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OPEN SOURCE LITERACY

Mike Henley mnhenley at msn.com
Mon May 26 09:49:26 EDT 2003 
[i, deliberately in smallcaps,  might, heh, as a lay person developing
an interest in computing - and so typically haughty of me! - think
that my first foray would be to "coin a term", but i don't that'd be
true. On google's web search it comes up on someone's CV
http://www.dubravac.fau.edu/cv.htm whereas on google's groups search
it did not match any documents, though this is changing with this
post. So here you go; someone might've beat me to it on the web but it
seems i'm the first to post "open source literacy", as in computing
literacy, on usenet groups covered by google, HA!!  p.s. Please shut
up about this and lemme indulge in myself for a day before you toast
me for it xox]

Now my post is... 

As in computing literacy, i would like to ask about open source
literacy for the non-IT or CS, aka "lay", people like me. I recently
installed apache, perl and used a wiki script that runs as a cgi. It
was an enlightening and enjoyable experience. I think i'm starting, or
would like to once i find the time, to get hooked on OSS. It's simple,
there's a whole new world out there on sourceforge and elsewhere,
where there are scripts that one can use, and modify (heh, i modified
a few things about the UI for the perl script, well, it was the html
side of it regarding an annoyingly small box; basically added 1 to 5
so 5 rows became 15, but even so, imagine that! it was such a joy and
i felt so omnipotent and free!).

So my questions are... 

1. How would you define open source literacy for lay people and
non-OSS folks. Keeping in mind all I want to do is use it for my own
purposes, simply make the computer do stuff for me the way i want it,
being able to read OSS scripts and modify them, or even with time
writing small and simple scripts from scratch to make my work and my
personal life easier, considering my income and the majority of my
time are elsewhere.
2. if you were to make up a syllable, err... syllabus!... that is both
relatively easy and enjoyable, basically for dummies, what would it be
like? Mine starting with PHP and Javascript using the web as an
interface, on apache and mozilla. Then from there i plan to learn
python. Then possibly ruby and TCL. Then possibly Perl. Then possibly
Java. Also along the way i'd like to learn more about the theory of
programming and whatever. p.s. it should provide instant
gratification, useful and usable from the start, and enables access to
a lot of scripts, right from the start;  basically the availability of
open source material on sourceforge or elsewhere is a big plus and
also the ease of reading and modyfing such material.

[please post to the group rather than emailing me]
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