On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 12:47:20PM +0800, Pablo Manalastas wrote: > In the Computer Quiz Bee held at the University of Perpetual Help at > Las Pi~nas yesterday, the question "Who is the principal author of the > Linux operating system?" was asked. Of the 12 competing teams, only > four teams got the right answer, Linus Torvalds.
I wonder how Richard M. Stallman and the other "behind the scenes" authors of the GNU system that GNU/Linux builds on -- together with the Linux kernel that Linus Torvalds wrote, of course -- would feel about that. Having just written a three-page reaction paper on Renato Constantino's "Veneration Without Understanding", I sense a tad bit of similarity in the way Linus Torvalds has been getting attributed with so much more than he's done, which while not wrong per se, has cast a multitude of other equally qualified and equally significant developers into his shadow. > The most Linux-literate in our society should be our college students, > but they are not. Maybe this is the fault of our school system that > encourages the use the most commonly available and piratable OS: > Windows. Maybe it is our fault in PLUG. Maybe it is nobody's fault. But no matter whose fault it is or isn't, I believe your message is clear. Free software advocates like us here in PLUG can do something and should, especially in the academe where the training (or lack of it) of tomorrow's leaders and decision makers is done. In UP Manila I'm happy to note that more and more students are using F/OSS, at least as far as my "batchmates" (I'm an irregular, a shiftee, and am two batches ahead of those I'm hoping to graduate with in March) and their Special Problems (theses) are concerned. Although many still prefer to use Microsoft Windows for one reason or another, many are using Apache, PHP and MySQL, and those doing SMS-related development, Gnokii. Free Software and the GNU GPL are not greek to many CS majors in UP Manila anymore, and that's one step. UP Manila also recently did a major move to RedHat GNU/Linux from Microsoft Windows, and this has prompted more classes to use free alternatives to proprietary ones easily available as pirated copies from Greenhills et al. There's still much to be done, but at least we're not starting from scratch anymore. What other activities are being done as far as Free Software advocacy in scheels are concerned? Is the LiCUTS[1] (Linux for Colleges, Universities, Teachers, and Students) project/movement still alive? --> Jijo [1] http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-licuts -- Federico Sevilla III : http://jijo.free.net.ph : When we speak of free Network Administrator : The Leather Collection, Inc. : software we refer to GnuPG Key ID : 0x93B746BE : freedom, not price. -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
