[Scribus] Torture testing Scribus

[Janet Hawtin]

On 4/9/06, Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> wrote:

> What this also illustrates, and perhaps could be a side learning
> experience for students as they get introduced to open source software,
> is the citizenship involved in giving useful feedback to developers so
> they can fix and improve the software that fills a great need.

This is certainly an aspect of the INGOTs system of desktop training,
ie. folks as one of their competencies must show that they are able to
contribute back. This different levels include different degrees of
giving back to the community from basic things like burning a copy and
passing it on, to tech support of properly contributing to a project.

Including this as a part of the desktop training might help to shift
the students from a consumer perspective to a particilant perspective.
For me spending time watching the ideas and workings of inkscpae and
scribus lists is helping me to appreciate more fully all the thinking
and work going on to make these things go.
It is something very funky about these programs and communities that
they are accessible and that there is room for people to make a
positive difference.

Perhaps putting the students in teams/pairs and getting them to check
out an aspect of the community related to that application, to report
back to the rest about their application, who develops it, how long
theyve been working on it, what the patterns are for stable releases,
what is important to making that project possible, funds wise or
technology wise, a bit about bounties for specific things to be solved
perhaps, posting bugs.

This is a new industry model we are working in.
The community build model is becoming more pervasive.
It maybe at this point that proprietory products have some specific
bases covered that the community model has not got to yet, there are
other aspects that are very sound in open source apps. If the school
is well resourced/has time then showing people a range of things from
both camps is probably the best plan. If not then
I certainly think that learning the skills to participate in a
community based application development environment is a future proof
skill.

Cheers

Janet