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Open Source in Politics?

Posted by Cliff on Mon Feb 27, 2006 11:25 PM
from the a-gnu-platform dept.
GNU is Not Unix Government Politics
tetraminoe asks: "Spread Firefox has a story about a student at the University of Florida running for student government promising to promote open source on campus. His platform includes expanding F/OSS on campus, using open file formats, etc. Is this the first time 'free culture' has become an electoral issue? Has anyone else made open source an issue at their university?"
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  • It's a non-issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BadAnalogyGuy (945258) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Monday February 27 2006, @11:32PM (#14814240)
    The real issues are tuition, professor quality, library resources, and campus safety (wide net encompassing dorm safety to the campus rentacops). Open Source is just a buzzword that gets play with a very narrow circle of jerks that think they know what's best.

    Besides, Open Source ought to be about freedom, which would mean that it should be as far away from politics as possible to ensure that everyone has the Freedom to choose whatever software they liked. Now, if the "IT director" in the computer labs wants to screw everyone over by installing a minority OS on all the campus computer lab PCs, that's an IT decision. It ought not be handled at the student government level.

    • Re:It's a non-issue (Score:4, Insightful)

      by oirtemed (849229) on Tuesday February 28 2006, @12:14AM (#14814447)
      I beg to differ. Open source is a real issue. My school spends millions of dollars on MS contracts and has to upgrade their contracted Dell computers all the time just to keep pace. While Windows and other prop programs are needed, there is no reason that many of the workstations couldn't be switched over to linux. We have workstations dedicated solely to catalog lookups for the library. I would love to see the MS tax be eliminated there, all it needs is a web browser to run and MS support isn't needed on those machines. I would also sleep better at night knowing my personal information wasn't kept, most likely, on windows machines.

      I use openoffice and have never ONCE had a problem moving a document between here and the Word2000/MS machines at school. This tells me that there could be room for an alternative, especially when computer seats are so expensive. You could take dated hardware and convert them to word processing/web browsing stations for cheap.

      I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you, you are an obvious troll. Academic institutions are the places where freedom SHOULD be pushed. Open document standards should be the norm. This doesn't mean no MS machines at all. But there is room for OSS there. It's only a non-issue for those who can't wrap their heads around concepts like freedom, cost savings and portability. And freedom is a political issue. I suggest you take a class and learn what politics really are.

      • "Academic institutions are the places where freedom SHOULD be pushed."

        Your statement that "freedom should be pushed" pretty much captures the essense of "free" software's idealistic double-speak.
      • "...freedom SHOULD be pushed..."

        You sound like Stallman. Would society be freer if everyone were forced to remove their front doorlocks?

      • Re:It's a non-issue (Score:4, Insightful)

        by queenb**ch (446380) on Tuesday February 28 2006, @01:33AM (#14814723) Homepage Journal
        First off, your university doesn't spend squat on Microsoft products. Seriously, Microsoft gives them to us. I should know, since I'm in IT for a university.

        You know what a per seat license for Microsoft Office Pro costs at the educational rate? $6.00 and no, that's not a typo. It's 6 bucks, which is usually cheaper than my lunch on campus. Now that's if I want the disks. If I just want a license, it isn't even a whole $1. Retail for the same product is $450 per seat.

        You know how much the license is for Windows XP? Well, there is no "per seat" charge. We pay a few hundred bucks a year for the right to install it on as many University owned machines as we can. Retail for it is nearly $200 per seat.

        All of the other Microsoft products are priced similarly for education. The whole reason being that if they are cheap enough, we will use them and crank you out already assimilated. Welcome to the collective.

        If you want to whinge about Microsoft's TCO to a Universtiy, whinge where it will do some good. Complain about the additional costs of anti-virus "solution", the anti-spyware "solution", the patch management "solution", the anti-spam "solution" etc. Since *none* of these products come from Microsoft, we pay out the a$$ with your tuition dollars to cover them. That's what you ought to be mad about!

        Frankly, even at an initially higher purchase price, we'd be better off if everyone had a Mac. Still runs most of the proprietary software, runs Office for Mac, and doesn't need any of the above to remain in good working order 99+% of the time.

        2 cents,

        Queen B

      • At UMBC all the lab computers dual boot to their own Linux which is pretty much Fedora. Granted we are probably one of the most geeky universities in the country. Go Chess!
        • We're not talking about home PC's here, with people wanting to plug in their latest printer, scanner, webcam, or other USB gadget. In a university computer labe or library sitation the only hardware concern might be the network and graphics cards. But Realtek network cards/chips are pretty common and well supported under Linux, and graphics support under Linux/XFree86/Xorg is much better now than it used to be. An old generic card will do in most cases, for media labs (3D, etc) put in some nice nVidia cards

          • Universities don't tend to have bleeding edge workstations.

