Linux in Italian schools - five months later [LWN.net]

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

Posted Feb 2, 2006 9:26 UTC (Thu) by glynmoody (guest, #34032)
Parent article: Linux in Italian schools - five months later

Your point that "the students are not yet, in general, ready to think about where free software comes from and why it exists" is an important one, especially against a background where the music and film industries are trying to inculcate in children a warped sense of what copyright and fair use really mean.

Success stories like Bolzano notwithstanding, I worry that not enough is being done by the open source community to reach out to children to explain what free software is and why they might care. The danger is that they will grow up equating the Web with Internet Explorer, email with Outlook, productivity software with Office and computers with Windows, since Microsoft's software is the default for most schools that I know about.

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Education Hegimony

Posted Feb 2, 2006 22:00 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

Good gracious, you're right! Apple once dominated classrooms in the United States. Many childred equated computers with that brand. As a result the Macintosh is now a desktop monopoly that will be nearly impossible to dislodge and...

Oh, wait.

Education Hegimony

Posted Feb 2, 2006 23:12 UTC (Thu) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link]

While your point is made and true, this is, however, not slashdot, so the "oh wait" style of writing very sarcastic replies sort of misses the mark with the LWN subscribers I would think.

In short: please just state your point in the future instead of trying to get +5 Funny ratings ;)

Get over yourself

Posted Feb 3, 2006 13:32 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

I was trying to make a point with a bit of levity. I make no appology for that whether you're amused or not. Your remark about a rating system on some other website is an example of the same thing, so you're in no position to police my comments.

In short: get over yourself.

Education Hegimony

Posted Feb 2, 2006 23:42 UTC (Thu) by glynmoody (guest, #34032) [Link]

I'm not saying this approach leads to a perpetual desktop monopoly, simply that it's a good way of seeding later sales. Apple once dominated classrooms, and soon did well in the business sector. But it failed to consolidate its position in corporates with the Apple III and Lisa, and PC/MS-DOS took over before the Macintosh could get established.

Apple lost its dominance, and Microsoft may do the same. But only if somebody comes along - as IBM/Microsoft did with Apple - and takes it away. At the moment, I don't see much evidence of that happening, and this worries me.

Education Hegimony

Posted Feb 3, 2006 0:40 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

however, do you think that the mac would have survived at all if all those schools had been running PC's exclusivly?

Education Hegimony

Posted Feb 3, 2006 13:35 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

That's a perfectly unanswerable question. Suppose I say yes. Exactly how will you prove me wrong? But even so, my point was only that education marketshare does not lead to irreversable desktop dominance, not that it isn't desirable.