OpenSource

Has Linux crossed the chasm? I just had to post this cartoon ;-)

The Learning Circuits Blog asks, what should Instructor-Led Training (ILT) and Off-the-Shelf Content Vendors do today in the face of more demanding customers, lower margins and more competition?

I’m not sure what vendors should do, but as their business model has been declining, some of us have been promoting open source technologies and business models as well as do-it-ourselves informal learning approaches. During my exploration of shareable digital content, through a Creative Commons search, I came across this photo:

Here’s a post I made a couple of years ago on This New Business of Learning.

Novell is apparently becoming the leader in Linux installations for the education market:

Do these numbers make sense to you – $2,500 versus $100,000? This is the price difference felt between migrating over to Linux or instead, upgrading to the next version of Windows. What’s interesting is that I’m noticing that more often than not Novell is the company making this possible for schools.

I’ve recommended open source for our schools before, and even sent a letter to the Ministers of Finance and Education at the time, but to no avail. These cost savings are significant, but what is more important is that our education community can now own the primary means of production (operating system & applications) of knowledge artifacts, and not some multinational corporation. Students would be able to freely mirror their school computers and even play with new programs. Instead of just being consumers and users of software, students can become co-creators of software and the underlying knowledge.

With corporations like Novell behind Linux, it is difficult for education IT departments to continue to play the FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] card against open source. However, as Matt Asay reminds us, MS is not out of the game yet, “Importantly, the price comparison above may not be representative of reality, as Microsoft will likely discount to zero to keep a strong foothold in the Education market. ”

The bottom line though, is that open source in our government-funded institutions is one way to develop a sustainable Province, something that our Self-Sufficiency Task Force should know.

I’ve been an advocate of open source software for quite some time now. Part of the reason for this advocacy was my experience selling a proprietary learning management system. I saw how customers could become hand-cuffed to a technology once they had put a critical amount of data into the system and could no longer get it out. This wasn’t just our company but everyone in the business.

Matt Asay, in a case study from University of Nebraska (that’s an academic client folks), once again shows why open source is better for the customer in the long run:

You buy into a Microsoft (or Oracle, or ….) ecosystem, and they provide all the tools to get you in deeper, and to keep you there. There are good reasons for Microsoft to do this, reasons which have nothing to do with pernicious business practices. One reason is that Microsoft can better control the total user experience if it controls all the interlocking pieces, just as Apple does on its computers.But therein lies both the promise and peril of a vendor-dominated ecosystem. It’s hard to get out once you get in.

Here are some of my past discussions on open source for learning:

How open source has a much lower total cost of ownership.

A Canadian case study on open source in education.

Open source is recommended by impartial research organisations.

Dell has created a “sort-of” open user community site (Dell insists on owning all of the suggestions) to generate ideas on how to improve Dell products & services. The most popular suggestion on Dell Idea Storm is to provide computers with pre-installed Linux; followed by a suggestion to have Windows boxes with pre-installed OpenOffice.org alongside MS Office.

I think that this year may be the tipping point for desktop Linux with the Linspire and Ubuntu canonical partnership announced recently. The partnership may result in a more user-friendly Linux desktop for the mainstream.

If Dell follows the suggestions (382 comments on suggestion #1 so far) from the crowd, there may soon be an easy way for your average user to get on the open source cluetrain.

Update: Dell will soon be selling Linux-loaded desktop PC’s and notebooks

Michael Geist explains in plain English why there is no reason to rent (you’re not purchasing it anyway) Microsoft Vista:

Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users.

Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for “spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software.” The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated “high” or “severe,”even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

Given that most applications are available on the web (e.g. GoogleDocuments, Gliffy, Gmail …) and that Apple or Linux give you an excellent desktop, is there any reason to support this monopoly? Not for me.

You know the TV commercial with the hip Apple computer talking to the nerdy Windows PC? Well, it’s not just Macs that can work right out of the box. Today, Linux is simple and easy enough for the mainstream.

This morning I went downtown and bought a new hard drive for my +3 year old Dell Inspiron 8500, as the old one was shot. I inserted the backup installation CD (Win Professional SP 1) and went through the install process. It took about an hour to get the Windows desktop up and running. I then tried to connect to my broadband but could not, so I next installed the network drivers from the backup Dell utilities CD, but still was not able to connect.

During the installation process I used the option to partition the hard drive and only used 50 GB of the available 80 GB for Windows. The rest remained unformatted.

I turned off the computer and then booted from the CD (F12) and inserted an Ubuntu Linux CD that I had previously downloaded (for free of course). On boot-up from the CD I clicked on the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the Ubuntu desktop (very obvious to see). I followed the half dozen instructions and installed Ubuntu on the unformatted portion of the hard drive. This took about 10 minutes.

On re-booting, I selected the main Ubuntu option and was soon looking at the Ubuntu desktop. I did not change any settings and I did not install any other programs. I just opened the Firefox browser (a clearly marked icon) and was on the Web – immediately.

It’s a few hours later and my son is still playing with Windows and trying to connect to the Net.

Update: 24 hours later and we haven’t been able to get Windows connected to the Net. Linux is still working fine.

Update 2: Three days later and still cannot get Windows drivers working to connect to the Net. Linux working like a charm.

David Thornburg provides a very good explanation on how proprietary software is crippling our ability to use information and communications technologies effectively for education. My own experience with the DRM not letting me play a legally rented movie shows the absurdity of our present commercial situation. It’s why I’ve switched from Microsoft and Dell crippleware to the open source VLC Player.

Thornburg shows how proprietary software vendors are treating all of their customers like criminals and making, “NO, you cannot do what you want to do, even if it is legal”, as the default use mode:

How much of our energy is spent overcoming obstacles instead of enjoying or building creative works? There is little doubt that vendors of “protected” software must hate their customers. They want to look at our computers remotely, make surprise visits for license checks, and otherwise treat us as people who should be marched away in shackles. And, tragically, we buy into this nonsense by spending money with the very people who treat us like dirt.

Enter Linux and OSS. Imagine a software world where the answer is YES, not NO. Yes, you CAN give a copy of your presentation software to a child who wants to finish a project at home. Yes, you CAN play DVD’s from any region in the world on your computer. Yes, you CAN tweak a program to add a new feature, or even fix a bug yourself. Yes, you CAN use an operating system that takes less than a class period to boot up. Yes, you CAN have all your software updated automatically for free. Yes, you CAN make older computers behave like energetic teens by eliminating the software bloat associated with Windows. Yes, you CAN save enough money to bring even more technology into the hands of children. Yes, you CAN be part of a global community of educators who see technology as a tool of empowerment for ALL children, rich or poor.

Check out the many options at Make the Move or Software for Starving Students. I just installed Linux Ubuntu on one of our computers and it worked like a charm. There is a bit of a learning curve on the different model that Linux uses, such as the Package Manager, but if you have a teenager in the house it shouldn’t take long to figure it out ;-)