On 6/5/09, Billy AM <[email protected]> wrote: > > To end my rant , I see almost no commitment for OSS in most educational > institutions here. Its all student led clubs and societities. If they want
Actually, things are not that bad (at least not in NUS). Quite a few research groups are using Linux exclusively as it's free and, more importantly, easily customized to the needs of the group. My research group is one of them. We exclusively use Fedora (and some Ubuntu and Debian where Fedora fails to work--and we lazy people refuse to troubleshoot too much). I remembered the Operating System (and IT Security) Lab exclusively use Linux (I think it's also Fedora). Most courses are already using some open source software already even if they are not advertising them, such example includes (of course) Eclipse, emacs/vi, OpenSSH, MySQL server, among others. Lastly, we probably shouldn't be too myopic to blame instructors and institution solely. I know Microsoft spend quite a lot of money by giving free (as in "free-of-charge") softwares, including Windows, Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc. (MS is not the only one; Sybase, Oracle, etc. are also giving away software in exchange for courses using them; and they're useful because they are software industry may use in the future). Institution must also take into account that interest in CS/IT is dwindling and using Linux right away at the beginning will scare away students. I do think that we should have more exposure to OSS, but I believe those days will come sooner rather than later. Cheers, -- Chris [email protected] +65 9755 3292 http://www.google.com/profiles/chrishenry.ni A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
