Dan Kegel was roused into action on 09/12/02 12:48 and wrote: > Hi all, > not quite who to contact to get input from the Debian project > on this -- apologies if "debian-user" isn't the right place. > > I've put together a resource page re "Linux in Universities" > at http://www.kegel.com/linux/edu/ > My goal is to encourage universities to support Linux and > free software in general, and to provide information on > the current state of Linux support at universities. > > I would appreciate your feedback on the content. If there's anything > missing there from your point of view, please let me know, > and I'll see if I can fix it. >
Two things: (1) I don't know how or if this fits, but for what it is worth the department of economics here at Queen's runs on Debian servers, and has some Debian-based workstations available for use by grad students and faculty. However, the workstations used by undergrad students (and many/most grad students) are all Windows-based. The difficulty, I guess, is that to have the workstations of undergrads being linux-based would entail some additional amount of support that the department really can't provide, even though I am sure they would like to be able to. Just training students to mount and unmount a floppy for instance, as we use floppies for data storage quite a bit. Not a big task, but nevertheless, who is going to do it? QED Website: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/ and, particularly worth reading, http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/pub/computer/advice.htm (2) In the second paragraph under the heading "Linux as an aid in the fight against Software Piracy" we see the following line: "Universities could avoid that problem by requiring the use of free Open Source software..." To me, the notion of "requiring" the use of "free" software is practically a contradiction in terms, and most definitely a contradiction in philosophy. A better way to go about it would be requiring adherence to open standards as much as is practicable. Then students would be free to choose between open source or commercial software as they saw fit. -- David P. James 4th Year Economics Student Queen's University Kingston, Ontario http://members.rogers.com/dpjames/ The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. -Dr. Leonard McCoy, Star Trek IV -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
