[Ktechlab-devel] KTechLab Project Shutdown

[Julian Bäume]

Hi,
it's me again,

On Wednesday 21 May 2008 Jason Lucas wrote:
> Well, thanks for the input Guys. It's the busiest time the list has seen
> for a while! One thing that is most apparent is that we would all like
> to keen the project alive, but none of us have the time to do it. I'm
> surprised that there has been very little activity from the vast student
> population that uses OSS. Surely in this day and age, active involvement
> in an OSS project should be paramount in a degree student's portfolio.
> We have in the past been contacted by various educational establishments
> regarding the status of the project (check the list), yet none of them
> have actually bothered to to encourage their students to participate in
> OSS projects.
Well, as a student I must say, that it's quite hard for me to get in touch 
with OSS projects. I try to, but I have quite a little time to really put 
work into such a project. I really dislike this, but I haven't managed to get 
my studies and OSS together in a way that can move something. Some weeks ago 
I convinced a lecturer to do some work for an OSS project, but that was quite 
hard, because I now have to do everything on my own. Sadly the subject hasn't 
anything to do with ktechlab, because this is a multi-media lecture.

So what the students need to get in touch with OSS, is a project they can work 
on, and it must be guided by some of the lecturers. At least my university 
fails at the last point :-/

> We need to change the attitude of some of these educational
> establishments: to view participation in an OSS project as an integral
> part of the educational (and indeed the qualification) process.
> I hope that this will actually happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Since I started looking at the ktechlab code and joined the mailing-list, I 
thought of ways to encourage the people from my university to get in touch 
with ktechlab and use it for education purposes. It's not easy to find 
somebody to supervise the work, so everything is up to the student. 

Since time passed by this year, I mentioned, that I was stuck within a project 
I had to do in order to start my diploma thesis. So I decided to stop it 
during the summer term and start something more promising later. As I 
mentioned on this list before, I'm planning the move to kde4 technology for 
ktechlab, but was interrupted again and again by other important things. Now 
I decided to continue this work as part of my study. At the moment I try to 
find somebody to be the mentor for my student research project, where I try 
to find a path (and may be also some implementation) to migrate all the stuff 
to use kde4 libraries. If I can find somebody, this means, I would have 3 
month (on the paper, in fact this can be even more) to work only for this 
purpose and I'd really love to do that. I'll see, what the next weeks will 
bring and keep you up to date.

> On a personal note, I've found that on the verge of my 40th birthday, my
> wide ranging and extensive experience in IT is no longer valued, (try
> getting a job interview for an IT job at my age & you'll understand).
> So I'm now forced to re-skill, and to try my hand at another career.
> I've chosen Horticulture and Garden Design, It's a difficult change, but
> It least I'm spending much more time out in the open air & enjoying the
> outside life more than I ever done before.
I wish you all the best for your future and thanks for your time you invested 
for ktechlab.

bye then
julian
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