Students of Free Software

Thanks to the FOSS@RIT program, Wikiotics is proud to welcome two new developers to the project, Taylor Rose and Nate Case. Both are students at the Rochester Institute of Technology and veterans of the FOSS@RIT program.

FOSS@RIT houses an innovative introductory class “Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development” designed to give students real experience with free software all the way from the principles of copyleft through the communication and development tools used to build systems like Wikiotics in a global community.

You may have seen some of their projects before, like the video chat client for the deaf that landed on BoingBoing back in June. Once students complete the class they are eligible for independent studies, campus jobs, co-ops and Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships. The goal is to partner with interesting mentoring organizations where their development talents can help solve real world problems, which is where we come in.

Regular Drumbeat users may recognize Taylor from our comments page. In fact our Drumbeat project launch is what brought Wikiotics to the attention of Taylor, Nate, and the folks behind FOSS@RIT, spurring this collaboration into existence.

As our team of developers continues to grow, we will continue expanding and stretching what is possible for the Wikiotics community. The weeks ahead are going to have more activity pushes like this week’s Translation push so it is a great time for any interested developers to come on board and see how everything fits together

Crossposted with churchkey.org