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South African Education Department Bans Free and Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "The South African Education Department has effectively banned the use of FOSS software in state-run schools by forcing all candidates writing the Computer Applications Technology examination to use Microsoft's Office 2010 or 2013 as the only supported options. In the same circular, the state has mandated that all schools use Delphi, instead of Java, as the programming language for the country's Information Technology practical paper. South Africa, notorious for its poor performance in Maths and Science and for having vastly over-crowded and underfunded schools, are now locked into costly Microsoft licensing because of this decision."
Well, I don't smell any hint of corruption here, no sirree!
</sarcasm>
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
How many people where bribed to make this deal?
"The South African Education Department has effectively banned the use of FOSS software in state-run schools by forcing all candidates writing the Computer Applications Technology examination to use Microsoft's Office 2010 or 2013 as the only supported options."
Fascinating, apparently MS-South Africa has sophisticated technology that seeks out and destroys all open source software simply because Microsoft Office is used for some tasks. This new learning is amazing! Tell me again how sheep-bladders can be used to prevent earthquakes!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Mark Shuttleworth, please speak up!
Side effect of the Gates foundation aid to Africa?
S. Africa is known for this sort of thing. They purchased a bunch of fighter jets that they could never afford to fly in exchange for a huge kick-back to the ANC.
Hopefully the kickback they got from Microsoft was worth it.
This makes me sad
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I'm not afraid to admit I use a quite of commercial software and have been quite happy with many products out there. Yes even a few MS ones. But as a person with a functioning brain and an interest in productivity you can bet your ass every time I'm looking at an upgrade I take a moment to survey the options. Often over the course of a major version upgrade cycle I learn that a cheaper or if I'm lucky an OSS solution has become viable for my needs. Any time I see an organization act outside of that simple principle I can suspect only one of two things and neither are good. I usually hope it's just narrow minded ignorance, which with luck can sometimes be cured, but when you lock people into a paid-for only solution it usually ends up being bribery of some sort. Governments are in the end just made up of people, and like in the corporate world the decision makers are often the most selfcentered people in the land. Add to that despite using and recommending certain MS programs and services I have little doubt in my mind that MS is one of the most unethical technology companies in the world- it's how they got where they are.
If my $10 mil company can't afford Office 2013 and is switching to Libre, how the hell can an African school system afford it?
I think, it's an hoax. Isn't it?
Forced to use Delphi? Really?
Aren't there a couple FOSS compilers that support Delphi to a greater or less degree?
Keep them dumb and dependent!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The last thing this industry needs is yet another wave of bad Java programmers.
I know nothing of this Delphi doodad, however if you're not teaching Java you're not in the present reality. The country is already behind, this doesn't help any.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
maybe not for every situation, but it certainly applies here...
this is often a false distinction...true 'incompetence' without malice requires a staggering level of pure ignorance...
Why bother bringing this up?
b/c there is **NO DEFENSE** for what South Africa and M$ are doing here....it is PURE EVIL
I see these discussions on /. whenever a company or government does this horseshit and we all call it out as horseshit...
The idea that this decision was an "honest" mistake is surely *theoretically* possible...but to make an "honest" mistake at this level would require so much ignorance of how daily society works that the person probably wouldn't be able to support themselves...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Is not malice enough? And doesn't stupidity fail to explain it?
Forgetting someone's birthday: stupidly forgetting or maliciously hates them? Why attribute malice here?
Makeing a collossal cock up and screwing people over, and remember that there WILL be bribes offered, and why ascribe to stupidity when malice explains it so much better?
After all, youd have to explain
1) Why stupidity leads to this decision
2) Why someone didn't point out the stupidity
3) How did someone get high enough when they were this stupid
4) Why realising it's stupid isn't happening when we're pointing it out
Rule of acquisition #98.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If my $10 mil company can't afford Office 2013 and is switching to Libre, how the hell can an African school system afford it?
Office 365 plans and pricing for education [South Africa]
Plan A3
Students:
R 23,30 user/month
Faculty and staff:
R 42,00 user/month
1 South African Rand = 10 cents US.
Includes:
Hosted e-mail. 25 GB/user.
