When will educators understand opensource

It has been gratifying to see the number of businesses and personal computers moving to Open Source software and the Linux Operating System. In our organization alone, the numbers, while small on a grand scale, are quite significant from where we stand. We've installed hundreds of Linux systems in the past two years and the retention rate of those systems are what we get excited about.

I have received a spate of emails in the past 60 days, complaining about various universities and corporations that are disallowing most anything but Windows to access their systems. A good focal point for this can be found on a recent article here. Further evidence of public ignorance about Open Source Software was uncovered in the "Karen" donnybrook. In the most recent article reflecting the same subject, Carla Schroeder nailed it dead between the eyes.

I'm not writing this to bemoan the facts...I am going to write this in hope that we can get the attention of some people that can change this trend. We can only hope.

Many of you are not deserving of a tirade...you are simply conducting business the way business has been conducted since computer networking became a part of your operations. Hopefully we can work together. Some of you however are digging in your heels and refusing to smell 21st century air.

First off, let's dispel a couple of things. I have sat in meetings with principals and school administrators and listened slack-jawed as system administrators (mostly MSCE's) told their employers that it was illegal to remove Windows from their current computers. They didn't say it violated their contracts or licenses...they said it was illegal.

That's either so uninformed that it raises the question "Why are you doing this job?" or it undeniably stands as a bold-faced lie.

Look. You are not only barring thousands of students and customers from your systems, you are forcing them to use an operating system that is inherently weak. In addition, you cry about your operating costs then when the tears dry, you write the check to Microsoft for the latest licenses.

I have recently seen the depths of ignorance when it comes to Open Source Software and on a personal level I can understand it, but you get no such pass. Do you realize that by demanding that your students or customers use Windows, you are subjecting them to this? I want you to justify that to me. As the people making decisions as to how and by whom your systems can be accessed, I want you to justify it. I must subject myself to attacks like this for the privilege of accessing your site?

It's just one of a never-ending line of viruses and spyware tools that your system administrators have to battle. I know you are "invested" in Microsoft products...I realize that. I also know that your system administrators are deathly afraid of losing their jobs because they don't know the first thing about Linux. Many of them anyway...there are a number of them that are running Linux Servers behind your back because it makes their jobs easier...and that's a good thing. But for the ones that hold Microsoft to their breast and swear their undying loyalty?

Learn or leave....you are holding the world back from what is inevitable. Open Source will have a place in our technology...on a large scale.

Open Office documents send and receive .doc and exel spread sheets just fine. As in the story noted above, the uh...young lady lamented that she couldn't use anything but Microsoft Office because the formats on her Ubuntu computer were incompatible...?

Absolute nonsense. I am suspecting one of her professors told her just that. I have specific reasons to believe it.

I would expect a first year college student to be this ignorant, but as administrators of entire universities and server systems, I would expect a bit more breadth of knowledge.

I don't usually do edits once an article is posted but in this case it is important enough to make an exception. One astute and knowledgeable reader left us a link to an extremely successful migration of an entire school. No one is asking you to go to this extreme but it is posted just so you know that no one is asking you donate a kidney here...just some common courtesy in letting a popular alternative system gain access to what they need. You can see the success story here.

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.

Now, we won't get specific here....for obvious reasons. Your "secure" system can be owned by about 17 people I know right off the top of my head...you just haven't merited their attention. Let's hope you stay below their radar. Your argument that Linux is only secure because it is obscure is also urban legend rubbish.

Now, we're going to be following up on this. Seems a certain University in Indiana is forcing some of it's students to purchase Microsoft Office or they are not being allowed to enroll. That's the report we are getting.

We'll be having a discussion with them this week. Hopefully we will report back that this was just a silly misunderstanding.

One of the questions we will be asking is this? Why do you capitulate to using or buying additional software so that the software you've already purchased will work as designed? Oh you don't do that?

We'll also be asking a major medical center in New York why they insist that a growing number of Linux users cannot access their logins. We know why...it's a piece of proprietary software that they demand be used prior to login. Windows-based proprietary software.

We'll be talking to them as well and we'll publish the names of the organizations and the people we talk with. we'll also publish the conversation verbatim if possible.

This isn't an argument or discussion on which operating system is best. It's a statement that thousands and thousands of people are making the conscious decision to take control of their computers. I notice with a bit of humor that some of you boast of supporting Mac machines? That's nice. Some numbers indicate that Linux has surpassed Mac in user numbers a while back. Different entities will dispute this statistic and with good reason.

