A Monocultural Alternative: TheOpenCD

GooseLiverPate writes "Computers and Composition Online has an article by Dr. Paul Cesarini concerning the risks of a Microsoft monoculture in education. He describes the relation between Open Source and Microsoft as: "one of gnats swarming around a large, slow-moving beast." and emphasises the lack of innovation in Internet Explorer and MS-Office. He suggests TheOpenCD as a possible bridge for schools and universities to Open Source, and includes a review of the newly released version 1.2."

Comments

Schools not the best candidates for change

[shystershep]

In advocating resistance to the Microsoft "monoculture" in schools, Cesarini is aiming at the wrong target. Public schools will probably be the very last to "resist" and switch from Microsoft. The "widespread budgetary woes" and "ever-increasing licensing fees" don't effect them. Microsoft gives its products to schools for free or at a steep discount, and is more and more likely to do so the more viable the competition becomes. I don't have any hard data, but I imagine that a transition to Open Source would be more expensive for most schools than hanging on to the goodies from Redmond. And if anybody wonders why MS is so generous to schools, it's not because Bill is such a swell guy - if kids spend their school careers using Windows, Office, Outlook, Exploer . . . well, the first one's always free, right?

I disagree.

[H.G. Pennypacker]

Open source is about choice. People should be able to stay with Microsoft if they want to. Why does anyone still on Windows have to be pestered by a swarm of open source gnats about their choice of OS?

When I was in school...

[BagOBones]

They taught word processing, and how to use a spread sheet. It really didn't matter what system it was on because the schools never taught anything but the general concepts.

Innovation in office products? Don't you mean bloat.

Word already does over 100 things I don't need it to do when I am writing a paper. You think it needs more?

Choose Windows?

[freeweed]

I'll play devil's advocate here:

Most (and by most, I mean pretty much 99.99%) Windows users do not use Windows because of choice.

They use it because it came with their computer. They've become familiar with it and figure it's the best there is, because "hey, it sells the most".

They use it because they've never heard of anything else. If they have heard, they're too scared to try. If they've tried it, they've gone back to Windows because there is no viable alternative for them.

They use it because their workplace makes them use it, and a surprising number of people take work home with them.

They use it because their ISP only supports it. Or their hardware only supports it. Or, little Jimmy down the street who is "good with computers" supports it, because he can click more efficiently than they can.

I think I've met maybe 5 people in my life who actually CHOOSE to use Windows, when presented with viable alternatives for what they do.

No one in the OSS movement (well, no one sane) advocates forcing people to get off of Windows. What they do advocate is educating users so that they CAN make a choice, which in most cases, is currently unavailable.

Innovation lacking in Open Source as well

[cmorriss]

and emphasises the lack of innovation in Internet Explorer and MS-Office.

So often Microsoft is decried as unoriginal with all its products and with this I certainly agree. However, and I'm not trying to troll here, rarely have I seen Open Source software do anything but the same.

Most innovation comes from small closed source companies that have an idea and want to make some money off of it. Microsoft moves forward by either emulating these companies or buying them outright. Open Source software seems to move forward almost exclusively through emulating these innovative companies (Either directly or indirectly by emulating Microsoft).

Almost all open source software provides a piece of functionality already provided in closed source or non-"free as in beer" software

This all begs the question, why doesn't open source encourage more innovation? I really don't know why. Does anyone else have an answer to this?

practical obstacles

[bcrowell]

I've been trying hard to make open-source inroads at my own school, but the devil is in the details. Examples:

I teach physics lab courses, and would like my students to be able to use OSS to do their graphs. (E.g., it's a drag when they save their Excel file, take it home, and find out they can't read it with the older version of Excel they have at home.) Unfortunately, Open Office is missing some critical features, like the ability to fit a line to the data and find the slope of the line. (Or maybe the feature is there, but I couldn't find it.) There's other OSS that can find the slope, of course, but my students need something with a familiar-looking UI.

We have lab equipment that we interface to, and the software doesn't run on Linux.

I've tried using Samba to print on the shared laser printer from my desktop FreeBSD machine. Unfortunately, the postscript files I generate have a tendency to cause an error which stops the queue. My co-workers are not happy when that happens, so now I print at home, or, if I have to print at work, I transfer a PDF file to a Windows machine.

Our instructional computing staff is undermanned. They already administer two operating systems (Windows and MacOS). I can't really blame them for not wanting to administer three.

There is no critical mass of faculty members who want to use an open-source OS or open-source apps. The typical reaction is that Linux sounds hard to use. And you know what? They're kind of right. Try explaining to most people -- even the science geeks I work with -- about shared library conflicts, or explaining to them why cut and paste doesn't have consistent behavior.

Insight into a Linux User

[Dalcius]

Hey buddy, I'm really sorry for the Linux newbies who are still fawning over Linux, but don't lump us all up with the idiotic zealots. That's just as much of a logical fallacy as to say nobody uses Windows because they like it over all the other alternatives.

Any true Linux user is all about choice. That's what makes Linux great.

If Windows suits your needs, then so be it. That's great! I'm honestly happy for you. I wish Linux could provide that, maybe someone can help fill that need. It's the same thing I tell the folks I know: Linux isn't for some people.

If there is one piece of advice I can give anyone to understanding the rants of a Linux person, it's this:
Most Linux folks don't care what you use. They found a system that is elegant, suits their needs and let's them tweak things to their exact preferences. They found a system that is very in tune with the way they use a computer. And they want to share the gem that they found. This can start the rabid zealot rants, especially from a new Linux convert. I used to fall in this category; then I got over it, realized that not everyone will do best with Linux and moved on.

NOW, my biggest thing is education. It hurts to see someone down-talking Linux when they know little to nothing about it. I enjoy showing people Linux as most people don't know what it is -- maybe they'll enjoy it as I have. It's when people start spewing misinformation that I get mad.

This has been my experience. I sincerely hope that Linux folks can be a little less rabid and I hope that Windows users will be a little less defensive.

Cheers