Some of our projects have deliverables that can be shared with everyone. A good example would be documentation. Take a look at what we learnt during our LearnLinux project and perhaps our discoveries will help you too.

The challenge
One of the major challenges that the Foundation faces is creating awareness of the functionality, flexibility and accessibility of open source. Up to now it would appear that an awareness of open source has been limited to sophisticated technology users. The Foundation aims to bring open source to learners from all levels of society – not only to make them aware of its existence, but also how this revolutionary, boundless technology can be used in software development and training.

The solution
We want everybody to have access to high quality Linux training material. We recognised the need for these materials while implementing several of our projects; and while high quality training material is available, none of it is available freely. Without freely available material it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop our projects in a truly sustainable way. We thought we would remedy the situation by putting together a band of bright, young South Africans who together could put together a body of work that would not only be significantly better than the the few pieces of freely available material, but it would also rival the commercially available material.

The conditions
We make this material available freely to the world under two conditions. Firstly, should the work ever be modified, (which is allowed), we request that you credit the Shuttleworth Foundation as the original producers of the material - we're proud of what we did, we'd like this contribution to be remembered. Secondly, should the work be modified, all modifications should be shared and the modified work distributed under the original licence - after all, if you change this material you're building on top of all our work, you should give others the opportunity to build on top of your work too.

Success!
The success of any great open source project can be directly attributed to the formation of a supportive community around that particular project. While the contribution of each individual member may be small, they have an extraordinary impact when combined, with an entire community and more benefiting from that collaborative effort. This may be an unusual kind of open source project, but we would encourage you to add to this material and make it the point of reference for GNU/Linux education. It belongs to the open source community, use it, share it and above all enjoy it.