Web conferencing, supports HD video, etc.
3,000 SharePoint team sites.
Active directory integration
24/7 phone support
Anti-spam and anti-malware
Office Web Apps
MS Office "Pro" Suite for 5 PCs or Macs/user
Advanced e-mail, advanced voice mail.
May include "MS Office Anywhere" --- stream full Office apps to any PC.
So what are your monthly costs per user for an equivalent bundle of applications and services? How well does Libre Office integrate with third party applications and resources?
That's not very Ubuntu feelings, I can feel.
Who is using expensive up-to-date Microsoft products at home, and who is using the FOSS alternatives? OTOH perhaps the economic boundary is more between those who have computers at home and those who don't, in which case perhaps this is a good thing - prospective employees should be training on the current business-level software (not that school is supposed to be vocational training, but something is better than nothing).
Ok, I know this might be confusing, but just because the Greek city of Delphi had that famous oracle doesn't mean that Oracle owns Delphi. Oracle owns Java. The programming language, not the country of Java. And when I say own, I mean they blood well own it and anyone who says otherwise trying to whine about open source while their panties get in a bunch don't understand how the political landscape of patents, standard stewardship, lawyers, money, and power work.
Delphi is owned by Embarcadero Technologies. It compiles IT'S OWN VERSION of Pascal. Because any time you talk about Pascal you have to specify what version of it you're talking about because Pascal died due to fragmentation. Everyone took it their own direction and it was effectively drawn and quartered.
...kicking and screaming.
Stick Men
If students learned a variety of office productivity applications (word processors, spreadsheets, email clients, presentation graphics etc.) they might not all go on to chose one set of products from a single vendor when they enter the workplace and start to make the decisions, unlike their blinkered and indoctrinated parents.
Stick Men
There is a Free Pascal compiler that compiles various dialects of Pascal and Delphi and runs on and targets more than just Windows (and x86 processors). It Supports Linux.
Stick Men
*Scratches head*
In ethics there is a concept known as "conflict of interest". In almost every instance where someone trots out the line "Never ascribe to malice..." they are responding to a question about someone's potential conflict of interest.
Especially when those in position of trust and authority are involved in improper decisions, it is unethical to trot out the "Never ascribe to malice..." line. Their position of trust and authority obligates them, and their would-be defenders to being open to additional scrutiny as to potential conflicts of interest.
Seastead this.
I used the free Office offering that comes with my free SkyDrive subscription. Surely a student / school can use this for basic Office stuff. Of course, if they want anything more advanced then they will have to pay.
"When Samsung packaged a solar-powered classroom for Africa’s remote communities, it shipped a GNU/Linux solution but M$ intervened"
"Working together with Reza Bardien, our Education Lead, we managed to turn this into an end to end Windows solution by the end of the week"
- quote -
Solar Powered Schools – Linux Win
In the week of 16 January, Samsung Africa launched its first Solar Powered Internet Schools. These 40 ft solar powered containers are designed for use in remote rural education communities with limited, or no access to electricity. This is a world first and shows great innovation from our partners.
However, this solution with little education relevance (all 20 student laptops as well as the teacher one) was a complete Linex solution at the time of launch. Working together with Reza Bardien, our Education Lead, we managed to turn this into an end to end Windows solution by the end of the week, including the PIL Learning Suite and the Windows-based NETOP Classroom Management solution.
By Friday morning, when Samsung demonstrated its solution to press and stakeholders, the solution was based on a Microsoft platform. This container (and the next 10 containers going into Africa and South Africa) will include devices running on a Microsoft platform only, so the students learning on these devices will be running and learning on Windows.
Some great cross group collaboration between the Windows BG, the Education Public Sector, NETOP and Jacques from OEM who assisted.
Thank you all!
- unquote -
They are using Delphi because Pascal's always been taught, and they don't want to have to teach the teachers a new language.
IT as a subject is not taught in all schools, maybe it's bigger now, but I had to travel to a different school twice a week to take it, and there were only 20 people in the class. Typically a maths or science teacher will take the class as an on-the-side sort of thing. There's a huge shortage of teachers here, unfortunately it's just not practical to change from Pascal.