Linux is free so there are no real sales numbers to go by and internet polling is all over the place. Some show it as number two, others as a distant third. While that may be the case, there is sufficient evidence to show that Linux is growing in popularity by the day, and I mean substantial growth. One focused advertising effort by Linux and those numbers will change without any dispute.

Even Microsoft, in it's annual report to the SEC, cited Linux and Open Source software as the number one threat to their profit margin. I didn't see any mention of Mac in there at all. So you will support the number 3 system but number two gets the cold shoulder? We are talking millions of users in the US alone.

Who appointed your entity as the gatekeepers of our technology? You may not perceive yourself as such, but actions are leading some to think you are just that... the gatekeepers barring us from your sites. Linux users are growing in huge numbers and those numbers get bigger daily. I am hearing from Linux users about you at a disturbing rate.

Look, no one is asking you to embrace this thing fully, just tweak a couple of things to allow Linux users equal access to your portals and sites. Heck, pay my travel and one night's lodging, buy me a meal and I will come do it myself. I'm serious, I will be happy to do it and I am fully qualified to do so.

Why are you denying computer users simply because they choose to use a more secure operating system? In a short period of time, I will not be the only one asking you this question.

“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 $$$.”

This is true and that’s why large organizations usually stick to one standard but when a teacher tells a kid that opensource is illegal we are not talking money, we are talking stupidity.

“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.”

Lack of uniformity? when windows 7 comes out people will be using everything from 2k-xp-vist-windows7. There is more choice on the linux side but if you want uniformity its there you just stick to a distro.

As to support I have worked with vendors and support of all stripes and RedHat comes away head and shoulders above the rest..

Well,

Redhat is opensource, but the support is not. I use CENTOS, which is basically Rehdat ES for free. I’m not arguing with you about the a$$hat’s statement about the legality of using an OS. I’m not arguing with you at all actually.

Lets look at an average LAMP stack Linux server. It is using Linux distro, Apache Web Server, MySQL, and PHP. Its a fabulous combo for free. But, when you multily the number of linux distros x the versions of apache x the # of MySQL versions x the # of PHP versions, you are looking at a support nightmare in a large setting like a university with 1000s of users and a tight budget. I even make a concerted effort to limit the variations of OS/Software combos in the server room for the same reason.

We limit our client support to Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10x. We will help you if you are on a linux variant, but it is not a supported OS on our campus.

I’m a big linux fan myself. But when it comes to support and uniformity, there is something to be said for a standardized supported OS.

I’m not arguing with you, just stating obvious realities.

No, he is talking about retail education purchases. This software really is from $100 to $200, depending on what is included.

The MS Office that you purchased at college is produced under a special license from MS, and even that is suspect and open to interpretation.

Most colleges around DFW will charge a “copy fee” of $6 per CD, and MS lets them give the software away.

However, even within MS there are differing interpretations of the legality of this transaction, as of summer 2008.

“Lets look at an average LAMP stack Linux server. It is using Linux distro, Apache Web Server, MySQL, and PHP. Its a fabulous combo for free. But, when you multily the number of linux distros x the versions of apache x the # of MySQL versions x the # of PHP versions, you are looking at a support nightmare in a large setting like a university with 1000s of users and a tight budget. I even make a concerted effort to limit the variations of OS/Software combos in the server room for the same reason.”

I don’t know about RedHat or Novell, but I think Canonical will support Ubuntu LAMP Server fully not just their distro under their service contract. But you do have a really good point. Getting support for Terminal Server, IIS and SQL Server is pretty easy; and probably doesn’t even require a back end contract with MS considering the number of people out there that can support those applications.

“Getting support for Terminal Server, IIS and SQL Server is pretty easy; and probably doesn’t even require a back end contract with MS considering the number of people out there that can support those applications.”

This is where the logic fails me...

if you use centos you can buy support from the centos folks, if you use canoical you can buy support from them. If you use novell you can get support from them. Its *not* hard to find support for a LAMP stack unless you decide to go with something like Fedora or Slax or some other seldomly used distro.

Thanks for your suggestions.

We own CS2, but my background is not in print. I have not spent a great deal of time with it. Did try to import XML into it, but the learn curve seems steep.

I spent 30+ years in outside sales, sales management, and retail store design.

