[lug] Free Software in Schools

[Davide Del Vento]

>
> **
>
> As a parent trying to decide where to send my kids next, I've been
> horrified by many schools proudly calling themselves "mac-school" or
> "microsoft-school" and the likes.
>
>
> Can you describe your complaint here in more detail?  Why does this matter
> to you?
>

Many reasons. A partial list:

1) Schools should pick what is best for their needs and should *not* behave
like fanboys (some are as I wrote)

2) They may use Microsoft Word just to type an essay when they only need
justification, boldface and italics, not hard-to-meet business needs that
sometimes may make MO a better choice than LO

3) Often times this is unnecessarily more expensive and shouldn't be done
in times of tight budgets with taxpayer dollars

4) In fact the budged is to tight that many public schools ask parents to
contribute money or labor (!)

5) I'm fine if an adult freely decides to use something that will lock him
in. I'm not ok if that same adult is a teacher and pretend to lock my kids
in

6) Kids will soon ask me to buy them the same machine they use at school
because they won't like what we have at home (in my case that would be
likely microsoft vs gnu/linux, but this applies in the same way to apple vs
microsoft: diversity, not monoculture should be allowed and actually
encouraged)
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