Enabling others to teach with NAMS

[ericmjl]

@MridulS, moving this over from our email thread.

Seems like we've got something good going here. Perhaps we should somehow state clearly how others can use NAMS material for teaching purposes, something akin to how the Software/Data Carpentry organization allows the material to be used freely. I'm thinking of adding some verbiage to the README:

Teaching with this repository material

If you would like to teach with this repository material, we request only the following:

• Proper attribution back to the original in the primary landing page of derivative work. (This would usually imply the README.)
• Modifications to the original material documented in forked repository. (An example would be a plain text HISTORY file, or as a section in the forked README.)
• Loop back to us if there are recordings - so that we can link to them in the original repository!

The text is experimental, so if you're ok with the idea but want to propose a change, please do so!

[MridulS]

Yeah this looks nice :) I would also add to not remove files like LICENSE, CONTRIBUTORS, FEEDBACK-CONTRIBUTORS from the forked repo.

[leriomaggio]

If I may add something on this, since I feel quite "involved" in this :D

The very first two things that popped out in my head:

• I think that the LICENSE of the material should be a bit more restrictive if you "ask not to change it": MIT is very free and allows for basically everything. Maybe considering switching to BSD or GNU GPL3 may be worth considering

• keeping track of the changes in a History file may be a huge waste of time and very complicated. Unless, you were thinking of very general comment on the changes such as "changed formatting of slides" or "new subsection Xxx and crosscheck of reference links" (which is something I did, for instance).

HTH.

[leriomaggio]

Btw, I think that these "rules" and "directives" may be of general interest and apply to basically any lecture notes/ material/ tutorial available on GitHub.

So, I think I am going to support this initiative by applying the same set of rules to my own material. I hope this may be of help to the cause.

[ericmjl]

keeping track of the changes in a History file may be a huge waste of time and very complicated. Unless, you were thinking of very general comment on the changes such as "changed formatting of slides" or "new subsection Xxx and crosscheck of reference links" (which is something I did, for instance).

Yes, that was what I was thinking. General comments on what changed, with granularity made optional. It's just so that we have an idea of what's changed - and also what could be good ideas to import back into the original repository, with attribution.