As for office, everyone uses it, so it makes sense to teach it. Microsoft give very good student rates.
This really has nothing to do with being specifically anti-FOSS.
It's the way of higher management. If it succeeds- it happened due to my leadership. If it fails- it failed due to incompetent workers, incompetent committees, incompetent scapegoats, sub-optimal company structure, etc. Incompetence is easier to forgive than greed-driven risk-taking or things designed to fail after they have enriched you.
--Coder
Hallo. I'll reply to you because you're far enough on the discussion.
"Never attribute to Malice ..." is a really great concept because it gets you out of a *lot* of nasty jams!
1. There *is* malice, but you find an awesome fix, then you avoid million-dollar malice-audits.
2. There really is *incompetence*, so you just fix that before *anyone else* "pretends" it's malice!
3. In the realm of social affairs with co-workers, a "mistake" is tons easier to fix than an accusation of "malice", which threatens a firing and then you for calling it out!
And more.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually, Delphi is as much a language as Objective C is a language. In fact, it is often referred to as Object Pascal
Huh, that almost sound like Delphi (the program owned and sold by Embarcadero Technologies) has it's own version of Pascal. Which I believe is EXACTLY WHAT I SAID.
Pascal didn't die due to 'fragmentation' for two reasons,
the first being that it's hardly dead,
Bwahahahahahahahahaaaaaa, oh boy, that's cute.
and the second being that Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embarcadero were the only the current owners at the time and they all had exactly the same product: Delphi.
Let me know how that compares to free pascal, turbo pascal, Niklaus Wirth's 1974 Standard, UCSD Pascal, or Pascal-P.
And, historically there where competing standards. IEC/ISO 7185 didn't match ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983, and ISO 7185:1983. Even the old established guys whose job it is to keep everyone on the same page couldn't agree which version to go with. It took a decade for them to agree on one standard, but by then there was of course and extended version of the Pascal standard ISO/IEC 10206....
But hey, if you think that Delphi and it's Object Pascal is the One True Pascal, that's great. For you.
they all had exactly the same product: Delphi.
Oh! Wait wait wait, are you telling me they never had any backwards compatibility issues? That code for the original Delphi way back in 1995 will run just perfectly fine with whatever Ebarcadero is selling now? Do you really believe that?
I've read the whole thread, refreshed to the point I started reading about an hour ago. A fellow above gave the "1995" link to the Wikipedia article on Delphi which I read.
I'm not gonna touch the whole mess about incompetence, malice, corruption, what have you.
I'm also not gonna touch the whole 'bestest cosmic uber language' to teach especially as it might relate to future employability, 'cuz I think it's irrelevant here.
What the students - high school and younger, if I read it correctly - are getting is a set of tools within a complete development package with all kinds add-ons and such available. This is something I would have given much to have when I took Fortran for Engineers classes in the Sixties.
The Delphi doodad provides for different processors - x86 and ARM anyway, and different OSes, Windows, OSX and GNU/Linux. The young'uns will be exposed to classes, objects, procedures, libraries, GUIs all while learning logic, branching, talking to databases and whatnot. Sounds pretty good to me. (They'll be able to write and test as they go, so getting valuable feed-back to their efforts - no keypunching your card deck and handing it to the priests at the computer center only to get a printout three days later of a failed run due to a mis-placed comma. This is half-way to magic, in my book, just as working with a good interpreted BASIC gave often very good feed-back when one was coding. One became a participant, not a supplicant.)
Programming is a skill (and a talent, for the really good ones.) Good programming is, I think, a state of mind as well. While one would have a lot of "fun" moving from Fortran to Python or Java, it's like learning any other language with a grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc. But it's the skill development, the exposure to that state of mind that marries creativity to the focus on logic, detail, and flow that's important - not the language. While there may indeed be better languages and environments at this early stage of a student's life I think it's not so important a consideration as the skill to be gained. It's for class, not trade prep school. Just because one takes a shop class or an algebra class doesn't mean he will become a machinist or mathematician. As others have pointed out, this thread and others, most good programmers learn on their own anyway.