It comes as both a surprise and not a surprise that the New South Wales (NSW) state government chose a "safe bet" of Lenovo and Microsoft to supply many thousands of taxpayer-funded laptops to secondary school students. Was Linux ever on the short list?
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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lozz
3 years 7 weeks 1 day 4 hours ago
No surprise
The early government of NSW was run by a gang called the Rum Corps and things have all gone downhill in the centuries since.
You could buy the entire government for a sack full of beads and mirrors and Ballmer must get a big laugh out of doing "business" with them.
aboutblank
3 years 6 weeks 3 days 8 hours ago
People don't care for freedom
People don't care for freedom. Society is conditioned to give up their freedom for familiarity and convenience, and this particular government body is not different to the rest of society. This government made the familiar and convenient choice of Microsoft's non-free systems when it came to the decision of software systems. This government does not care for freedom.
It really doesn't matter that the software master in this case happens to be Microsoft; the master could be anybody else and the result will remain the same: users will give up their right to freedom. You will be doomed to lose your freedom when you don't value it. I will guarantee that the masters of non-free software will always have ways of making their software more attractive than free software. There is only one issue that these masters cannot compete with: it is the issue of freedom.