Amir I fully understand your arguments... but I see a conflict of interest here: they're encouraging students to write open code on the one hand, and keeping their own code proprietary on the other. Same with Google I guess. I can also see a cheap and dishonest recruiting process going on here... not to mention the semantics of the #1 proprietary social networking platform in the world associating its name with Opensource and established Universities. It's a win-win (to the nth power!) situation for Facebook. And finally: how would we volunteers at Wikimedia feel if Facebook did the same thing officially and "out in the open" (i.e. earning CSR credits) with us? Tyson Henry has added an interesting comment on the page (last one as of now)... what do you think? Mina ----- Original Message ----- From: Amir E. Aharoni To: Wikimedia Education Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 10:00 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] An alarming piece of news: Facebook teams with opensource??? Google has been doing similar things for years with Google Summer of Code. So did other organizations. Free software is not necessarily non-commercial. The whole point of Free Software is that everybody should be allowed to do pretty much everything. It cannot and should not be prohibited. Free software may, however, need to adapt to contributions from commercial organizations. When Google tried a few years ago to pay people to fill Wikipedias in languages of India with auto-translated articles, it was a big failure, because the editors community rejected it. When PR companies are filling Wikipedia articles in different with poorly sourced and biased information about their clients, it is also frequently rejected and deleted. A different issue is constructive editing for money or for prizes. Some countries held article writing contests with prizes, and though there was some opposition to them, they didn't hurt the projects in the long run, especially if they already had established communities of volunteer editors at the time of the contest. In any case, very few articles are usually written in such contests. It's unlikely at this point that Wikipedia in any language will be overwhelmed with many thousands of articles written for money, although this may change in the future. Again, we cannot and should not prohibit it, but we may want to think about how we shall adapt ourselves to it. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬ 2013/11/19 Mina Theofilatou <theoth(a)otenet.gr> Hello all I just wanted to share a link that I just found. It seems that Facebook is running a campaign to encourage Computer Science students to earn academic credits by contributing to opensource projects: http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/13/facebook-partners-with-22-universities-to…! I don't think Facebook should be allowed to do this. Imagine Facebook tried to pry its way into Wikimedia: I would expect all of us to revolt. A for-profit organization taking advantage of non-profit ideals??? MAKING PROFIT on non-profit? Would they even consider converting THEIR project into an open-source one? Of course not. Don't Mozilla and other Open Source Projects have ways of campaigning to attract CompSci students in their own organisations? Why does Facebook have to be the middleman? I find it revolting... if this is their idea of corporate social responsibility, I'll have to find away to stop using Facebook altogether in reply. _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education

Facebook was created using PHP and MySQL , free software. They like Google are not required to release their code because they do not deliver the program, they provide a service. And the above is possible , because they use a license that allows, designed for a time when software was distributed , for that reason it was created by the FSF a new version of the GPL , the GNU Affero General Public License What we should do is encourage students to license their work , free software works with that license. The site of the FSF argues: " That Developers use our General Public Licenses protect your rights with two steps : ( 1) assert copyright on the software , and (2) offer you this License Which Gives You legal permission to copy , distribute and / or modify the software. A secondary benefit of defending all users ' freedom Is that improvements made ​​in alternate versions of the program , If They receive Widespread use , Become available for other developers to Incorporate. Many developers of free software are heartened and Encouraged by the Resulting cooperation. However , in the case of software used on network servers , This May result fail to come about. The GNU General Public License Permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public . The GNU Affero General Public License is designed específicamente to Ensure That , in Such cases , the modified source code available to the community Becomes . It Requires the operator of a network server to Provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of That server. THEREFORE , public use of a modified version , on a publicly accessible server, Gives the public access to the source code of the modified version . " Source: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html Best regards, Fernando 2013/11/19 Mina Theofilatou <theoth(a)otenet.gr> -- -- Fernando da Rosa fedaro(a)fedaro.info fernando.darosa(a)gmail.com http://www.fedaro.info

