This is within the framework of an academic course on “Computer Tools” that, Wednesday December 6th, Hervé – a member of our collective – made a presentation on Emmabuntüs. This course is led by Antoine Caumel and is intended for students following the Master 1 degree “Contemporary Societies : ethical, political and social challenges” of the Paris Descartes university. About 20 students registered for this course, which is actually more a workshop than a classic theoretical seminar. A total of 12 sessions are scheduled during the first semecter (the course ends with the Christmas vacations).
The “Contemporary Societies” Master is of the “research” type (as opposed to a professional course), which aims at training researchers, and therefore is very focused on the production by each student of a research essay (representing 50% of the final grade). The first sessions focus on literature reviews, tools and working methods, in order for the students to gather the key information to grasp, at the end of the semester, what is the current “state of the art” in their respective research field.
Alexis Marise Bique, president of the “Société d’Histore 94120 Saint Georges & Dalayrac” [Historical Society], also implemented and presented during the course some on-line collaborative tools allowing the students to work in particular on the transition from copyrights to free licenses.
Because this is a fundamental dimension of this course : the contemporaneity challenges and in particular those related to the “free movement” and to the intellectual property. It is thus within this framework that an example of a GNU/Linux distribution was presented, followed by another example of a free project : “Jerry Do It Together” the now famous computer embedded in a plastic container and built with recycled electronic components during collaborative workshop sessions.
Undoubtedly, we were able to show the way for the interested students to “look in the guts” of their computers, and to not remain in a passive attitude in front of this tool which has often a “black box” look.