Hi,
I will be writing petition to my government (Poland) to try to get them to ban Windows at schools. I believe it should be illegal to force children to use systems that are paid and use children’s data for AI and advertising.
Maybe you will do it as well? Let’s end this insane practice.
Makes no sense. If you ban windows it makes it harder to snipe a school shooter. /s
That actually makes a lot of sense, if you remove concepts such as “but Windows is already customary here” from your head. From scratch, you’d never want to do this.
If such a petition exists for the Netherlands or EU-wide, I’d sign and subscribe/support.
I wouldn’t worded as “ban windows” (monkey hand they give the ipads), but as implement Linux on the curriculum
I disagree. While it would be correct in some way, it would be a different political movement.
With “let’s introduce Linux”, it’s easy to stop mid-way and too early. For example, at 1 hour per week for 1 semester once during the whole school.
With “ban Windows [from school computers and as mandatory software]”, the political agenda is clear and the technical goal is clear. And the benefit is clear, too.
American mindset, and probably more broadly speaking, “ban thing” when thing isn’t widely understood (to be bad, or even in general) usually gets reactionary backlash because people don’t like when decisions are made for them or options (even those they’re unaware of) are either taken off the table or forced upon them. It’s teeing up Microsoft to spend a few bucks on a country song and cowboy character ad campaign to brush the issue off.
“New thing better” doesn’t always work well either because people need a reason to change when things seemingly already work as-is. Leading with outrage is unfortunately the better way to win over people who aren’t going to make an effort for themselves to investigate the problem. Tell them why they should be angry, why Microsoft is a threat to their children, etc and then, if you can convince them, is when you add “…and that’s why we should ban MS products.” Even that is still insufficient without a clear course of action. If the solution isn’t drop-in and painless, it’s going to disrupt the education of the generation when the change is made. The argument needs to be compelling enough to worth unsettling the status quo.
Last up, our education system is headed by a carny. Our administration swung the doors wide open for Mecha Hitler. Our president loves the uneducated and the uneducated clap like a pack of trained seals when they hear it. Even if Microsoft failed to backroom deal or blackmail their way into maintaining their stranglehold, you’d have to be on Elon levels of ketamine to believe the current admin would adopt open standards or invest the US equivalent of Venezuela’s Canaima Linux. We’d get gaudy gold TrumpTops preloaded Grok, nationalist propaganda and government spyware.
All that isn’t to piss on the parade. I’m for open standards, open operating systems and improving technical literacy while stripping away the invasions of privacy and stopping the dumbing down of our youth. I just think “ban thing” is only ever going to appeal to bandwagon radicals and the folks that already agree with you. If you’re not winning over the opposition (and more importantly the idiots who don’t even know they’re opposed until their indignant inner sleeper cell is activated by the word “ban”) you’re in for a losing fight.
Also ban Google. I think we should ban any schoolwork in required courses that requires students to agree to any third-party EULAs, such as Google account and Windows OS. For selective courses, considering the de facto status that many fields don’t have a mature enough open source software, banning is a bit exceeding proportionality IMHO. And offering Windows computer is probably ok as long as it’s not the default choice IMHO.
In my freshman year in the Electrical Engineering department, I took a required computer programming course, the course that I supposed it to be most aware of the existence of GNU/Linux, free format, and so on. However, it uses Google Sheets for homeworks and demands a Google Drive link of an exe for final team project and YouTube link for presentation. When they let students evaluate each other, I just got a bunch of exe, half of which doesn’t even open in Wine.
I also think they every school should offer NextCloud. Otherwise when team work occurs, Google Drive/Docs/Slides/Sheets is the de facto only choice.
BTW, I think LaTeX with git is more customizable and extensible and should be taught instead of teaching MS Office stuff. I actually take all my notes in LaTeX in a GitHub repo and do reproducible compilations.
Yeah Nextcloud for all learning entities would be huge. We actually have that in Germany for all universities, issue is the vast majority of people don’t even know it exists. And honestly I doubt any of them would even care to use it if they did.
BTW, I think LaTeX with git is more customizable and extensible and should be taught instead of teaching MS Office stuff.
Right. I am using it over 30 years now, for uni reports, phd rhesis, talks, letters, CVs, and never had any regret.
Keep in mind this is a very techy place. I doubt the LaTeX learning curve is worth it for the average Joe. It certainly shouldn’t be the only option for all document writing in school.
and Google (classroom, chromebooks etc). Treating children as products is abuse.
I don’t know how much IT experience you have, but at the end of the day when an organization pays for license, they’re paying for a fall-guy. They want to have someone to go to when there’s a problem with the software, because that’s cheaper than everyone needing to hire an expert at whatever issues pop up to be certain it’s solved.
They don’t want to have a bunch of PCs running whatever distro and domain software the last IT guy felt like going with. And when the next heartbleed/shell shock/spectre happens, they don’t want to have to figure out how to get the fix for the flavors of software they went with. They want to be able to say “hey company, this is what we pay you for” and the company to say “all good, we got you”.
Of course, it is possible to have both open software, and corporate support. This is why redhat exists. Just understand that your IT dept may have a preference based purely on how easy/hard it makes their job. When my PC has some bug or hw incompatibility, I’m willing to take the time to solve it. But someone who doesn’t have that time is going to prefer to just tell the company that made it to solve it.
