[Fsf-friends] Re: a memo and the IT@School Project

[Raju Mathur]

>>>>> "Raghu" == Raghavendra Bhat <ragu@vsnl.com> writes:

    Raghu> Members of FSUG-Kochi have submitted a memorandum to the
    Raghu> Government of Kerala regarding the choice of software and
    Raghu> syllabus prescribed for the IT@School project.  Link up and
    Raghu> read the full memo at

    Raghu>     http://www.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi/mass-memo.html

Nice document.  I specially liked section 2 which talks about
proprietary communication standards.  Agree that those are going to
cost much more in the long term than open or closed source.  Leo, are
you listening?

Section 4 is a bit weak.  MS is now making source code available to
limited audiences, and could theoretically make source available to
Kerala schools if pressurised.  Instead you could add stuff about
learning from play: get the source, modify it, distribute modified
source, gather experience.  Software development today is (or should
be) assimilation and integration rather than pure development.  And
that is what our school students should learn: not how to write code
but how to judge what existing code comes closest to their
requirements, how to modify it, how to integrate it into their
application.

Finally, your argument may be strengthened if you point out the fact
that free software like Linux will work just fine on older 386 and 486
PCs, unlike Winduhs which would require a hardware upgrade with each
software version upgrade.  And since we have already started making
open source arguments (cost), why not bring in the other open source
arguments too?  Let's talk about the stability of free software, its
security, its lack of creeping-featuritis.

Regards,

-- Raju
-- 
Raju Mathur               raju@kandalaya.org      http://kandalaya.org/
                      It is the mind that moves