[Newark] Government backs Open Source

[Tom French]

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.

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.

Tom

2009/2/25 Chris Burton <Chris at 7of9b.org>

> > Dunno if you've already seen this, but it makes interesting reading.
> >
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7910110.stm
> >
>
> On a similar note some of you might be interested in this which came
> through
> on the LUGMasters list earlier.
> http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/
>
> ChrisB.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Newark mailing list
> Newark at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/newark
>
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