There's this course on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) that is just getting underway in Sweden. See https://winner.informatik.gu.se/moodle/course/category.php?id=2

Its self-description: "The course will study the development of politics, policy and law in relation to the role of software in society. Subjects which will be treated in depth are the role of free software/open source in relation to property theory, the politics of technology, community governance and the economic foundations for the assessment of free software/open source development."

It might be of interest to note that the course is pretty much 'open' and 'free'. In the many senses of those words. Students from across the globe can (maybe 'could', since the cut-off date for joining might be passed) join the course with just a simple email application. Best of all: no fees!

It's also running on a FLOSS-based e-education platform called Moodle. Haven't used Moodle myself, but here's the self-description:

OPENQUOTE: http://moodle.org/

Moodle is a course Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.

Moodle is Open Source software, which means you are free to download it, use it, modify it and even distribute it (under the terms of the GNU General Public License). Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP, including most webhost providers. Data is stored in a single database: MySQL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others.

Moodle has 50 language packs, including: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK and US versions), Finnish, French (France and Canada versions), German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Maori, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish.

To find out more, see the features demo, try the demonstration courses on this site, or see the growing number of Moodle sites around the world. To meet other Moodle users, join us in the Using Moodle course. ENDQUOTE

FN

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