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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."
Mod up! I'm a big fan of both Linux and OO, but a lot of people seem to have a dangerously smug attitude towards security. As they get more popular, especially with non-expert users, more vulnerabilities will be found and exploited.
Still, the FOSS community does have a good record of discovering and fixing severe problems quickly IMHO.
Well if he did lie, it's a pretty elaborate lie, because in a later entry he said he talked to Karen the Teacher, and that she was near-crying. He also revealed that the student had been disrupting the class so, in this instance, the teacher was justified in taking the Linux Demo CDs. He apologized to the teacher for not getting the full story upfront.
So I don't think he was running a hoax.
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