I’m also on-board with no computers in schools, as someone else brought up. Phones should not be allowed in classrooms. Before we had LLMs running on calculators, my idea was to have a series of optional classes where you build your own calculator starting from logic gates, and that’s the only computer you’re allowed to use.
Which given the budgets that most schools have for equipment, software and staff is currently entirely reasonable.
It’s probably doable if a country pushed to create a defacto well documented distribution that’s paired with a MDM and online office suite. Basically replicate a locked down Chromebook environment, a lot of edu resources are online these days so most activity is through the browser.
EU Office appears to be the start down that road.
I mean, hell, Fedora SOAS is a thing.
Should people use OSS? Yes. Should it be illegal to not to? Hell no.
The advertising caveat there I can get behind, but that’s not about paid vs unpaid.
Policy and legality are two wildly different things.
I’d start by banning tablets, what the fuck is the point of “learning” IT stuff on a glorified 10 inch phone? Get them fucking laptops, even better with Linux, but I feel like even going BACK to Windows PCs would be an improvement at this point, sad.
Just go back to establishing a computer lab with shared resources. We don’t need a laptop in every kid’s backpack. Fewer screens and more books is the answer.
Jup, in an ideal world there would be one or more computer rooms with desktop PCs running whatever fucking immutable Linux distro.
However I’m also kind of torn about books since I DO think they are important, but in practice they were always just super outdated, super politically one-sided, unreasonably heavy and so on. Some kind of middle-ground would be great with a mix of some classes using books and paper and some classes using a cheap laptop with Linux on it. But whatever’s the case, tablets are absolute fucking bullshit.
Edit: hell or just no laptops but WAY more than one computer room so you could literally have some classes exclusively in “regular” rooms and some in computer rooms, idk. JUST NOT FUCKING TABLETS.
Agree, a 100% free distro should be the default in schools. And free programs. No proprietary app should exist on computers.
100% agree and support your determination. Unfortunately, however, it’s not gonna happen.
Currently, Microsoft (and other companies, but mainly Microsoft in Poland) offers schools and universities discounted Windows licenses, as well as very cheap or straight up free Microsoft 365 packages for all students. It comes with 24/7 technical support, which education facilities desperately need, since staff is tech illiterate and they can’t (or can, but won’t) afford IT departments.
Furthermore, Poland is an American puppet state, and won’t make any decision that substantially hampers American interests. As we’ve been shown many times over, even in just the last two years.
It’s so obvious that children and students, especially university students in tech fields, should work mostly with FOSS, unless a FOSS option is unavailable (very rare cases). Not only would they get more meaningful knowledge and skills, but the country would reduce its dependence on the US Empire as well. If only governments ever did the obvious good thing.
Even if this won’t push it throughout it stars people talking about it which is already good.
Also; used to work in a small polish school that run everything on Linux, only windows was a VM for some state software for documents.
I agree all public institutions should use foss. But what makes you think Poland is an american puppet state?
It’s not just Poland, but like half of the EU. Not due to faults of their own, for the most part, but as usual due to the US Empire forcing weaker countries to do its bidding, and meddling in their elections.
Poland’s current president is an obvious American asset. Whether he works or worked directly with the US or not - he has clearly demonstrated that his loyalties lie with Washington. Just like the previous president, and the one before him, and so on.
Most of the government remains very much pro-US, and pro-Israel as well, both of which are closely tied. Government officials, like the current prime minister, may publicly criticize the US, but then go back to discussing terms favourable for the US or sanctioning Chinese companies at Washington’s request behind closed doors.
The Polish government still continues to buy American-made military equipment.
Just last week prime minister Tusk publicly defended the terrorists who bombed the Nordstream pipeline, echoing both Trump’s and Biden’s rhetoric.
Last year he invited Netanyahu to Poland, completely disregarding the ICC warrant for his arrest. Just as the US was putting sanctions on the ICC for said warrant.
All major Polish companies are being purchased by American corporations, putting the entire Polish economy at serious risk in an event of a conflict between the EU and the US. The government introduced legislation to protect Polish companies from being acquired by foreign ones, but it conveniently ignores any transactions with American companies. In addition to all EU countries, which makes sense, and some more questionable ones such as Israel, Australia, or the UK.
The list goes on and on. A lot of what the current one, as well as previous governments do tends to benefit Washington disproportionately more than it does the EU or even Poland itself.
Not to mention it still appears so lost in its American delusions that it seriously thinks the US will do anything to aid Poland in case of a Russian attack.
Go for it, but please consider the platform you use for that carefully and get as many partners as possible beforehand - gives much bigger chances it reaches more people.
Pracowałem przy kampaniach społecznych, w razie czego służę doświadczeniem.
“banning” it will just make it “the cool forbidden thing”
some people will use windows because it’s cool and forbidden?
news flash: they’re already using windows
I agree with Stallman and others on this sort of thing, it should be illegal for any public institution to use proprietary, corporate software in any capacity.
Public institutions are supposed to serve and benefit the public good first and foremost. The idea that they can do that equally well or better by partnering with mega-corps who’s only fundamental drive is to generate as much profit as possible for their shareholders, is idiotic.
I think about this a lot. Living in probably the most digitalized western country, pretty much 100% of the software used is proprietary.
We are so deep in the pockets of Microsoft. It’s disgusting. The same goes for pretty much every medium/large company.
best thing to include a few screenshots of how easy linux mint is to use and navigate today.
You should be worried about some other things happening in Poland.
