[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

[Jason Cormie]

Gary Short wrote:
> You say that I've not gone down well on this group, but what is it that 
> I've actually done? I made an argument that its better to send teachers 
> rather than laptops. Was that so bad? If so, why has there not been a 
> load of posts in reply showing where I'm wrong. The majority of the 
> posts have just been anti MS posts from Lee and Kris. Is that the real 
> reason why I've not gone down well in this group? Is it because I have 
> an MS background? Are we not welcome in the Linux world? If so, just say 
> and I'll not come back.

Laptops vs Teachers:
	Sure teachers would be better, I don't think anyone can argue otherwise.  But 
they take training and salaries, its cheaper and easier to ship out laptops. 
It won't be more effective, but I think it is more realistic.


Flamewars & MS Bashing:
	I work with MS products daily, luckily over the years my workplace has 
opened its mind to alternatives and I now only have to spend about 30% of my 
time babysitting exchange/mssql and all those other miracles of blackbox 
technology.
   Like a lot of Linux folk I came to Linux after becoming disillusioned with 
the tools I worked with.  When you are debugging a problem and can go no 
further, it irritates you.  Sure you can phone Microsoft for an untested 
hotfix to put on your production systems, but I'd rather know what the issues 
was in the first place.  Working with open source has made me enjoy my work 
again, its as simplae as that.
Because many people have the bad memories of pre-linux life (viruses, spyware, 
yearly PC rebuild, etc), MS bashing is something we all enjoy.  Don't get me 
wrong I still think Microsoft has some great products and they are definitely 
moving technologically in the right direction.
I just find myself philosophically opposed to the majority of what they do.

Have Lee, Kris and Arron been aggressive?  Yes, but only because they are so 
passionate about "the cause".  You yourself class yourself as an evangelist, 
surely you knew coming along would be like swimming with piranhas.


Paying the mortgage:
	You've got a point that most companies are still very Microsoft dependant, 
but I think your being a little naive to assume that that you cant make money 
from opensource.  Many companies already exist to support OSS projects through 
providing training, installation and/or extra customised development.  Even if 
you do end up working in a closed source shop, unless you have signed away all 
your IP rights without negotiation you can still contribute (to non-competing 
oss projects :-) ).  We use a number of open source monitoring products, if 
they dont do what we want, we write a plugin and release under GPL.  That way 
they are available to others to use, helps push a project we use forward, and 
others may enhance our alterations/additions further.

I for one welcome healthy debate, but I do think you'll need a thicker skin to 
last here,



--
Jason Cormie
Senior Information Specialist
Information Services
University of Abertay Dundee