Helios Linux Attacked as Illegal Enterprise

I saw this article from Ken Starks, the maintainer of the Helios Linux distribution, about a letter he received. It is from a teacher who confiscated a number of live Linux CDROMs from a student and then accused the Helios maintainer of illegal activities. The teacher’s letter is astounding in its misunderstanding of the true nature of open source.

Setting aside the audacity and ignorance of the teacher for this article…. It goes to show that not everyone is as well-informed as many of us. The teacher in this case perhaps has never heard of Edubuntu, a distribution formed just for education – nor of OLPC, a nonprofit organization trying to get laptops (Linux laptops mind you) into the hands of all of the children of Africa and the third world.

We must be prepared for educating our supervisors, users, and others that rely on us as to why this or that open source project is worthwhile. In many cases, the fact that a product is open source (or not) is not a selling point: many folks will not use something because it is open source, but would rather pay for something which is better – or meets their needs – or is “what everyone uses.”

Examples of this abound: Linux v. Windows – Linux v. UNIX – Red Hat Enterprise v. CentOS – OpenOffice v. Microsoft Office – OpenSSH v. SSH – GNUCash v. Quicken – and more. Put aside the open source nature of the product and explain why it is better than the commercial product. Does it have more features? Does it work in more places? Is it easier to use? Does it cost less? (Okay, the last is not free of the open source movement – but freeware is there too…) Does it have a lighter footprint? Is it more widely used than the commercial product?

All of this must be explained to those who have no idea what open source is about – and perhaps have no technological background, much less an understanding of technical history.

Let’s get out there with our heads held high and educate the masses!

Update: this story has a happy ending. I’m also glad he didn’t name the teacher involved, and I can just imagine the vitriol that flew his way. The fact that he stood his ground speaks tremendously to his character. Kudos, Ken!

Laptop “Disaster Recovery”

Over at the Productivity501 blog, there is a good article about laptop contigency planning. It is a must read. Go read it!

I’d like to take this one step further. Here in Wisconsin, we are having one back-breaker of a snowstorm (one and a half days so far). Closings everywhere – and people are looking to use the corporate VPN to work from home.

Here are some things to do to prepare for this ahead of time:

• Make sure your certificate is current. You don’t want to find out your certificate is expired when you are desperately trying to get in.
• Have you tried the VPN already? Does it work? When you are buried in snow and can’t reach the help desk is not the time to find out your software doesn’t work.
• Try accessing everything you need to use. Is it responsive? Does it work? What are the quirks? If it’s slow, you can plan a backup strategy; if it’s not slow, you’ll know it’s not your machine when the VPN slows to a crawl.
• Try accessing the VPN from where you would be when the snow flies (or wherever you would be when disaster strikes). Some ISPs have restrictive policies that will prevent your laptop from working if you are visiting someone. Try it first and find out how to solve any problems ahead of time.
• Do you have your laptop with you? It won’t do you any good if you are caught without it when you need it. Do you have charging cords? Network cables? Wireless cards? Cellular phone modems? And test the connections!
• Create backup plans. For all your careful planning, your laptop and Internet connection have gone south. Now what? Most likely, you’ll need phone numbers of your boss and coworkers, pager numbers, and other such things.

With this wintery weather upon us, it will be very important to be ready if you have to do your admin work from home (or on the road).