Hello Mina, I agree with you that companies/foundations like Mozilla, Red Hat and some others should promote projects like that, providing special partnerships and academy programs to keep Computer Science students on the good side of the code, many of they are moving to the dark side through programs like Microsoft DreamSpark, Ambassadors Program, Oracle Academy and etc. In our case on the Brazilian Catalyst Program I'm trying to build a good relationship with IT Universities bringing students and teachers to the good side through the Education Program. We are promoting talks, hackathons and spreading the tech side of the wiki, providing info about all the APIs, data analysis and tools used to keep the projects running and growing, and probably, for the next months we will plan something in that field using our part of our budget with micro grants. Wikimedia, Wikimedia UK and some others are doing that, but without a "marketing campaign", IMHO we need only to improve that area to have more people involved working with us. Unfortunately we cant compete with Google, Facebook on marketing and budget :( but we are moving in the right direction, I guess. -- *Rodrigo PadulaEducation Program Coordinator - Brazil**Consultant for the Brazilian Catalyst Program at Wikimedia Foundation* *+55 21 9326 0558Blog: http://www.rodrigopadula.com <http://www.rodrigopadula.com>Twitter: @rodrigopadula* 2013/11/19 Mina Theofilatou &lt;theoth(a)otenet.gr&gt;

Hello everyone,   let's not overestimate the risks. Looking on the provided pages, I currently see no mention of students organized to contribute to Wikipedia, nor do I currently see any link with Wikimedia whatsoever. Mozilla community, for example, sure can decide on its own if they want to cooperate with Facebook.   And even if they did include Wikimedia in their plans, restricting such companies from providing us valuable help would make us look like complete ... (add a suitable noun here). :-)   Vojtech   ************************ Vojtěch Dostál Mail vojtech.dostal(a)centrum.cz &lt;vojtech.dostal(a)centrum.cz&gt;     ______________________________________________________________ Sorry for the delayed reply, busy day yesterday and another ahead:) Having read all of your comments carefully, I think you're missing my point. Perhaps I didn't stress my main point enough: I understand that profit can be made from non-profit endeavours and that this is not something that should be criticized. What is BEYOND me is the role Facebook has arbitrarily taken on in this case. Facebook is playing the middleman (there's a more "vulgar" expression in Greek that would be more appropriate, for those of you who understand Greek it's "νταβατζής"). I read the project description on the Fcebook page created for the "Open Academy Program". https://www.facebook.com/notes/open-academy/welcome-to-the-open-academy-pro… <https://www.facebook.com/notes/open-academy/welcome-to-the-open-academy-program/216150918554109>. If they're so keen on encouraging students to tackle real-life projects, why don't they offer paid internships? Why are they using Opensource as nothing more than a vehicle for their middleman role? Are Opensource communities like Mozilla so "desparate" to find developers so as to consent to Facebook being the "magic link" between Opensource and the academic community? Asaf Bartov and members of the Greek Wikipedia Community certainly remember the conflicts we had with an EU and state-funded organisation that was trying to do the same with promoting Wikipedia in Greece. And they were not even a commercial enterprise! If we are to be so lax in what we find acceptable in terms of opensource/open-content ethics, the future is certainly not promising, at least not in my eyes... I can only shudder at what we will see (and consent to) next. Mina ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Bauder" &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; To: "Wikimedia Education" &lt;education(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 2:47 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] An alarming piece of news: Facebook teams with opensource??? _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education>

Again, that's beside my point. There's a huge distance between companies using/benefiting from opensource, and the same companies coming out and saying more or less "The Opensource Community meets the Academic Community. Brought to you by Facebook". (Replace "Opensource" above with Open-content to describe Wikimedia, and "Facebook" with the multinational for-profit organisation of your choice. There you have it: an emerging trend.) If we're to be so elastic about who can usurp the labour put in by hours of work from dedicated volunteers by simply branding a publicity campaign, I see no reason why we "open" folks are so adamant about not having ads on the sites we love to contribute to. Which brings to mind my initial thought when I saw the news article: Facebook can't pry into the huge and promising open community by simply adding e.g. an ad on the sidebar of the Mozilla homepage or a "like/share" button at the bottom of each Wikipedia article. Looks like they found the way to pry in... But I'll leave you all alone, it seems I'm the only one so alarmed and disturbed by this issue. Mina ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Salsman" &lt;jsalsman(a)gmail.com&gt; To: "Wikimedia Education" &lt;education(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 11:30 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] An alarming piece of news: Facebook teamswith opensource???

There is no good reason. Fred