LWN: Comments on "Linux in Italian schools - five months later"

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

daenzer — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:50:59 +0000

Or just install cupsys-bsd?

EULAs and contracts

quintesse — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 19:53:53 +0000

You say "I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it" which is true, but you also say "The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises" which basically means that they are affecting how you can use their product.

Which gets me to the other thing you say "If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software" because it does not only affect your right to copy but a host of other things that are commonly found in EULAs, like Microsoft saying that you MUST upgrade if they tell you to or you lose the right to use the product.

So we get back to what I understood is the norm in several european countries:

- the first is that you can not add restraints or additional requirements AFTER having bought the product. You are only bound to the requirements known to you at the moment of the sale. In that case a judge would most likely agree with the buyer ignoring an EULA.

- the second is that sometimes EULAs require you to make promises which go against certain rights given to the buyer by local laws and in that case local law trumps EULAs. The interesting thing would be to see if a judge would agree with a buyer selectively ignoring parts of an EULA or that you can only accept or reject the whole of it.

Of course IANAL, just relating what I think I heard a vague friend of a cousin of mine say at a party where we were all lying stoned around the swimming pool. But it could be true though :-)

EULAs and contracts

giraffedata — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:35:45 +0000

In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software

Careful here. You mean you have to have a license, with means you have to accept the EULA. (You accept the license too, but that is of no consequence since it doesn't commit you to anything). The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises. If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software.

I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it. I know some publishers write the EULA as if you need a copyright license to copy the CD onto your disk or make a backup copy, but from what I've read, the jury in the US is still out on that, because it might also be fair use of the one copy the publisher gave you.

I can believe that the courts have already decided that issue in Germany and elsewhere, making these EULAs superfluous.

This is getting fairly academic, though, because if Adobe can't trade you a copyright license for those promises about how you'll use the software, Adobe can just change the wording and instead of having a license agreement, have a purchase contract. To get that CD, you have to pay $1000 plus promise to use it a certain way. There was a time when the license agreement was thought to be the easiest way to do a store-shelf transaction, but now that shrink-wrap contracts are enforceable in the US, a straight purchase contract would be as easy.

EULAs and contracts

arcticwolf — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:11:48 +0000

It very much depends on where you're from, actually. In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software your purchased (the USA is one of these, AFAIK), but it's not true everywhere - there are also countries where *purchasing* the software already gives you the right to use it, so the EULA is basically meaningless. I know Germany is in the latter category, and I wouldn't be surprised if other European countries were as well, so it might well be that the same thing's true in Italy.

On a side note, it arguably makes more sense that way, too. When I pay a thousand bucks for Photoshop, then I *should* have paid for the right to use the program - not just for a few (physical) CDs and a printed manual. I shouldn't be required to enter into another contract with Adobe just to use a piece of software I paid the dealer a grand for already.

Linux printing

Wol — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:49:13 +0000

If it's like mine, it has a USB port ... mind you, I might be blaming ZA for my inability to print from my laptop...

Cheers,
Wol

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

Wol — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:47:21 +0000

I've just updated SuSE to v10. My HP LaserJet is about 3 years old. CUPS recognises but refuses to configure it ...

My previous experience with CUPS (SuSE 8, I think), was even worse. Having told it NOT to scan the network, it went ahead and did so anyway - I ended up using the Big Red Switch to stop it, iirc. And I had great difficulty forcing the system to install old-fashioned lpd so I could actually get a working print setup ...

Cheers,
Wol

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

rqosa — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 07:31:27 +0000

> And Ubuntu marked the record in disabling the native CUPS web interface at all

It can be enabled again (link).

Linux printing

roelofs — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:19:17 +0000

On my Ubuntu system (either Breezy or Dapper), I have _yet_ been able to print to an SMB printer. And (at work), since all queues are hosted on W2K servers, and no one has local printers, it means I print from my XP system.

Do none of these printers have network ports? Generally speaking, all you need is an IP address and you're set (insofar as most work printers have PostScript engines in them and speak "lpd"). That W2K server is just a nicety for the Windows folks.

