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CommunityArchitecture/Leads/CMU
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Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Community Contact
JackAboutboul
University Contact
Dr. Gregory Kesden, Director of Undergrad Labs (gregory.kesden cs cmu edu) Klaus Sutner <sutner cs cmu edu>
May 2008
We had a wide-ranging discussion on May 13th. Jack, Greg, Dr. Greg, and Klaus.
Things are changing at CMU, and not for the better for advocates of open source.
The background: back in '99 at CMU, there was a pretty even split of OSes on campus. Solaris, Linux, Mac and Windows split the landscape quite evenly. Students were coming in with good knowledge of various OSes and languages like C. There was a vibrant community of UNIX-y folks.
Now: Solaris is gone and Linux is hard to find. The Powers-That-Be are standardizing on Windows and Mac, to make their lives as administrators and bureaucrats easier. Students are coming in with Windows systems, and graduating with Windows systems. Courses that really should be taught on Linux systems are essentially homeless.
The opportunity: The CS administration at Carnegie Mellon is *not* happy with the current state of things at CMU, and are moving quickly to revamp the curriculum. Their 100-level intro course, which is mandatory for all CS and ECE folks, is now teaching basic C, basic Unix literacy, and version control. They have a 400-level system practicum in which the explicit goal is to give back to the open source community. They are not ABET accredited, so they can move their curriculum as quickly as they see fit. They also have something going on called the "open learning initiative," which is a competitor of sorts to MIT's opencourseware project.
A great discussion. We are looking to recruit these guys to our broader curriculum effort, and are discussing ways to build a Fedora presence at CMU very directly.
