Re: [Fsuk-manchester] MS Windows on the OLPC

[Finn Lewis]

"A lot of it will end up as what governments and educational institutions choose to use," added James Utzchneider of Microsoft.

What I'm interested in is why and how governments and educational institution chose to use MS.
If we lived in a true democracy, surely we would be asked what our taxes were spent on. And who wouldn't choose an open, evolving, free and ethical framework for our future generations of learning and business?

So last year I heard the Stockport was tarting to use Open Source software in education. Anyone know if this has happened, and if so, has it started to kick in?

I'm seriously interested in setting up an action group on pushing free and open source software in education in Manchester (or joining one!!).

Here's hoping.

Finn.

Finn Lewis
Technical Director - Ecobee Ltd.

w: www.ecobee.org
t: 0845 347 9348 / 0161 226 5555
m: 07966 776 903

Company No. 5964804

Ecobee Ltd.
Unit 1, 41 Old Birley Street,
Hulme,
Manchester,
M15 5RF

Lucy wrote:

Following on from yesterday's debate, what do people think of OLPC's
decision to start selling the laptops with MS Windows installed?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7402365.stm

Many governments have been asking for MS Windows to be installed and
it will undoubtedly mean that more are sold in the short term. It will
also dual boot GNU/Linux.

For those people who are not morally against proprietary software, do
you still feel that way in light of this decision? Is this just a
practical solution needed to get more laptops in the hands of children
to help them learn?

I know that yesterday I was having problems thinking that proprietary
software was immoral, although I knew it was 'bad'. Today, I think
that things are much simpler, forcing kids to use proprietary software
because 'everyone else is using it' or because 'it trains them for
business' is wrong, completely morally wrong. It scares me to see how
much influence one company has and it frustrates me that kids will be
missing out on valuable learning because of the interest of business.


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