Greg

EULAs and contracts

giraffedata — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:36:07 +0000

I have a small correction. An EULA isn't just basically a contract -- it's completely a contract. The "A" stands for "agreement," which is a legal synonym of "contract." Clicking "I agree" is as good a manifestation of assent as various other ways people form contracts, including signing a piece of paper. I'm not aware that EULAs are especially unenforceable, or ever were.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Ross — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 05:32:42 +0000

Borrowing is not theft. The problem in your hypothetical situation is the duplication of the software on the CD, so that it is copied to the other computer. If it only ran directly off the CD, there is the question of portions in RAM, but aside from that you may have to click "I Agree" to a EULA when you install it which is basically a contract. In many places these are now enforcable as contracts so even aside from copyrights there could be an issue, but it still wouldn't be related to "theft".

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

evgeny — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 10:34:54 +0000

> If there were no copyright, there would be no license.

This is true, but compare e.g. the MS EULA.txt with the couple of standard copyright protection lines found in any book.

> I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right.

IANAL, of course, but the general perception in public is certainly like software piracy == theft. Just google for "stolen sotware" and "illegally copied software" and compare the hit counts. Also, the notion is widely spread in all kinds of homebrew "explanations" of software fair use, e.g. see http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ethics.html ("... illegally copied software is viewed as stolen property"). I had to sign a very similar form myself in the past.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

giraffedata — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 03:40:06 +0000

This is totally about copyrights. If not for copyrights, there would be nothing to stop you from borrowing or lending the CD to install on another computer. The license involved is a copyright license -- i.e. a person who has the right under copyright law to stop you from making a copy of the software chooses to allow you to do so. If there were no copyright, there would be no license.

A license is not something one can violate. When people say "he violated the license," it's a shorthand for "he violated the conditions of the license, therefore didn't have a license, therefore under copyright law was obligated not to make a copy."

If the CD is ordinary proprietary software, then the kid has no license, conditional or otherwise to make the copy on the second computer; there's nothing to violate except copyright.

Copyright law creates a quite unintuitive right to control who gets to make copies of stuff you wrote. The copying public subjects itself to such laws because in the big picture, it may cause more stuff to get written. That's what's not intuitive to a 9-year-old.

If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement.

I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right. It's just copyright owner publicity that tries to draw the analogy between copying and stealing a bicycle, to persuade people not to copy.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

evgeny — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:30:55 +0000

> While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true.

No, it's not generally true, and neither did I pretend it was.

> Copyright is a rather complex way to bring about certain good results. I don't expect a 9 year old to know how it works.

I beg your pardon. This has nothing to do with copyrights. When one borrows a proprietary OS CD from his friend in order to install the OS on his PC (he is NOT distributing it), this is a license violation, not a copyright violation. If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

jbreiden — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:27:55 +0000

What brands of printers did the district have? I ask because this is the sort of news article that a printer manufacturer might read, and then get motivated to do something to help.

Libero vs gratuito

giraffedata — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:16:30 +0000

I'm really curious about the one 9-year-old who commented on the fact that the software is libero. Since every other child mentioned that it was gratuito, and I doubt that a child that age would be interested in societal aspects of software distribution, I suspect he was referring to the fact that you don't have to pay for it.

I know nothing of Italian, but if the two concepts get mixed up even in a language that goes to the trouble of having separate words for them, maybe free beer and free speech aren't as different as Stallman says they are.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

giraffedata — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:11:03 +0000

I'd say it's a proof how morally wrong and unintuitive is the notion of > non-free software.

I'll give you unintuitive, but not morally wrong. While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true.

When I was about that age, there was a problem with inflation and I was puzzled by how difficult commentators seemed to think it was. I said, "why doesn't the president of the US just mandate that prices won't go up any more?" Just because I couldn't see how disastrous that would be for everybody even if it were possible, that didn't mean that the free market is morally wrong.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

nix — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:45:01 +0000

Exactly. Sixteen years ago or thereabouts, GCC 2.4.something and Emacs hooked me in pretty much that way...

Education Hegimony

GreyWizard — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:35:30 +0000

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.

