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Windows7sin not forgiven

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The Microsoft paid

The Microsoft paid publishers are out in full force it appears.

Probably true, but what

Probably true, but what about the commentors that support each author's contention? I think some of the commentors sincerely believe the babble they espouse. "Stockholm syndrome", maybe?

Re: Windows7sins not forgiven

I went to the Windows7sins site. I'll only comment on the education "sin", because I'm qualified to do so.

The FSF is certainly not above criticism. I see nothing blatantly untrue in the education portion, but the subheading title is unnecessarily incendiary, and the "corrupt educational departments" reference is misleading:

windows7sins.org wrote:
1. Poisoning education: Today, most children whose education involves computers are being taught to use one company's product: Microsoft's. Microsoft spends large sums on lobbyists and marketing to corrupt educational departments. An education using the power of computers should be a means to freedom and empowerment, not an avenue for one corporation to instill its monopoly.

By "corrupt educational departments", I assume that this refers to (at least in the US) the various State Departments of Education, since education in the US is controlled largely at the State level.

Educational departments do not, in any way, have to be corrupt when encouraging or mandating the use of MSFT software products in schools. Education is supposed to (in part) prepare students for the world of work. These students will likely be using MSFT products in the workplace. This is all the justification the departments of education need. Teachers won't object because all the classroom workbooks, lesson plans, and ancillary support materials assume MSFT software. The cost issue doesn't matter as much as it used to because MSFT discounts heavily to schools. Finally, school district Information Service departments want to simplify and streamline their support to one OS and set of applications software, as their makes their support jobs easier.

Perhaps the FSF meant to refer to US state legislatures where MSFT does have lobbyists working against state legislation designed to encourage the use of OSS in schools. This certainly does occur, and does serve to stifle the use of OSS in schools.

All this said, I am a (just retired) public high school Computer Science teacher who spent the last seven years finding, learning, using, and teaching with open source software at the high school where I taught.

I love Linux (it's all that's installed on my four home machines) and a great deal of OSS (such as Firefox, OpenOffice.org, KMail, DigiKam, GIMP, Inkscape, Filezilla, Kate, Geany, Python, and Ruby, just a name a few). More than anything, I liked being able to give my students a CD with all these tools installed for use at home, without breaking any laws.

Given the amount of Microsoft's anti-linux FUD, I don't disagree with the FSF's publishing such articles--but the education portion appears to me to be oversimplified and misleading.

FSF

It's no wonder that any successful Open Source projects puts as much distance from these FSF kooks as they possible can.

Sending moronic letters to Fortune 500 companies telling them not to upgrade to Windows 7. WTF? Is there anyone on the planet (excluding the FSF nutjobs) that think those types of companies take IT (or BI) advice from random nutjobs? What Fortune 500 IT department isn't fully versed in the pros and cons of Linux and/or other Open Source software.

The sooner FSF focuses on making a better product, instead of raving like religious freaks, the sooner Linux will make actual inroads into market share. For now, any decent IT Dept is afraid to bring up Open Source solutions because any due diligence reveals exactly what type of collective nutjobs are pretending to run these projects.

If you can't compete on features, but only by bashing the competition, then you can't really compete. People (especially engineers) see thru the bullshit factor and make decisions on FACTS not marketing or FUD fiction.

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