Sadly, I feel that this situation is partly our fault too. We, as the Linux community, might not be doing enough to spread the word. In a sense its not our job. As a USER group our aim is to support established and interested users (I'm sure there are many more Linux users out there in Malta who are not reading any of this). But if we have to take advocacy seriously, its a pretty tough job to take on purely as volunteers.
Think of what would happen if we found a sponsor and published a bunch of Edubuntu CDs with informative leaflets and distributed them in schools. Image the press release "Local NGO distributes a few million Euros worth of software to all secondry school students studying Computers", That would have an impact! (btw. the amount would be based on a study, wich i don't have at hand, that calculates the cost of recreating Debian from scratch) But really how many of us on this list would be willing to try and approach peppi to try and have a Xarabank on how the government's IT strategy vis-a-vis free software? I fell that us linux guys tend to be a bit snobbish sometimes. Probably if we want to change the tide there are two things we need to do, 1. Swell our numbers. 2. at the first opportunity issue a FORMAL reaction to something the government does. This second step is important to establish MLUG as an interested party. Philip On 11/03/07, James Attard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hey Jean, Coincidentally I was just writing an article on my website<http://www.jamesattard.com/2007/03/linux-education-programme.html>about the situation, but remarking a sign of hope. This is after the Linux Education Programme happening as of next week due to an agreement between IBM and MIIIT. So I believe things are getting better. James On 3/11/07, Jean Azzopardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am going to be as frank as I possibly can. > > The situation is scaring me. All over Europe, we can see governments > warming towards linux, educating students to use Linux, etc. > In Malta, on the other hand, all we hear about is Microsoft, and how the > > government is sucking up towards it. How offers are being made from > Microsoft towards our students, how Microsoft is "innovating", > anyway...microsoft, microsoft, microsoft. > > Linux never gets a say...it's like the Government has totally ignored > it. Why is this so? > _______________________________________________ > MLUG-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailserv.megabyte.net/mailman/listinfo/mlug-list > -- http://www.jamesattard.com _______________________________________________ MLUG-list mailing list [email protected] http://mailserv.megabyte.net/mailman/listinfo/mlug-list
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