[OLPC-Philippines] Organization Formation

[Bernie Innocenti]

James Shields wrote:
> I'm completely against the notion that the kids might want to open up their
> OS and take a peek inside.  Let's be honest with ourselves there.  I forget
> who mentioned this ... but, it's some kind of open source fanatic fantasy.

I was one of those kids who did.  Not all kids will be curious about
every subject, but those who are going to be curious about programming
computers would certainly find access to the source code useful.

Admittedly though, that's not the primary use case for free software
in education.  What's most important is that it is something you can
easily build new things with.  It gives every country a concrete
opportunity to become protagonists rather than just passive consumers.
We've seen this happening in Nepal and Uruguay.

That said, we shouldn't become open source zealots who would refuse a
very useful technology that is only available as proprietary software
if it would make a big difference in our ability to create or deliver
educational content.


> Our goal is content.  Delivered as close to free as possible.  At least,
> that's what I believe our goal should be.

Indeed.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://www.sugarlabs.org/