[OS:N:] My thoughts on the issues raised by JMD

Hello, 

I'd like to express some thought I have had while reading the recent
posts on this list, brought up by James Michael DuPont.

Mike, your aims to promote the use of open source programs and file
formats in education is one that is probably shared by most people on
this mailing list, as it is the main purpose of the list. However you
seem to have put yourself offside with a large number of people by the
comments you have made. I am not going to comment on your motives, but
on the methods you are using to try and get your point across.

Whilst reading the thread your constant insistance on the "rights" and
"freedoms" of students to use oss, that you claim are being taken away
by Red Hat, had me wanting to scream every time. They have no such
rights, if they did then you wouldn't have to be fighting for them.
The only right that have is to not use the educational materials in
question. Therefore your task is to try and gain these rights, if that
is what you think is best. Constantly falsely asserting them just gets
people annoyed and detracts from your message. DON'T DO IT!

Also don't forget, when you are attacking IP, that you can't get rid
of IP without getting rid of the GPL which I think you are probably
quite fond of. The GPL is based on the programmers copyrights to their
work in order to place it under that licence.

We are in a very exciting time technologically, there are some major
paradigm shifts happening at the moment, including the huge uptake of
the internet and the new paradigm of open source software
development. The latter is causing traditional buisness methods to be
turned on their heads, and buisnesses are finding new ways to make
revenue. Who would have predicted just 10 years ago that IBM, HP etc
would be inbracing a software development model where they give away
some or all of the software that they produce for free? 

The question of what buisnesses that depend soley on copyrighted
material are to do to make money is lagging behind software a
little. Software developers can make money by providing support, but
musicians and authors are seeing their works distributed on the net
for free and are rightly concerned. However even here things are
starting to change. The widely publicised attack on the Napster mp3
trading site by the band Metallica has recently taken a turn in that
Metallica have seen that file sharing is a fact of life now and
released live/rare mp3s on there site for fans that had bought the
latest album, giving them permission to download, burn to cd and share
with their friends.

In regards to technical/educational books, there has been a change
too. Recently oss advocate Bruce Perens has started a series of book,
(http://perens.com/Books/), that are first published as physical books
and then the source of the books is released to the community. This
has happened with other publishers as well, including New Riders and
O'Reilly, and they see that this leads to sales of the books even
though they are freely available on the internet.

Which brings me on to my point about the way you are approaching this
issue. Lobying for educational providers to only use open formats is
good, but maybe you should have suggested that there paradigm is wrong
instead. Like Metallica they are going to have a difficult time tring
to keep control of the distribution of the material that they provide
and that if they release there contents for free it would be
benifitial to themselves as well as the community in general. More
readily accessable material will lead to more people taking the exams,
which will in turn lead to more Red Hat skills in the job market and
this will lead to greater adoption of Red Hat Linux and therefore
profit.

Sorry that this post was so long.

Tom.
--
Thomas Mortimer-Jones.
-- 
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