"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3533939.zutGIFyzHZ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
__/ [ Oliver Wong ] on Tuesday 25 July 2006 20:46 \__
"Mark Kent" <mark.kent@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:b61ip3-016.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If this is government, then anyone even considering allowing proprietary
code is probably already "owned" in some way. The only way you
guarantee real choice is through the use of OSS. As government money is
the people's money, then government should not, under any circumstances,
be lining the pockets of lock-down products, as not only will they
impact the government, but they also impact everyone who has to deal
with them, which is, err, everyone. The only pro-choice position is to
be relentlessly pursuing open-source GPLed solutions, so that /everyone/
gets to make a choice.
So according to you, you're only pro-choice if you deny certain
entities
from choosing between OSS and CSS?
This strikes a nerve. Governments extends to the realm of
academia and schools, too. I have always been utterly
dissatisfied with the fact that poor students pay
extortionare tution fees and lecturers get paid miserably.
The only ones to gain millions are Microsoft, who deliver
shoddy software that clogs up our network, prevents good
research from being done, and leaves people uninspired,
unproductive, and in need of nighttime jobs.
I really don't know how it works, so can you (or anyone else) clarify
this for me: my assumption is that in the case of public schools, the
government allocates some budget to the director, who can spend the money
more or less as (s)he sees fit. That is, if the director thinks it's better
to spend some money on getting Windows and spending a bit less on textbooks
and teachers, that's his/her decision to make. In the case of private
schools, the government doesn't allocate any money at all, and again it's up
to the director to come up with some income and decide how to spend that
income.
Presumably, people who go to private schools can choose which private
schools they want to go to, but there are some restrictions on public
schools because they have a "local monopoly". That is, sometimes students
cannot choose which school they wish to go to because of factors like the
physical distance between the school and their homes.
In this case, there should be strong attempts to not require that the
students require materials that they cannot afford. For example, we should
not assume that the students have access to a computer at home, which means
that if coursework involves computers, there should be a computer lab which
remains open after school hours.
In my specific experience, I was given programming assignments in Java.
I completed them at home on my Windows machine, and then would demonstrate
them for the teacher at school on Linux machines. But I see no reason why
the situation couldn't have been reversed, with me developing at home on a
Linux machine, and demonstrating it at school on a Windows machine.
- Oliver
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