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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."
I have always been a big advocate for open source at the schools, but most of the big education software is win/mac only and most technology coordinators at schools are hesitant to give the K12LTSP a shot. This week Igave a speech to a bunch of other school technology coordinators about the GnuWin CD. Plenty Open Source for Win. I downloaded at the Open CD once and found GnuWin to be more comprehensive. I guess I should take a look at the new version. Most schools were highly interested in OpenOffice and AbiWord, so the foots in the door here.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1331169,00.as p
"Addressing several thousand attendees at the Worldwide Partner Conference, he took a swipe at Linux, open source and StarOffice, saying, "they simply accept the view that what they have is good enough. That view does not foster innovation. Being where we were with Office 1997 is not good enough for us," he said."
Microsoft admitting that OO is already equal to something they spent millions and millions on and also happens to be much more widely used than Office XP is the best thing they could have said.
I mean that. Office 97 is still very popular. One of the biggest challenges MS has is moving people off that since many businesses find that Office 97 is all they need. The fact they think OO has met the quality level that most of world thinks is "good enough" is excellent news.
Congrats to the OpenOffice.org team and thanks to Microsoft for the marketing material.
As I am no way in hell able to afford Microsoft Office, I can only use it at College, not at work or home.
OpenOffice 1.1 has saved my life. Even complex presentations, with Animations, Transitions, Pcitures and Sounds are imported flawlessly in Version 1.1 and it is very fast.
Many students I also know are starting to use it. OpenOffice, together with KDE is perfect. I admit OpenOffice 1.0 was a bit slow and ugly, but version 1.1 is perfect.
From the About page;
"The Open CD project aims to introduce users of MS-Windows to the benefits of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)."
Don't you think users of an OSS OS would already be aware of these benefits?
I choose Windows also at home because it runs the apps I want and is stable. My experience with Linux at work is that it is not stable for desktop. Of our 5 linux boxes for engineering work, we get about one crash a day that locks up the whole box. Can't even ssh in usually.
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?
I agree - people should be able to choose what OS and programs they run, which is why I'm so against OSS ninjas sneaking in the labs and my house at night, installing their versions of the software I love to pay for.
When you say pestered, I think you mean exposed to. How many non-techies do you know who've heard about OpenOffice or Firebird? After introducing most of my friends to tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking, there was no need to fall back on any OSS rhetoric. They saw that the program had useful features and decided to use them instead of the MS alternative. And as a former English major, I can say that many a starving artist loved the idea of a free word processor.
The OpenCD project is more a drive to make OSS as accessable to people who aren't that interested in computers as the MS alternative. Since so many MS products are "essential" to Windows, most people are introduced to Windows Media Player, IE, and other proprietary programs before having a chance to check out the competition. Since they can use these immediately, why would they find an alternative, especially when that requires researching an area that they're not particularly interested in? The open cd provides more of a fair playing field. Sadly, since MS is so insistent on bundling everything they have to force out competition, there's still a long ways to go.
The "widespread budgetary woes" and "ever-increasing licensing fees" don't effect them.
That is why I was told to use the leftovers from last years tech budjet to buy enough toner cartridges and ink cartridges for this year and next. We have already been told that the money isn't there. After many years in school systems, the only time I believe it when people tell me about future money is when they say it isn't there.
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.
Could you please point me to where this is available for schools? All my MS products are at a marginal discount. At best.
This might be right for You and the Software You need. For most schoolars its not. They could do pretty well with OpenOffice, Mozilla and stuff like that. For the most technical subjects there is enough educational software available as well, plus some software development tools for programming lessons, a data-base and a better networking support. Why should a proprietary, expensive (well, not expensive for the schoolars, but expensive for those who are blinded for other choices later on) System be the default? If you need so special Software which is only for MS-Windows available (btw: I do as well, my PC at work runs Windows because I need a cross-compiler which is only avalable for MS-Systems) you are probably flexible enough to change to Windows for that purpose.
Trolling is a art!
Once Linux becomes a major player in the business world then schools will start teaching it. You cannot change schools until you change business.
Are we so quick to forget incidents like this one, where Microsoft started going after schools for license violations? Microsoft and the Gates Foundation may give away a lot of stuff to schools and libraries, but it's rarely enough to make a dent in the budgets of most schools (I still send a number of old computers to my mom's classroom - running linux or old versions of macos - because her school can't afford to give her the computers she needs).
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
This district is in fact heading towards Linux-the big reason is that they are heavy users of Novell--and Novell is moving towards Linux in a substantial way. That is how Linux is getting its foot in the door here.
Im sure they have dumpsters filled with all the Lotus SmartSuite, Lindows, OSX, etc, that are donated to them as well.
Or maybe its that MS is the first company not trying to gouge funds from the lucrative educational market? Nah, couldnt be- Mikro$loth is EVIL!!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
That's just not the point...OpenCD seems like a great idea to me...
