Good thoughts, Alex.
Yours is a much better response.
I regret that my own response was far less constructive.

Joe

On 12/10/08, Alex Dean <alex@crackpot.org> wrote:
>  On Dec 9, 2008, at 12:59 PM, Stephen P Rufle wrote:
> > http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_Stop_holding_our_kids_back
> >
> > Interesting article about how a teacher took away Linux disks from a kid
> > who was passing them out.

>  I think the poster took the wrong tone with his reply to that teacher.
> Things like "you've been trained well" are just calculated to insult.  If I
> were receiving a letter like that, I'd be done listening to this guy.  A
> rant feels good when you write it, but it doesn't convince anyone of
> anything.
>
>  The teacher he's addressing obviously not aware of open source and what it
> is, but that's a pretty common thing outside of technology communities.  If
> our attitude towards such people is going to be "You are obviously idiots!",
> I'm afraid we aren't going to advance the goals of Free Software very
> effectively.
>
>  It would have made a lot more sense to me to say "I can see why you'd be
> concerned about kids passing around copies of downloaded software, since
> copying things like Word is definitely illegal.  But there's a whole world
> of software that doesn't work that way, and Linux is from that world.  Let
> me show you how that can benefit your students..."
>
>  alex
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