AwareNet in a Box (planning)

This page is a scratch space for for collecting and discussing material to do with packaging awareNet as a DVD product for installation on generic Windows machines.

1 Installation

• Create XAMPP distribution to install Apache 2.0, PHP5, MySQL and a clean new awareNet, we probably don't want phpMyAdmin and other cruft it adds by default
• Must include php-gd2, php-curl, php-mysql, php-openssl, apache mod_rewrite
• Will need to research how XAMPP uses InstallShield
• Not doing this anymore - using a portable XAMPP Lite and using the C# installer to install Apache and MySQL as services.
• Will need DVD-related windows bits, autorun.inf, icons, etc
• Will need to create scheduled task to ping the cron interface (could use wget or PHP CLI)
• Forking to be handled with winbinder.
• We need legal advice on the distribution of MySQL Community Server - it is unclear whether we fall under Oracle/MySQL's FOSS exemption.

Install form asks for a bare minimum of information to keep things as simple as possible. Default install path is %%program files%%awareNet

2 Technical TODOs

• Work out how forking will be done on Windows
• Discover if there are any P2P issues when WINS is used instead of DNS.

2.1 Proposal: Books Module

The wiki is awkward for books, as the entire document is loaded as a single page. A large document such as the Bible could crash a browser, and XML processing is more work than needs doing. Having a separate books module for non-editable content would allow us to show chapter navigation and implement a specialized search. Kapenta already has a books module which could be upgraded and modified for this use.

Suggest use of either Calibre or FBReader (client side) together with epub-utils (server-side) as these allow learners to export content to mobile phones - effectively turning awareNet workstations into lending libraries for Gutenberg and other content. Calibre supports a wide variety of devices, and all are FLOSS which could be included on the CD/DVD.

• underway

2.2 Proposal: Maps plugin

Not a priority, but something to consider. There is a kapenta module for mapping, similar to Google/Bing/Yahoo Maps, and open source content from OpenStreetMap and US Federal Agencies (NASA/NOAA

3 Content Plugins

Content plugins are free - we can't sell them since since much copyleft content includes Non-Commerical use clauses (NC). Content plugins will be formatted as XML or SQL dumps in Kapenta wiki/images/video/alias format which can be imported into an awareNet network. Updates can be distributed on CD/DVD like a magazine subscription. Types of content may be:

• images
• image galleries
• videos
• video galleries
• aliases
• wiki articles (includes books)
• revisions to any of the above

3.1 wikiHow

A large collection of HOWTO articles, published under CC-BY-SA-NC. Most useful articles are likely to be heath and skills related. We may need to edit this collection to remove superfluous stuff and items which may be audience inappropriate. Much supporting content for this wiki is drawn from WikiMedia Commons.

http://wikihow.org/

We have their go-ahead and are indexing their site. Up to 'B' articles at this edit.

Image:Awarenet-wikihow-scan.jpg

3.2 Schools Wikipedia

This is a curated version of the English wikipedia. I'm usually against these, for many reasons, but I think this redacted version is the best fit - we don't need 4GB of articles (text only) sitting around on every node, and we probably don't need community members up in arms because their kids have discovered, in detail, what packing and pegging are.

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/archive/2007/05/wikipedia-for-schools

• downloading, it's a 3.5GB torrent, coming in slowly as my connection is shaped and throttled, and is competing with other downloads. 23% done.

Possible alternate is the Children's Wikipedia:

http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Children%27s_English_Wikipedia

3.3 Project Gutenberg

Free and public domain books.

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Turns out the complete Gutenberg collection is 350GB, am limiting to English language only, text only. Stripping bulk legal notices at the beginning of files and filtering by category I hope to have a reasonable library which will fit on one or two DVDs. Complete text library is 14GB (compressed, zip) but I am only downloading English language texts.

3.4 International Music Score Library Project

Wiki of free sheet music and recordings. GFDL.

http://www.imslp.org/

Choral public domain library - sheet music, etc:

http://www.cpdl.org/

Musopen - public domain recordings, mostly of classical music:

http://www.musopen.org/

3.5 WikiBooks & WikiVersity

Have textbooks, children's books and coursework. Good license terms (CC-BY-SA) but a lot of the content is mediocre or incomplete.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

4 Speculative

4.1 Scarleteen

Easily the best comprehensive sex education materials on the net. Non-judegemental and non-heteronormative. Unfortunately they do not publish under a copyleft licence, but may be worth writing them and asking. Western POV, but still an excellent resource.

http://www.scarleteen.com/

4.2 OpenStreetMap

Coverage of rural areas in Africa is not great, but something to consider.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

4.3 NASA World Wind

Has public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Operational_Environmental_Satellite GOES imagery and GIS data. Think Google Earth on DVD. Not nearly as high res as Google satellite imagery, but good metadata.

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

5 Links

[http://www.comminit.com/en/node/291592/38 link for others doing * in a box]

6 potential partners

6.1 board game

Andre Mostert (Petchey Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of East London)

Richard Kilpert (Vega)