Dear Sandra Pupatello

p2p news / p2pnet: I wrote the following letter to the Ontario Minister of Education, with a copy to my MPP for Ottawa South.

Dear Hon. Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Education, Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues

Copy to Hon. Dalton McGuinty, Premier, Minister of Research and Innovation, and member for my riding of Ottawa South.

I was just told a good-news story about a Toronto area high school computer science teacher who has been using the Linux operating system exclusively in his classroom for the past 5 years. Linux is a very well known collaboratively developed operating system that is not only free for teachers and students to use without additional payment, but also provides the source code so that students can dive deeply into how the software works. Linux provides the same level of access to prior knowledge that students need to learn as providing books in English class provides. Protecting the ability of people to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software is how Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is defined, with Linux being one example of FLOSS software.

The bad-news part of the story is that the school recently dismantled the already running Linux lab and told the teacher that he *must* only teach Microsoft software. Microsoft jealously guards the source code to their software, disallowing teachers and students from studying and improving the software


go here to read it all
http://p2pnet.net/story/9207