Hyperandy's Blog

I was reading a disappointing article today (Found Here: http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9682258&nav=menu1362_2) I use free software on a regular basis (many of you do and don’t realize it, I’m just one of the few who go the extra mile to insist on using it as my desktop as well). I do however think a few attitudes need to change.

This story is a great example of people belittling other people for there choice. Open Source is suppose to be all about choice. I feel that proprietary or other wise, you should always be able use whatever you want to use. If you choose to use Microsoft or Mac for various reasons, they should not have to be considered “good” reasons, just the fact that they do what you expect, should be good enough. Although, I do not like either of those operated systems for various reasons. I find it better to educate then condemn. Open Source is a valuable resource for the community.  But we should not gain success by acting like school yard bullies.

In that article, the persons/people that should be held accountable should be the school system. Verizon sounded ready to handle the problem and get her going. The school on the other hand needs to understand what type of world they are creating when they require proprietary software.  It is understandable that a school cannot teach every type of software out there and should not be expected to. But requiring a student to obtain an expensive peice of software to hand in reports in unacceptable. Stating it’s what businesses use is not a strong arguement. Think about when we went from MS Office 2003 to 2007, It is actually easier to go from MS Office 2003 to Open Office 3.0 because the UI changes very little. The argument goes a few different ways fom here, those of you active in Open Source have probably seen all the arguements.

The simple fact to remember, is to educate and get the value of Libre out there and not bad-mouth individuals for their use of proprietary software. Many of us do use Open Source software on a daily basis and never even notice. There are many alternatives we need to share with other people. Educate your friends, schools, and teachers, people should not be scared to ask us questions.