Philip next week.  I posted about which major packages we are about to start work on.  I'd love to go out and meet Dan if anyone wants to buy me a plane ticket J.  Believe me, the last thing in the world I want is to have the OACS and .LRN cores not be compatible.