Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Timusk <ptimusk@sympatico.ca> Date: September 9, 2009 4:36:35 PM GMT-04:00 To: jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Fwd: [F/OSS-Discuss] UOC's Official Master Programme in Free Software

On 9-Sep-09, at 1:21 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

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This degree came about by the need to train qualified staff in free software. The European Union has recommended the introduction of courses on this subject because it considers that the habitual lack of knowledge of source code prevents us from auditing the true operation of software, which could seriously compromise security in some countries, leaving it in the hands of companies that create proprietary programs.

This is interesting as in my legal studies I had wondered in one paper if there were enough programers who could read free software source code and thus keep the free software programers honest

I stated there were many of us who had learned programming in school.

Question is how many years has programming been taught and how many students have studied it?

I assume it is like learning to ride a bike that once one has passed a programming course one never forgets say the meaning of and correction of "syntax error".

Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa. just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. kiitos paljon, merci, thank you and muchas gracias for reading.

Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa. just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. kiitos paljon, merci, thank you and muchas gracias for reading.