Get over yourself

GreyWizard — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:32:11 +0000

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.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

grouch — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 08:20:20 +0000

" debian and cups? forget it. "

Bull. I use nothing but Debian and CUPS. Samsung ML1710 -- works perfectly. Samsung ML1740 -- works perfectly. HP Photosmart 7350 -- works perfectly (from letters to glossy photos). Star NX2420 (yeah, it's a relic, but nothing beats a dot matrix for mule work) -- works perfectly. Epson Perfection 600 -- works perfectly.

I've had to set up a couple of small local businesses (sole proprietors) with Debian systems. In each case the pointy-haired boss ran out and bought one of those cheap little HP all-in-one inkjets. All I had to do was use the 'drivers' recommended by http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net (which amounted to apt-get install hpijs but you can use synaptic if you have to have something to click) and use the CUPS web admin tool (http://localhost:631/admin), choose the interface (each was USB) and a name. No problems. Surprisingly, Xsane noticed the scanner side of each right away, too.

The only problem I ever had with CUPS was trying to get a dinky Lexmark inkjet to work. I failed, but even Lexmark can't figure out how to get those things to work; they are nothing but Win-junk.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

stock — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 04:11:59 +0000

debian and cups? forget it.
cups and RedHat, SuSE, CentOS, Mandrake, Mandriva? a solid working
combination. period.
CUPS is the best thing which happened to UNIX printing ever. I would not
be surprised if M$ was trying to breakup cups in one or the other
mysterious method. Same holds for the C++ 'standard' so it seems :

"Visual C++ 8.0 Hijacks the C++ Standard"
http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=cplusplus&...

http://web.archive.org/web/20220619121231/http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060130092823950
"Microsoft's C++/CLI Language Specification is an ECMA Standard
(ECMA-372) and they are trying to fast track this document to be an
ISO standard. The problem is that the language specified is very
different from C++ and so is likely to create a great deal of
confusion. Details can be found in the UK objections, which suggest
that a name distinct from C++ be used for the proposed language."

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

cortana — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:01:49 +0000

Well, with Firefox 1.5 on Debian, I can choose between CUPS/Deskjet-950C* and PostScript/Default--so it appears things are getting better. Unfortunatly, Firefox still insists on using its custom print dialog boxes; one of the reasons I prefer to use the Epiphany browser is because it uses the standard Gnome printing system.

* a printer attached to another computer on my network, that CUPS detected and configured automatically ;)

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

cortana — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 02:54:47 +0000

Cool trick. If you are using KDE, you can do the same thing with kprinter.

On a Debian (or ~-derived) system you can move lpr out of the way gracefully like so:

dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /usr/bin/lpr

You can then create a symlink at /usr/bin/lpr that dpkg knows not to overwrite, the next time the package containing lpr is upgraded.

Education Hegimony

dlang — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:40:05 +0000

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

Education Hegimony

glynmoody — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:42:44 +0000

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

Zenith — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:12:41 +0000

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 ;)

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

evgeny — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:52:08 +0000

> Setup is easy, it's things like duplexing, choosing paper types, choosing trays (e.g. for letterhead, second sheets, plain - let me send a job to tray 3), orientation (landscape setting anyone?), envelopes, quality settings and sizes for photos that frustate the end users I work with.

Erh? The issues you mention mean you have NOT setup CUPS properly (wrong PPD or like). Otherwise, all these options would have appeared in the printing dialog of any CUPS-aware application (and in most legacy apps simply replace lpr with e.g. gtklp; for a desktop box it's probably safe even to softlink lpr to gtklp).

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

evgeny — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:37:28 +0000

> Some are honestly -unaware- that it's a 'wrong' or illegal thing to do, which is interesting.

