Teachers Need an Open Source Education

palegray.net writes "Teachers are sorely in need of an education in what open source software is, what it isn't, and how it can benefit their students. A recent news story at the Reg discussed the case of a Texas teacher who accused those distributing Linux to students of committing criminal acts. A HeliOS blog entry exposes a 'higher education' culture of apathy, lies, and fear of open source software. Things have got to improve, and that improvement needs to start with misguided teachers getting their facts straight."

Comments

this is an american phenomenon

[ChienAndalu]

Here in Germany, I never experienced any hostility towards open source software in the educational system.

The universities are quite supportive of open source and lend their infrastructure to host mirrors for various distributions.

Re:Helios Blog Entry Is Crap!

[SerpentMage]

Apache is a different situation. Apache has been around since the Internet and as such has fought the battles.

The problem with Linux and Open Office is that they have not been in broad use in the context of a desktop. And as such the traps related to the desktop have not been exposed.

Many of the worst problems are because people click on things that they should not be clicking on. Linux does not have that type of idiocy proof technology built in. Windows and Vista have that built in. It is also a reason why I hate Vista.

Here is a very simple example. If I want to open a port below 1024 I need admin rights. Well what about above? Nope don't need it. This was done in the days when anything below 1024 was considered important. Though now it has become irrelevant and as such could be a security threat.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/node/2179

From the article...

> I wonder why. Isn't it time to declare the port 1024 limit as obsolete too and remove it?

Re:citations please ..

[rs232]

"Did you try the links in the summary?"

Not only that, when the story first 'broke', I tried emailing the AISD, they never heard of a 'Karen' involved in the alleged incident. The only source is on that blog ...