Free software is helping people make the world better. And here
are two of them: Neil Sullivan and Laurent Savaete. As founders
of Wikiotics, they're on a mission to make it easier for
everyone to learn languages. Linux Format magazine caught up
with them at FOSDEM to find out why they're doing it, how the
economics of teaching fail and why Hungarian phrasebooks are
trickier than they sound. Linux Format: Wikiotics is a
completely open, editable resource. Is it for teachers, or is it
for real people? Neil Sullivan: Both. It's a wiki, so it's
editable by anyone in the community. We designed it with
teaching in mind, but I've been building lessons and I'm not a
teacher. Being able to build your own materials and customise
materials for your own personal study, or for a friend, is
pretty central to the design of the system as well. LXF: What
sort of advantages do you think that a wiki structure offers
over the more usual top-down language learning websites? NS:
Language teaching is really customised in terms of