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#1 2012-12-29 00:48:56

sagirfahmid3
Member
From: Planet Kerbin
Registered: 2012-09-16
Posts: 3

[LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

So basically, this is a petition to the U.S. govt. that public schools should start moving away from Windows and Macs, and basically all proprietary software, in favor or GPL software or free and open-source software. This would save a lot of money that could be put to good use, i.e. renovations, new schools, more computers, etc...

It took me literally 2 minutes, so please, do show your support! There's almost half a month left to get 25000 "signatures"--so far there's been around 2000.
Here's the link (note that it's a .gov website, meaning it's legitimate):
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti … t/T1xGw1fZ

Thanks for listening folks! Don't forget to spread this message! [You can just copy and paste this one].

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#2 2012-12-29 06:32:44

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: [LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=138764

In April 2012. Failed to reach the threshold.

No problem to try again, but I see some serious problems with the petition as it is. Software that is free (as in beer and speech) normally costs something else which educators and students both have too little of as a whole - time. As a non-US citizen though I have no say in this at all. Good luck, even if I don't agree smile.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#3 2012-12-29 14:27:17

Trent
Member
From: Baltimore, MD (US)
Registered: 2009-04-16
Posts: 990

Re: [LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

I signed it, but I'm not all that optimistic. I think it's something the US needs to do, but there are powerful commercial interests in schools. (Perhaps that's a problem by itself.)

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#4 2012-12-29 19:58:03

Leonid.I
Member
From: Aethyr
Registered: 2009-03-22
Posts: 999

Re: [LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

sagirfahmid3 wrote:

So basically, this is a petition to the U.S. govt. that public schools should start moving away from Windows and Macs, and basically all proprietary software, in favor or GPL software or free and open-source software. This would save a lot of money that could be put to good use, i.e. renovations, new schools, more computers, etc...

It took me literally 2 minutes, so please, do show your support! There's almost half a month left to get 25000 "signatures"--so far there's been around 2000.
Here's the link (note that it's a .gov website, meaning it's legitimate):
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti … t/T1xGw1fZ

Thanks for listening folks! Don't forget to spread this message! [You can just copy and paste this one].

I have two remarks regarding the procedure (but not the cause):
1. I don't think that the schools are run by the federal (or even state) government. Definitely which software vendor to choose is decided by each school independently or at best at the level of county/parish/city/...

2.  In my opinion, such petition would be much more effective if sent to a local government, e.g. the city of New York. But then the wording has to be changed. Believe me, absolutely noone cares about GNU, FSF and similar crap because people who make decisions do not know (want to learn) about these things. So a (cynical) game must be made jumping off solving the issues that will help a given politician in the future elections, or simply look good on the quarterly report.
    For example, recent mass shooting in schools are now much discussed. Of course, many people talk about a deeper community involvement. Although sad, this situations can be used to argue that if school A switches to linux/bsd, it will not only save $N but may also expect a series of informal meetings of the students with a local LUG whose members are already successfull A's alumni. Clearly, this will be beneficial for the officials and you get what you want.


Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
pkill -9 systemd

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#5 2012-12-30 00:53:27

OrionFyre
Member
Registered: 2008-03-16
Posts: 68

Re: [LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

There's a major problem and it boils down to that age old adage "Those than can, do; those that can't, teach"

I mean most school system have nothing more than a glorified shop teacher teaching their CAD and Engineering classes, and a guy with an English teaching degree regurgitating the material from the teachers edition of "Web Design for a Modern Age" which actively teaches and promotes the use of the tables tag for website layout with a four page addendum hotglued into the back regarding HTML2.1 changes.

The major problem with the current top-down educational model is that unless you have genuinely qualified and knowledgable people working as your teachers then you will only end up with IT curriculum in which your programming classes amount to choosing a formula from a drop down for cell D14 in some office suite.

I've been watching as the pieces of this IT puzzle fall into place and I've been wringing my hands with joy watching it happen. The first problem is connectivity. Today you have fewer people without internet access than those that do, and this is occuring on a global scale. The second problem was accesibility. When the "net" as we know it first started out it was a consumer market with sparse producers. Now you have huge repositories of knowledge and collectives of people producing content for the masses. (wikipedia, youube, etc). When I got a wild hair after highschool I wanted to learn cobol. I had to buy a book. Now that same information (and even better) is available for free.

When I went to my freshman year in highschool I walked into my Visual Basic 1-2 class knowing more about programming logic and flow than my teacher, self taught from a shelf of manuals for a behemouth of a computer my uncle gave me when I was 8 years old and ran on 8" diskettes. (I thought it was awesome because it had an aircraft-type kill switch on the main unit). Now we have teenagers walking into web design classes laughing at the horrid lack of mention of CSS or php in the textbook, knowing more from running their own blogs and even retail websites.

The third major hurdle in this evolution has been affordability. And with the likes of the Raspberry PI and Arduino, the age of ultra low-cost computing is finally taking hold. We have schools throwing $1000 laptops at students hoping they'll learn. It is inevitable that these low cost platforms will infiltrate our educational systems.

With the three of these hurdles tackled I think the next stage in at least IT education is to in part abandon the top-down educational model and adopt a collaborative educational model. And I don't believe that this change will occur through legislative or decreed action. It will occur through the demand of the students themselves.

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#6 2012-12-30 17:02:13

nomorewindows
Member
Registered: 2010-04-03
Posts: 3,362

Re: [LINUX] If you live in the U.S.A. please sign this petition!

You're up against a brick on this one.  While most government entites started out on mainframe *NIX, they later replaced it with Windows * because it was cheaper/smaller/user-friendlier/whatever.  Windows * comes on most purchased hardware these days making such a move tricky.  I don't know what schools they are limited to with regards to this petition, but on college campuses, Microsoft has made a move to give away for research purposes legitimate single copies of their software with no limitations of how much grab for technology can be trained on.  Programs that will run on any architecture helps the free software make its' way onto some machinery.  There's becoming a blurred line between GNU's FSF and Microsoft's freebies. 

The ficticious debt limit means they'll just keep right on spending money on frivilous endeavours.  SETI@home and such projects allows you to attach to a project and save the institution from buying extra equipment.  Computers in the classroom starts first with the teachers only, then the students, and now you have graudates from high school who can't run a cash register without a computer.  It doesn't benefit everybody.  Then you spend money on having to keep playing the upgrading contest.  This office attachment sent to you by e-mail invites you to buy the latest version. 

We have several things we are trying to get the Government to honor, none of which they are paying any attention to, much less software.


I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.

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