Show windows users (not you defensive knowledgable ones, i mean schoolkids and people in libraries) that they have an alternative to the software they use, and they may become very receptive to it.
soon they may open their eyes to the fact that there is an alternative out there...some of them may become interested, and progress, and eventually move away from propriatary software all together. Some of them might not care.
I really think OEM's ought to push this as a default install on windows computers, and then offer office, photoshop etc. as upgrades (or sidegrades, seeing as it is equivelent software).
After using free software, people might see that moving to a completely free platform isn't so scary afterall.
I have yet to meet someone who, after using linux for a while, wanted to switch back. This includes some very non-technical friends of mine.
I definately agree. I'd never used Linux for more than a few minutes, I must admit, until buying my AmigaOne, which had Debian preloaded. I can't claim to be an expert in it, but the transition was extremely easy. KDE controls like Windows, but nicer, and learning anything new I needed to wasn't very difficult. Transferring skills you've learned on one OS to other OSs isn't too difficult anymore.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
If the skills of word processing, spreadsheet, and research are really platform agnostic, then why does it matter that the kids are doing them on windows?
Also, the main reason that schools have switched away from Macintosh is that it seems heir Jobs has somewhat abandoned them in favour of the uber-cool urban elite that his products are now marketed towards.
I don't think the issue is so much with individuals and what software they choose to use. If you are an avid game player and have to have Windows to run your games that's fine. Do so at home, with my blessing. In business and government, it's another matter, particularly in government. Here are my two first hand experiences... compare with your own...
At the Department of Energy I worked with a group of 100 or so OS/2 users. This was back in the early 90s. They loved OS/2 and had no desire to change. As an autonomous department, they technically could run any software they wanted. However when it came time to upgrade their PCs to a newer generation of hardware they were given an ultimatum: Switch to Windows or keep your old PCs. They eventually switched.
At another well known federal agency there is a group of people who love IBM computers and operating systems. There is also a group of people who hate IBM and anything connected with them. More importantly these two groups hate each other and are in constant conflict. Since their systems have to talk to one another there is ample opportunity to stab each other in the back... cause something to fail (or just wait for a natural occurence) and then try and blame the other group.
Many years ago the anti-IBM crowd decided to build a system based on Wang mini-computers. The system basically sucked, but it wasn't a good career move to say so. The only reason they migrated off the Wang systems was that Wang went out of business. In fact they ran the system out of used parts for quite a while before declaring the situation an "emergency" which meant that huge amounts of money were spent for a quick conversion effort that should instead have been carefully planned.
They picked Windows as their new target architecture. I'm not sure that this was necessarily a bad decision, and in fact there were parts of the "plan", such as it was, that tried to encourage the use of "standards based" softare. This means that you write your programs to use, to the extent possible, generic SQL (for example) rather than Oracle, DB/2, or SQL Server syntax. Because it was an "emergency" however, these sound business concepts were ignored and the system became locked into specific DBMS/Compiler/Operating system ways of doing things. Seven years later and the system is still buggy as hell. The application is written in a now non-supported programming language, but the only fix for this would be another total re-write.
At one point a group I was involved with was asked to recommend some statistical analysis software to allow for ad-hoc queries of this 7 years worth of data. Using live data the analyst compared several potential products and rated them. As part of the summary he pointed out that while several of the proposed products were quite capable, he had noticed during the tests that almost no column of values in the database had sufficiently enough valid data points (both missing and mangled values) to draw any statistical inferences, no matter what product they picked. Both analyst and report were "shuffled off to Buffalo" never to be seen again.
I was there for another year or so after that. There was begrudging talk about the lack of wisdom in continuing to rely on non-supported components. Jokes about the similarity to the Wang systems were getting too common. They went to one of the top consulting firms for independent outside advice (a very good idea in my opinion). After months of study, they issued an analysis of just one of the many applications there. Not surprisingly they said it was too dependant on the quirks and features of a particular DBMS. It also was using outmoded client/server methodologies and of course the non-supported compiler was full of bugs as was the resultant application. They also threw in some concerns about Windows security, which was just starting to show up on the radar for large geographically dispersed organizations (network dependencies).
I was encouraged by the
I would say - Give it a shot. At least on a small scale (ie. one classroom at a time) I am a teacher at a small charter school in Pittsburgh PA. I used a current DELL (shipped with XP) and installed K12LTSP. The dumby terminals and switch was all donations from the local LUG. It cost the school 1 computer (that they already had), and now I have 8 student computers in the class.
Best of all is when a student comes in from the lab (all XPs) and asks to use "my lab" cause they like it better. Some say it runs faster, some say they have less problems, some say they just like it. I really don't care why, it is just great!!
Now I even have a science teacher wanting me to put one in here room.