Hello, I am forwarding a copy of the letter send to the
The Executive Director IT @ SCHOOL Project SCERT Buildings Poojapura Thiruvananthapuram-12
itschool@asianetindia.com
for comments.
regards
ajith
hi,
Ajith Kumar wrote on Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:01:01PM +0530:
I join fsf-* recently. I'm from chennai and am planning to become a part-time volunteering teacher for fsf-edu and after 5 or 6 years become a full-time volunteer.
I have been trying to do the same stuff that you have done so far and I have certain questions to ask the people here.
[:: Quoting Attachment ::]
* Those who offered entry level courses and charged moderate fees. Their fee was decided by the competition in the market. People who go there do not atach much importance to the certificates they issue.
Initially I tried offering myself as a volunteering 'free{beer}' GNU/Linux lecturer at one such chota institute. For the first three days I never gave technical lectures and all my talks were about software freedom, etc.,. and by the end of three days, the proprietor of the institute got bugged and asked me to 'kindly leave' :D From his perspective, I was more of a 'waste of time' and I could understand that I only disappointed him for he wanted me to teach something technical. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten too philisophical. How do you think should this be done? Should I talk about the freedom aspect at all (atleast while beginning with)?
[Note: I thought it might have a better impact if he heard about freedom from the horse's mouth. I gave him a recorded tape of RMS's speech (and also asked him to make the students hear the tape). No workie]
* The second category is the franchisees of bigger agencies. Charged high fees and promised a lot and now busted along with the dotcom bubble.
This category of institutes is the worst, IMO:
1. They _never_ talk about the freedom aspect. 2. They sometimes give misleading information: (examples: "GNU is a set of tools", "It was all started in 1991 by a student...", etc.,)
How can they be approached and a change in syllabus be brought about? Has anybody successfully corrected them?
Syllabus (changes to that put on the web)Functional introduction to IT. Hardware and Software parts of a computer.
[:snip:]
Essential part. Interacts with the user - starts other programs -manages storage. Starting the OS - the booting process -
wouldn't it be nice if the free software movement's efforts, goals, path finds a mention in the syllabus? :)
I would also be glad to find more volunteers from chennai for conducting small GNU/Linux workshops for children of the age 10 and above.
I have an idea of conducting puppet shows for younger children (9 and below) talking about the freedom aspect at one of the schools here. Would it be worth an attempt?
suggestions would be very helpful.
thanks & regards,
-Suraj
Suraj Kumar wrote:
I never gave technical lectures and all my talks were about software freedom, etc.,. and by the end of three days, the proprietor of the institute got bugged and asked me to 'kindly leave' :D From his perspective, I was more of a 'waste of time' and I could understand that I only disappointed him for he wanted me to teach something technical. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten too philosophical. How do you think should this be done? Should I talk about the freedom aspect at all (at least while beginning with)?
That is the difficulty with most (almost all) non-european/anglo-saxon cultures. We pay little, if any, attention and/or respect to "intellectual property" "belonging" to others. (Please note the quotation marks).
AFAI see, unless some software giant conducts a few raids, and sends a few people behind bars for piracy, nobody in computer-related establishments are going to respect IP or copyrights. I have noticed that copyrights are a non-issue with most people. Indeed, only if the raids like referred to above take place, people would begin to respect copyrights. My guess is that such raids, as and when they take place, would give an immense boost to free s/w, since that would force people who would rather not pay switch over. And for those who are willing to pay, they will start demanding their money's worth.
There was an article somewhere (slashdot?) about two months back, saying that software piracy is harming the free software movement more than it is harming the Giants themselves.
All this apart, the end user is rarely concerned with terms of the license. Only developers, and persons who need to exchange copyrighted materials are concerned with distribution / redistribution / modifications. Hence, though licensing issues should be covered even in short term courses, they are ideally taken up at the end of a course, not the beginning.
- They _never_ talk about the freedom aspect. 2. They sometimes give
misleading information: (examples: "GNU is a set of tools", "It was all started in 1991 by a student...", etc.,)
How can they be approached and a change in syllabus be brought about? Has anybody successfully corrected them?
Here is a gem I heard :- Linus uses MS windows on his PC.
Those "poor guys" survive with the money earned selling certification for closed software.
wouldn't it be nice if the free software movement's efforts, goals, path finds a mention in the syllabus? :)
Yes, in Kerala, our govt. will shortly include free software in the syllabus ;), on its own, and if it does not, we are going to make them ....
Why don't you try to find out what the syllabus in TN says? That is, if at all IT is part of your school curriculum.
Mahesh T Pai.
Mahesh posts :
saying that software piracy is harming the free software movement more than it is harming the Giants themselves
Software gets copied illegally.
Illegally copied software cannot harm the Free Software movement because no revenue stream is hit. Maybe FS dissemination would be slow due to the widespread and prevalent use of illegally copied software. The Giants would slowly bleed to death due to rampant copying because of oxygen cut off. Slashdot may have been saying this, anyway I shall Google and get to it.
Best.....
On Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:24:17 +0530, Raghavendra Bhat wrote:
Mahesh posts :
saying that software piracy is harming the free software movement more than it is harming the Giants themselves
Illegally copied software cannot harm the Free Software movement because no revenue stream is hit.
I think you've missed the point. So-called piracy of proprietary software *definitely* harms Free Software because it propagates product lock-in. And there is no denying the fact that people and businesses locked-in to proprietary software (paid for or not) are the ones most unlikely to switch to free software.
However, Mahesh's assumption that if such a locked-in entity is "raided" for piracy, s/he/they will switch to free software is not convincing because the hidden costs of such a switch may be too high; re-training, migration of proprietary format data, even porting of custom applications, these may all serve as huge disincentives to switching. Therefore, if "raided", it might be less costly for such an entity to go out and purchase a proprietary software license than switch to free software.
One more reason to keep "cost" out of the free software advocacy picture.
"klak" == Khuzaima A Lakdawala klak@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in writes:
klak> On Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:24:17 +0530, Raghavendra Bhat wrote: >> Mahesh posts : >> >> >> saying that software piracy is harming the free software >> movement >> more than it is harming the Giants themselves >> >> Illegally copied software cannot harm the Free Software >> movement because no revenue stream is hit.
klak> [snip]
klak> However, Mahesh's assumption that if such a locked-in entity klak> is "raided" for piracy, s/he/they will switch to free klak> software is not convincing because the hidden costs of such klak> a switch may be too high; re-training, migration of klak> proprietary format data, even porting of custom klak> applications, these may all serve as huge disincentives to klak> switching. Therefore, if "raided", it might be less costly klak> for such an entity to go out and purchase a proprietary klak> software license than switch to free software.
Not just that. If you (hypothetically) are raided and found with illegally copied software on your premises or your computer you are liable to be put into jail. Also as far as I know a miniscule percentage of people from companies that have been raided have actually been put in jail. What happens to the rest?
Well, MS and Adobe et al and their minions the BSA and NASSCOM step in and tell you, `So which do you prefer, going to jail or purchasing the software legally?'
Guess which option most companies take?
-- Raju
On Wed, 11 Sep 2002 16:28:05 +0530, Suraj Kumar suraj@symonds.net wrote:
wouldn't it be nice if the free software movement's efforts, goals, path finds a mention in the syllabus? :)
It already does in Kerala, thanks to the efforts of free software advocates in Thiruvananthapuram. This was noted some time back on the fsf-edu mailing list.
-
Ajith Kumar -
klak＠giasbm01.vsnl.net.in -
Mahesh T Pai -
Raghavendra Bhat -
Raju Mathur -
Suraj Kumar