Interesting story, but I hope they're not planning to just switch unthinkingly to FOSS to save some cash even if the software's worse. I don't really think, for example, OOo is up to scratch. And of course, in some situations (where hopefully the gov't knows better) the fact that they have no warranty on FOSS might be a problem. While it's not happened yet as far as I know, I'm not sure how careful some of the big software is about the risk of an unscrupulous contributor introducing vulnerabilities. Still, good news for Linux and co.<br>
<br>About the petition, I'm not sure what the argument is for an entire country to massively promote a non-standard operating system to children (sounds like the kind of evil mind-share Microsoft is so often accused of having). The longer text mentions a few reasons (cost to poverty-stricken families, risk of malware, lack of locale support for bizarre languages (bizarre languages that most of our school children apparently require when being taught in a British school) and not being designed for education) but I'm not really convinced. I'm pretty sure most Linux-savvy kids can handle the bridge between their Linux box and the school's Windows ones if they really can't afford Windows at home; Windows has pretty reasonable support for British English; if you make another OS popular, malware will be made for it; I'm really not sure about the last point though. What OS are they talking about? The only one I know off the top of my head that's intended largely for education is MINIX. Perhaps that would be a good thing, since MINIX should be much more of a major FOSS operating system than the dysmal nth-place it has now. I'd sign the petition for MINIX, but not for Linux. Linux doesn't deserve any more of the spotlight.<br>
<br>Tom<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/2/25 Chris Burton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Chris@7of9b.org">Chris@7of9b.org</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> Dunno if you've already seen this, but it makes interesting reading.<br>
><br>
> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7910110.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7910110.stm</a><br>
><br>
<br>
</div>On a similar note some of you might be interested in this which came through<br>
on the LUGMasters list earlier.<br>
<a href="http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/" target="_blank">http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/</a><br>
<br>
ChrisB.<br>
<div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br>
<br>
<br>
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