When will educators understand opensource

Helios ^ | 1-17-2009 | helios

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

[N3WBI3]

There are some links in the original to stories (like a teacher telling a student that giving someone else a linux disk is illegal..

[Texas Fossil]

I have been a Linux user for past 10 years, and would never boot a Windows machine except I work on one ever day for my company.

The missing component for a complete conversion on my work desktop computer for work is a scriptable publishing program.

I use Quark now, with Xdata import plug-in.

Scribus is probably workable if I was proficient in Python.

Next years project.

[taxcontrol]

To be honest, this wont get the attention it need until a student who is being forced to purchase software files a lawsuit against the school.

Not sure on what grounds the student would sue but I'm sure that a creative and enterprising law student could come up with something ... “perhaps torturous interference with education”?

[N3WBI3]

uggg Python is nasty ugly stuff ;) Jython is even worse. We are cutting over from Weblogic to Websphere and I am almost daily pained by how cryptic the admin interface is made by its reliance on jython..

[neb52]

I think this is mostly tailored for Elementary.

http://www.ubuntu.com/education

[John 3_19-21]

..

[N3WBI3]

one could sue under equal access then again kids are expected to buy their own paper and school supplies so why should software be different?

[Zeppelin]

I had a conversation with an English Professor at the University of Texas today. He stated that his insistence his students purchase the "student discounted" copy of Microsoft Office to be more out of his laziness than for his real need for that particular program. Turns out that he just doesn't want to change his syllabus to inform his students they have a choice.

News flash Prof. Some folks just don't have a spare 150.00 laying around to sustain the Redmond Giant. You won't be able to tell a Linux-based .doc from a Windows-based one.

I just graduated from the University of Texas 2 years ago. All 4 years I was there, the student-discounted version of MS Office cost us only $15.

I agree with the author on most points in the article, but his arbitrary figure of $150 is not due diligence on his part.

[neb52]

“To be honest, this wont get the attention it need until a student who is being forced to purchase software files a lawsuit against the school.”

MS gets around that by dropping the price of their products for education big time. Business and Consumer users get screwed on MS pricing since they are subsidizing Education and Foreign markets.

[Texas Fossil]

I am not the average application user, but I am no programmer either.

I am also 61 years old. You don’t learn as fast at that age, although I can generally hold my own with the Wunderkinder (wonder children).

My first PC was RS Model-1 Z80 that I built up from floor sweepings in 1982. That dates me.

Am also a Ham (have a commercial radio license) and like all things technical. You cannot live long enough to do it all in electronics.

[Texas Fossil]

I do not believe your post AT ALL.

I know there are some lefties in OS, but the license is not part of the plot.

[abb]

I’m far from a techie, but I understand the concept of open source. Wikipedia is an ‘open source’ knowledge database. Blogs, bulletin boards, etc. are ‘open source’ journalism.

Government schools are about as far away from the concept of open source that one could get, I suspect.

[ChinaThreat]

Add me to this pinglist please!!!!

[John 3_19-21]

I am not making the connection. Look at the bottom of the image.
Debate is my agenda.

[neb52]

Considering it would hurt ISDs “We need more money” mantra, I doubt they would go for something free. LOL!

[antiRepublicrat]

I use Quark now, with Xdata import plug-in. Scribus is probably workable if I was proficient in Python.

InDesign on OS X. Sweeeet. You can use AppleScript and JavaScript, both quite easy to learn. If you have a generated XML source it can automatically build pages based on it.

[ChinaThreat]

There are arguments on both sides of this issue. Especially support issues. If you have to support client computers, it is best to limit the # of OS’s you have to support. Otherwise you have to have staff trained in all the variations. This costs $$$.

Opensource is great stuff. But the lack of uniformity is troublesome and the lack of support is a major issue also. As times get tight, you will see more and more of it though.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

There are some links in the original to stories (like a teacher telling a student that giving someone else a linux disk is illegal..

i've had students run into situations where a professor insisted on Microsoft Office, and placed work in formats that could not be opened by any other application. It was needless, what the guy was doing could have been done with Adobe (in a different format).

What really irritates me is that vendors who are Microsoft Partners can't sell Linux distributions. While i'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that such prohibitions are a violation of the Anti-trust agreements that Microsoft had with the feds, and a violation of the agreement that Microsoft made with Novell.

Time for Microsoft to be held to the standard that everybody else is held to.