after the Vienna International Congress

[Stefano Costa]

Dear all,

after the Vienna Congress, I want to share my feeling about the
situation of open source in European archaeology.

Good lectures we had from Ducke, Lieberwirth and Bezzi did show that
open source software is not behind the current standards of the
discipline. Markus Jobst pointed out why open source is highly
recommended in a public environment like most government agencies.

But - and this is the most significative advance - also private
companies like 7reasons and Arc-Team are using effectively free software
and earning money too in their work (and it looks so good!). 

So now it sounds like we should put more effort in education. And, in
this sense, the proposal for a common platform to collect documentation
would be a good starting point, also to encourage teachers in the
adoption of open source software in their classes of quantitative
methods and archaeological computing (where there are such courses).

7reasons were first in row proposing to share 3D models used in
archaeological reconstructions for learning purposes, but we all know
that this is just a little part of the whole.

I know that iosa.it is a very incomplete source of information for this
purpose, but all the stuff we've collected there can be easily (re)used
elsewhere as a starting point at least.

I guess that almost 100% of those of you who are teaching have some sort
of tutorials or other material for students. Is someone willing to set
up a collaborative sharing environment (maybe using a wiki) ?

Let us know, best regards

Stefano Costa


-- 
Stefano Costa
http://www.iosa.it Open Archaeology
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