Re: [seul-edu] Article: PCs diverted from landfill to South African schools

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Thursday 24 October 2002 11:31 am, Jacqueline McNally wrote:
> PCs diverted from landfill to South African schools
> SOUTH AFRICA: October 24, 2002

> JOHANNESBURG - The first of around 150,000 personal computers destined for
> landfill sites were rolled out to schools in South Africa yesterday, as
> part of efforts to make the country's children web-savvy.

> See: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18308/story.htm

> "Teachers also need to be trained.

> But Davies's organisation has enlisted teacher training from three groups,
> he said."

> Perhaps the Open Source community may be able to offer their expertise to
> assist with suitable educational software and scope of the project.

    http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190239.html

Snippet:

    The move backs up the announcement made by President Thabo Mbeki
    earlier this year that Microsoft is to donate free software to
    every public school in the country. At the time this raised
    questions about how school children could use the software when
    they had no computers.

Snippet:

    Backers of the scheme are Eli Lilley, Microsoft, Exel, Nestlé
    and Shell.

I have a bad feeling about both of those snippets. I can't speak about Exel 
personally, but every one of the other companies listed has a bad reputation 
for supporting `good' causes for ulterior motives.

WRT Open Source, yes, by all means, since we are competing evenly on price 
now, but I wouldn't kill myself doing it.

I'm afraid the only way they'll learn is by trying it Microsoft's way and 
suffering an enormous support load, an unbelievable virus problem (there are 
no updates from Microsoft for the kind of software that runs on P1's), and 
facing financial ruin when Microsoft do start charging.

We should have schools piloting OSS now for when the others find the flies in 
this ointment.

Cheers; Leon