[LAD] students and copyright

[David Robillard]

On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 12:33 +0200, jaromil wrote:
> still, myself being a person working in education, i think the problem
> is  more structural:  i'd rather  question  why students  in a  school
> should be contributing to  a professor's project, rather than starting
> one on  their own? they could learn  how to work in  a more horizontal
> and creative way, even if the  project will be less interesting in the
> eyes of the director, who should be there to give suggestions and help
> on students projects, not the contrary.

This sounds a lot like elementary/middle/high school thinking being
applied to University where it really doesn't apply (no offense)

There are plenty of opportunities for students to do their own thing as
course work (or directed studies courses, if possible).  Professor-run
projects are generally larger, more complicated things, that some random
student on their own is not about to write in a term or two.  They often
live longer than a single student's entire tenure at the University...

Science(TM) tends to be a bit more difficult and elongated than sitting
down to write some straightforward program.  Often you don't even know
if what you're attempting is possible, or will work well at all.  If
it's straightforward for a student to sit down and write the program in
a few months, it's probably not very interesting or relevant...

Cheers,

-dr