On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 01:15:22PM -0800, Michael Dean wrote: > I think that it is a major blunder to view any rational thrust > into the schools adaptation of Open Source as a Linux initiative. Hm, sitting on Windows, advocating BSD in questionable manner, FUD, top-posting... Quite usual combo. Another poor guy. > Especially when schools, who are goal and objective driven, > must sift through thousands of duplicatory packages How did you jump over from "Linux" to "dup packages"? > many of dubious quality, that comprise what I call the > "kitchen sink" distros such as Redhat, Suse, Mandrake and > Debian. [*] > We must, instead look at open source as a collection of tools > to bbe selected from the perspective of the teachers and > admins. Sure. > We must produce an Educational System which is based on a > minimalist, goal driven philosophy. It's not that minimalist, it's "good enough". Then sure. (my term last years is "task driven", the meaning seems the same) > FreeBSD would work equally well in schools Would? I know quite a few cases of FLOSS deployments in educational institutions throughout Ukraine -- you know, the largest failure percentage was on FreeBSD ones, not Linux. Just to sync you with [local] reality. Re [*] -- how exactly would FreeBSD (with its substandard ports system having -- surprise! -- a bulk of duplicates, many of dubious quality), with an installer and management tools that *really* make it deserve its "FreeBS" tag -- how would that actually help schools? If you talk about customization, then you'd better look at Debian Jr and other _already_ customized distros to consider which base is closer to the goal. If you don't talk about customization, then it's already junk. > and it has a more rational license. Interesting claim. Not calling it BS as some backing may still arrive. So far I've seen nothing (see below). I'd argue that it has dumb crack-smoking license that gets nothing for developers' benefit (and thus users' benefit) and only serves good for governmental purposes (which were its origin but are long irrelevant) -- and, surprise, proprietary software businesses of Microsoft's elk. > I am collecting papers for an edited books on Transforming > Schools Through Goal Driven Open Source Software. Any > educator, or professional who can produce any contribution to > this title would be welcome to submit. Thanks you. Seeing you mixing things up in this manner, one should question how contributions would get treated. I write articles, books and reviews from time to time -- but either they're "fairly commercial", or it's FDL/OCL. Contributing to doomed projects is counterproductive. PS: JFYI: I've worked with FreeBSD and know a few committers (even one OpenBSD developer :). Yes it sucked and they couldn't support claims like "FreeBSD is better", "BSD license is better" when being asked "why exactly?". I'm working with a few Linux distros and companies behind them. They tend to be pragmatic and solve real problems, edu too. I've been analyzing things for several years in this area. Some of the results coincided with a friend's one (he's working for IBM); Linux will grow because it's pragmatic, FreeBSD will lurk in its niche because it's fanatic, self-concentrated and not really an open _platform_. I can tell that you're hopelessly defending failed things. So please spare the list traffic on putting your FUD back upon you with added shame. -- ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx> ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/
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