After reading the articles, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and  "The Future of Music" I had the basic understanding of Open Source.  But after reading all of the class discussion on the topic I now have a very good understanding of the whole idea.
I agree with Tammy Barcalow when she stated that educators could be involved in open source even with basic computer knowledge.  Even though these programmers are constantly improving on software developed in open source, who are they improving it for?  If programmers could include input from educators when developing software the end product would be something that teachers would want to use with their classes.
The giant software companies are beginning to use more input from educators when developing more software, but the people developing the software are still programmers in a little office with no experience in teaching 22 students in a computer lab or even a one computer classroom.  I have received several letters lately from companies and part of their advertising is that part of the software development team is comprised of educators.  But my question here is what did these people teach? Elementary, Secondary, College level, or Auto mechanics.  It is great to have educators involved in the development of educational software, but is it in their field or is a college educator giving input into reader rabbit for 1st grade?  They would have the fundamentals of reading and possibly how studies show student development in reading but they have never been in a classroom of first graders with wide reading abilities.

I see a great opportunity with open source and education.  School technology coordinators are always trying to find companies or organizations to help develop technology plans in schools.  Why not schools teaming up with open source programmers in their area, or state that would be willing to develop software or improve on software that could better fit an individual schools needs or projects they are trying to develop.  Most of these programmers love a challenge and love to create software to better suit peoples needs.  I bet that their would be people out their with these skills willing to help schools.  I feel fortunate since my school is 7 miles from Champaign, Urbana.  With the University of Illinois, NCSA, and many computer organizations in the area I feel this would be something to start investigating for my school district.