Right. I'd say it's a proof how morally wrong and unintuitive is the notion of non-free software. 99% of these young "pirates" wouldn't even think about stealing some real, material goods. Unfortunately, an astonishing majority of schools spoil our children by using (and effectively forcing them to use at home) MS tools and other proprietary software from day one; how can a child believe that his Teacher could have tought him something wrong?! Kill the Dragon...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Shvarts
[2] http://lib.baikal.net/koi.cgi/SHWARC/dragon_engl.txt

Education Hegimony

GreyWizard — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:00:33 +0000

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.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

amikins — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:07:40 +0000

No, it's much the same in the US.
What's particularly interesting is the variance in viewpoints.
Some of the children are aware of the cost of the software, and pirate because they can't (or won't) pay for it..
Some are honestly -unaware- that it's a 'wrong' or illegal thing to do, which is interesting. Some children in an elementary school I used to frequent shared software because it seemed the natural thing to do. When asked why his friend didn't just buy it himself, the child was puzzled. "But I have it. Why should he spend money on it when I've got it right here?"

I've taken to believing this indicates that libre software is the more natural approach.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

NightMonkey — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:22:36 +0000

One choice that helps with printer problems is to choose a good print dialog application. Make sure to use "XPP": http://cups.sourceforge.net/xpp/ . It works wonders for printing options (duplexing, papaer trays, output quality, etc.), and its organization is pretty intuitive. So far, the only application I use regularly that it does not work wih is silly OpenOffice, which insists on Doing Its Own Thing and has an internal, non-changeable, inflexible printing engine.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

iabervon — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 19:23:40 +0000

But I'd expect there to be some technical preadolescents, and these would find it neat to be able to change some small thing and get a result. And that makes a good trick to show off to their friends.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

kh — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 19:12:59 +0000

I fight printing issues for end users with Ubuntu - but not exactly setup issues. Setup is easy, it's things like duplexing, choosing paper types, choosing trays (e.g. for letterhead, second sheets, plain - let me send a job to tray 3), orientation (landscape setting anyone?), envelopes, quality settings and sizes for photos that frustate the end users I work with.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

musicon — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:32:37 +0000

Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not a Linux expert by any means. I've played around off an on since '94, and am comfortable with man and editing /etc as needed. But my day-to-day work and home systems are XP.

I've had other strange SMB authentication issues as well, such as one time being able to access SMB shares, and the next receiving the very helpful GNOME message "The folder contents could not be displayed."

This is apparently a quirk in Ubuntu - I can reliably mount SMB shares using the exact same commands on other systems, but Ubuntu displays (again very helpful) "SMB connection failed".

man is no help. Googling is no help. It's just broken, and I work around it, hoping that each new update will fix it.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

carcassonne — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:14:10 +0000

Since last year (at least), SuSE 9.3's YaST suggests a PPD file. I tried it with a networked printer and a USB printer and in both cases the suggested PPD was the right one. What happens when the printer is out on the market since last Monday ? I don't know.

It's important to choose a 'good enough' distro to show Linux to people. As developers and technicians were hear buzzwords flying. Like 'Ubuntu' and 'Kubuntu' for instance.

- Did you get your NTP client working ?

- Just Excellent ! I just had to create this config file and bootscript...

This of course is not good (and certainly not factual regarding 'K/Ubuntu) since I haven"t tried it).

A good way to make people stick with Windows ? Introduce them to Linux using Slackware.

I think a highly configurable-user-firendly updated distro should be used for this purpose, which is not necessarily the latest developer's buzzwords.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

kleptog — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:50:48 +0000

One thing I havn't yet worked out is: Given this current world where every PCI and USB device identifies itself, why do I have to specify the driver? Why isn't when you plug in your USB printer it tells you which PPD file to use?

Maybe it's the case of my USB file being out of date, but it would be nice...

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

drag — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:59:26 +0000

Ya...

Most printers are going to work if they are proper printers and can take postscript.

With lower-end consumer style printers (think winmodems) produced by Brothers, Lexmark, or Cannon they are generally NOT going to work. Most HP and Epson printers will work, especially with HP stuff... but even then it's hit and miss sometimes.

This isn't so much of a problem for businesses as they get nicer printers generally, but for normal users it's very frustrating.

If you run down to the local walmart or office store and randomly buy a printer for under 150 dollars I figure you have about a 20-30% chance of having it work in linux without major headaches.

"AFAIK, there is no CUPS UI (except for the web interface) as such. What you see is either KDE or Gnome add-ons."

