open source petition to Uk Prime Minister

[bob-linux-user]

This really only applies to UK citizens.

Please petition the Prime Minister on his website to increase the use of non Microsoft Software. The full wording is on the site.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/#detail

Non Microsoft is good for Linux and is good for Ubuntu....

[xadder]

Good initiative. Somebody should do this for Government documents also. For example DEFRA forces people to submit their reports as Word documents!

[squaregoldfish]

Windows seems like a good pragmatic choice of standard OS to me. Teaching kids to use computers using the environment in which they're most likely to encounter computers in the future makes some kind of sense, doesn't it?

Steve.

[xadder]

Yeh, right, we should all encourage monopolies as far as we can. Makes life's choices much easier ;-)

(And schools have so much money, and MS so little, that it is good to redistribute the income too!)

[WatchingThePain]

Schools are always complaining about budgets so surely using Open Source makes more sense for them.
I don't know of a single school so far that does that.
I have taught ICT in schools for a while (alongside my main subject) and Linux was never mentioned.
They gave me a lappy with Windows on it too (sigh).
I reckon I could have taught the same concepts using Ubuntu as I did using Windows.
If a school could run a test scheme at least that would be interesting.
There are also Linux distros now that are built with younger people in mind.

[lad.kocb]

Windows seems like a good pragmatic choice of standard OS to me. Teaching kids to use computers using the environment in which they're most likely to encounter computers in the future makes some kind of sense, doesn't it?

Steve.

They are most likely to encounter Windows computers? But why? Because the Steves of this world perpetuate this. And because, which is more important, the IT business is mainly corrupted or little informed. But why not windows, do we have any good reasons to recommend alternatives? What is wrong with windows for everything? Learn once, use always and everywhere?

The price - but that is "only money"
The viruses, virus management, antivirus software
People learn where to click instead of what to do
People are turned into "clicking monkeys" instead of thinking individuals
People collect their windows programs, a little collection of tools, which keeps them from experiencing new things
Developers are locked into the windows world. The windows developement tools are designed with this as one of the main objectives. This leads to bloatware and waste of human effort
The main (and nearly the only one) purpose of Microsoft is to earn money. All other aspects then suffer.

My above points are just written too quickly. One should look in more detail into this. Also the question why Microsoft gets everything wrong, even when they buy an excellent product (example: equation editor in Word, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Equation_Editor; a product (MathType, http://www.dessci.com/ which originally produces also latex output as an alternative).

I suggest a scientific study (social scientists, natural scientists and computer scientists) documenting and investigating Microsoft's misuse of mankind for a blind pursuit of profit.

Recent phenomena: destroying OLPC, pushing Linux from netbooks, Silverlight, Microsoft (anti-)ODF activities, fight with Google to steal the advertising money now used by Google to run the web innovation

The schools of the world should be protected against this irresponsible conduct of a company run by profit maniacs. I quote myself since nobody famous seems to tell that: It is not immoral to earn money; there are however immoral ways to earn money (as Microsoft has been convicted to do)

I support any petition. But I call for a scientific documentation of Microsoft's misconducts. We have the legal documentation, but that did not help, they buy lawyers. I perhaps naively believe that scientific results can not be bought. Now we need them to convince the prime ministers.

[Sef]

This forum is for Education & Science
A place to discuss scientific and mathematics software for Ubuntu or linux in general. Questions and comments from all academic and research disciplines are welcome.

Since the thread is political, it has been locked..