[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux in school

[terry]

From: http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html

"It is indeed a strange world when educators need to be convinced that
sharing information, as opposed to concealing information, is a good
thing. The advances in all of the arts and sciences, indeed the sum
total of human knowledge, is the result of the open sharing of ideas,
theories, studies and research.  Yet throughout many school systems,
the software in use on computers is closed and locked, making
educators partners in the censorship of the foundational information
of this new age. This software not only seeks to obscure how it works,
but it also entraps the users' data within closed, proprietary formats
which change on the whim of the vendor and which are protected by the
bludgeon of the End User License Agreement. This entrapment of data is
a strong, punitive incentive to purchase the latest version of the
software, regardless of whether it suits the educational purposes
better, thereby siphoning more of the school's limited resources away
from the school's primary purpose. The use of such closed software in
education may be justified only where no suitable open source solution
exists..."
... read on:  http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also:
"Microsoft Windows ousted at California school district"

"By this summer, all 5,000 students and 250 teachers will be working
off of a Linux-based thin client running OpenOffice.org, and the
majority of the district's servers will be running Novell SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server."

See:
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1245710,00.html


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