Exactly. CUPS is system software, not so much desktop software.

On OS X you still have the web-based CUPS ui perfectly avaible and fully functional. (at least in 10.2.x series and I expect up to 10.4.2 were its disabled, but still aviable), but 99% of Apple owners (even fairly advanced ones) are not going to even realise that that it even exists! This is because they don't have to know it exists.

They even use the same pdd files time to time and use the same text-based configuration files that Linux does. They even can use gimp-print (now gutenprint) to get higher quality drivers then those that are provided by the printer vendors themselves. This is all stuff that was developed for Linux systems that is superior to what would otherwise be aviable for OS X.

Don't think I am a OSX lover though.. I still prefer Linux despite printing issues. (like I noted before I have virtually no use for printing outside of work)

"Don't know about Koffice, but the rest you mentioned are NOT using CUPS natively - this is the real problem. Each of the above implements a (more or less) dirty wrappers around the century-old printcap/lpr stuff. Personally, in all such apps that at least allow to define an alternative to "lpr" command, I use gtklp. This helps resolving 99% of printing issues. I wish there would be as nice a distro-independent CUPS configuration utility as well."

I agree with you 100%

It's hilarious that when you go into Firefox and try to print on Linux you still find items like this for the printer preferences:
lpr ${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME:+'-P'}${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME}

That stuff is insane.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

evgeny — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:18:41 +0000

> most printers don't work

No, I'd say most printers do work. It's often the question of properly choosing a PPD. The ppd's installed with cups/foomatic/... are a minor part of the whole supported base, unfortunately.

> the desktop UI is bad

AFAIK, there is no CUPS UI (except for the web interface) as such. What you see is either KDE or Gnome add-ons.

> Get it working with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, and some Koffice applications.

Don't know about Koffice, but the rest you mentioned are NOT using CUPS natively - this is the real problem. Each of the above implements a (more or less) dirty wrappers around the century-old printcap/lpr stuff. Personally, in all such apps that at least allow to define an alternative to "lpr" command, I use gtklp. This helps resolving 99% of printing issues. I wish there would be as nice a distro-independent CUPS configuration utility as well. So far, setting up networking printing at home between two Ubuntu boxes was the most challenging printing configuration task I've ever undertaken (comparable only to making linux talk to a mainframe-attached IMAGEN printer 10+ years ago...). In general, I rarely share ESR's views, but this one (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html) I wholeheartedly agree with.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

drag — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:37:09 +0000

Printing in Linux is still a PITA.

The problem isn't CUPS so much. It's two fold..
1. most printers don't work.
2. the desktop UI is bad and programs are difficult to setup to use printers.

Try something like going and using a multi-form printer to print pages back to back and use multiple pages sizes and such. Get it working with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, and some Koffice applications. I expect something like that to be fairly difficult even for a advanced Linux user.

I can't blame CUPS for this because OS X uses CUPS and I've never heard any complaints about that operating system being difficult with printers. So if linux desktop uses CUPS and OS X uses CUPS and Linux desktop is very difficult and OS X is very easy, then were does the problem lie?

With that OSDL conference a while ago there was a company that was doing major conversions from Windows desktops to Linux. Something like 20000 systems or something insane like that. They said that the number one reason that they couldn't replace Windows with Linux in many situations was that in places with many different types of printers it was too difficult and expensive to get the Linux desktop to work properly. (something along those lines)

I think that the problem comes from the fact that most computer geeks and programmers don't generally give a crap about printers unless it involves printing out photos or other images for display or odd small documents here and there. I know I don't have any use for my printer. It's been months since I last touched it and I am sure the ink is dried up by now... Printing is so 'backwards' almost.

But with some businesses you are constantly printing out reports or documentation. Pretty much non-stop. When I started my current job I was amazed at just the massive amount printing and the different sorts of printing that goes on. It's just all the time. I couldn't imagine the same thing being done well with a Linux system with all the sorts of extremely non-technical people you find at a average small to medium sized business.

Linux in Italian schools - five months later

glynmoody — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 09:26:16 +0000

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.