            My college at Cambridge just got some new desktops. They're dual-P4 systems with a gig of RAM each, and they're primarily used for word-processing and surfing the net. Guess how long they take to go from Windows' login screen to a usable desktop?

            FIVE GOD-DAMN MINUTES?!?!?!?!??!!

            *beats head against desk*

            This is while the Engineering department use Knoppix (well, MDP [cam.ac.uk]) workstations that take 5-10 seconds to log on to and are just as usable....

    • They can lobby the state government over tuition, which might do some good, although the higher-ups are already doing that. They have less influence then the faculty senate, so it's unlikely they can do anything about professor quality. Libraries and campus safety are probably reasonable things to focus on, but in most cases, there's only so much student government can do, for good or ill. At my school (we're talking 2000-2004) the Black Caucus alone was more politically powerful than the undergraduate sena
    • The real issues are tuition, professor quality, library resources, and campus safety (wide net encompassing dorm safety to the campus rentacops). Open Source is just a buzzword that gets play with a very narrow circle of jerks that think they know what's best.

      As one of the people who was popular enough to get elected to student government (first a student Senator, then Treasurer in charge of $millions), I can safely say that nobody outside of the CS department here gives a rat's ass about Open Source softwa

      • All good points, but most of your points can be addressed with F/OSS. I'm not claiming every problem/issue can be addressed with Free and Open Source software. But here are some suggestions.

        • Accessability. You know that there are many groups around the world that recycle old PC's, load them up them up with Linux and other F/OSS, and donate them to underpriviledged people. This could work in a university/college situation.
        • Diversity. Do non-MS users count as a group to encourage? Seriously. I tried to go
      • Well, please cast your vote for me. I'm running on the "My opponent is stupid and so are all of his supporters".

        Why yes, I am a Democrat. Why do you ask?
      • My school distributes a disk containing firefox and thunderbird (as well as some utilities most people never touch like putty) to all entering students. Next year that package will also include gaim so that people can interface with the jabber server they are pulling out of testing next quarter.

        The lab systems and such all run office and such but its not like they pay for it as stated by another poster. There are tons of sun thin clients displaying what looks like a windowmaker desktop running mozilla/f

  • Considering that a student has zero power to dictate the technologies on campus, I'd say that this is nothing but an attempt to get the votes of the Comp. Sci. students.

    Here's how the converstaion might go:

    Student: We should only use open tech.

    Administration: But M$ promised us ...

    Student: But, there tech. is broken; it doesn't work as advertised.

    Administration: Well, who are we going to believe. You a scruffy Arts student or the knowledgeble M$ salesman that we relate to?

    Student: But...

    Administration:
      • Two words: Internet Explorer.

        Has caused me more headaches than anything else. Relatives/friends insist on using it and expect me to clean up their machines. Security is nonexistant, websites are allowed to execute programs on your harddrive (WTF kind of website needs to do that?), and, to add insult to injury, it got bundled with Windows to gain its marketshare.

        Oh, and dont get me started on the proprietary extensions to HTML/CSS.
        argh! [wikipedia.org]


      • this is what pisses me off about slashdot as well. 90% of posters bitch about microsoft being shit and then when confronted about it they have no real reasons. I understand that there are some issues but you can't just jump on the bandwagon and bitch, especially when it's not something that's microsoft's fault.


        Microsoft's EULAs are Microsoft's fault and provide more than enough reasons for people to bitch about Microsoft.
      • 90% of posters bitch about microsoft being shit and then when confronted about it they have no real reasons.

        Guess again.

        Do you honestly contend that 90% of the people complaining about Microsoft have never personally been affected by the dismal quality of their products?

        -jcr
    • only petty thieves are stupid enough to pick up the phone and call their cohorts overseas to discuss their next nefarious scheme.

      In all fairness, that's not a historically accurate statement. Mafia cases have been, and continue to be, decided on wiretap evidence, despite the fact that Mafia Boss X replaced Mafia Boss X-1 after X-1 was sent away on wiretapping evidence.

      Sure, they're careful most of the time, but it only takes one slipup. One "oh sh1t, I don't have time to find my encryptor" or "I'm so angr

    • I disagree. Once they open up Gaim or Kopete (or, even easier, open up Firefox/Konqueror/some other *nix browser and load AIM [aim.com] or Meebo [meebo.com]), then they'll be chatting on their machines.

      Nothing will get in the way of high schoolers/ college students and their IM/MySpace/Facebook/whatever hit of the day. Unless you give them a command line, but if they find naim....

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