Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Free software: taking on dominant market forces
>
> ,----[ Snippet ]
> | Do you feel that the Kerala Government's decision to start using
> | free software in schools is something that the rest of the country
> | will follow?
> | Stallman: If you teach students to use proprietary software you are
> | teaching them to be helplessly dependent on a particular company.
I would go even further than that. If you teach students to use
proprietary software, you are teaching them to engage in piracy. If
the teacher wants the assignment in MS-Office, and the kid only has
Windows on his machine at home, he must obtain Office. If he, and his
family don't have the money to buy it, they will steal it. The kids
often use shareware that hasn't been properly registered (a problem
that plagues many corporations as well - especially with WinZip).
All of these are lessons which, because they are taught so early in
life, make the lines of law, morality, and ethics incredibly blurry.
20 years after the prolifiration of MS-DOS in schools, the graduates of
those schools didn't think there was anything wrong with actions such
as those taken by Enron and WorldCom. Those same people couldn't wait
to impeach one president for possibly lying about whether the underwear
might have slipped or not. That same generation a few years later
thought it was wonderful that the next president was violating both
U.S. and international law, in the name of "fighting terrorists", and
supporters like Anne Coulter suggested that anyone who disagreed with
this new president should be convicted of Treason.
> | And that is not good for society as a whole.
This really is the bottom line.
Do we say "you are poor, so you must remain poor for the rest of your
life because you can't afford to pay Microsoft it's percieved value
prices"?
Do we say "you are poor, but if you want to be a success in life, you
must learn to steal in a politically acceptable way, such as stealing
software from companies like Microsoft and PKWare"?
Or Do we say "you are poor, but by taking a little extra effort to
learn a few new things, you can become very successful, without
resorting to criminal acts, politically acceptable or not"?
As a parent, I knew which message I wanted my children to hear. Which
is why I gave them Linux when they were relatively young.
> | So, the schools should not do it.
> | What the Kerala Government is doing is the right thing and all the
> | other States in India should be doing this.
> `----
>
> http://www.hindu.com/seta/2006/08/31/stories/2006083100441500.htm
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