I learned enough Quark to get the job done.

Have been able to streamline the workflow, but it is still very labor intensive.

We are looking at going to CD version only. No print except for promotions.

My problem with InDesign is it is like all Adobe products, very very bloated. We went from Apple to PC’s about 6 years ago. I have used Linux personally for over 10 years and would like to find a total open source approach.

The catalog I compose is now over 3000 pages of pictures with the indexes added to that. It is huge. 37,000 sku’s.

I also do the images for our website, plus the images for the website of our sister company in California.

Pretty big task.

Have tried to find an XML solution, but have not found a solution using that yet.

I truly admire simple, efficient solutions.

“I don’t know about RedHat or Novell, but I think Canonical will support Ubuntu LAMP Server fully not just their distro under their service contract.”

That is what I said in my post you quoted. The difference is you can pick up a Windows Server Admin cheap and they are everywhere. Linux/Unix Admins are harder to find and usually ask for higher pay or charge a higher fee.

What educators will eventually learn to understand is that technology has the potential to multiply the good teacher productivity.

It will not make excuses for the poor teachers survival.

Distributive learning with local coaches is a win win for the student, taxpayers, local community, and the good teachers.

Not the teachers union.

If it's nonsense then why is the author balling his eyes out? Must be because it ISN'T actually compatible, if it were, he could just use it, and the teacher couldn't tell the difference with the finished product.

sorry, I did not see the lower image text.

I want you to understand I am not Microsoft, but I am against monopolies of any kind. In this case not technically based, but marketing based.

After 10 years of using Linux I am still in awe with what programmers have produced under the GPL license.

I have Never had an Open Source application cause a problem with Spyware or similar issues.

That is refreshing.

My school district is about to get millions in bailout money, and they’re saying they’re going to use it on technology. Whatever their solution, be it open source, PC or Mac, I hope they have a long-term plan or the money is going to be wasted. What you use means nothing if there is no viable plan, and schools getting millions in phone tax money have shown that to be true time and time again.

I think I’m going to a school board meeting.

My problem with InDesign is it is like all Adobe products, very very bloated.

InDesign itself is not bad. It has a small core application and everything else is a plug-in, including the text renderer. You can remove many of the plug-ins that you don't want. It can seem slow because by default it tries to render the page on the screen extremely accurately, and that takes a lot of processing power. You can cut down the quality of the representation while you are working.

XML in InDesign works basically like mail merge in Word, but on steroids. You define places for text and graphics to go, and the styles of those text and graphics. Here's an example doc from Adobe:

And here's the relevant part of the XML that would fill it:

<employeeName>davidfmiller</employeeName>
<employeeEmail>davidfmiller@gmail.com</employeeEmail>
<employeeAddress>1234 main street calgary, ab, ca a1b 2c3</employeeAddress>
<employeePhone>(403) 555-5555</employeePhone>

You import the XML and you're done.

You'd probably just tell your database to export all of your data with an XML structure that matches the styles and placement in your document, then import. Many databases have an XML output function. If not, a regular SQL query for your data, modified to add the XML tags, will do it. If you wanted an image, you could have defined an image frame and equated that with an XML tag.

If you have any problems, there's a book called "A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML" (under $40 at Amazon). One of the examples walks you through creating an automated product catalog. It will also show how to translate that XML to HTML for the Web using style sheets.

Of course if you're really masochistic, you could just use LaTeX and TeX.

I have not looked at InDesign in over 2 years. Several years before I used hijack this to look at my browser hi-jackings and was appalled at what CS2 did to that.

I quit using Photoshop for Gimp2, a long time ago. I like being able to use one application to open any type of file. Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. In Gimp I can open a .pdf, .jpg, .ai, .eps, .ps file in one application. I found it less resource intensive because of the Adobe Bridge.

Not sure where we are going from here. We were of many many years strictly an Adobe house. That was back when we created catalog manually on Mac’s, not from database.

Most of the XML structures I have produced or looked at are serialized. I would prefer something I can edit downstream. The SAX XML is not sequencially editable downstream, I cannot cut and paste items in the flow of data. With what I am using now, I can do that, it is not serialized.

I developed a process of extracting a text file from the final .pdf and using Grep (and regular expressions) to recover the item number sequence of the final document to give repeatability. The problem is there are always new items added, understandable with 37,000 sku’s.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

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