Why getting Shared Media rolling is important

[Karlie Robinson]

Interesting article about how the free (pirated) copies of MS and 
MSOffice positively effect the bottom line. 
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-micropiracy9apr09,0,414067.story

-- 
Karlie Robinson
Owner, Webpath Technologies
On the Web at:
http://webpath.net
http://on-disk.com
http://portal.on-disk.com

[CyberSpy]

Karlie,
I totally agree. I find it interesting that both Hal Varian and Bill Gates
would both akin Microsoft to drugs and "addiction". With that said, I think
it further fuels the need for some sort of LiveCD. I keep a laptop in my car
with some DVD ISO's, as a pre-emtpive "Ambassador Survival Kit" of sorts
until we have one available and one of the first things I do when I show
someone the laptop (it seems no matter where you go, if you are using a
laptop someone will come over and want to check it out or talk) is change
the desktop to KDE and use a theme/style that is very familiar to them, and
usually I get a "I had no idea Linux was like that" or some other such
variant and then the influx of questions follows ("can you do this, that the
other thing"). But the point to that being, most people started off on
Windows, so they are "used" to it like that article says, since the "free
dose" is supplied with the computer when they purchase it. I really hope an
agreed upon LiveCD is available soon and glad I chose to swallow the right
colored pill.

--
Surreptitiously Yours,
CyberSpy
www.cyberspy.ws

[Karlie Robinson]

Good morning, CyberSpy. 

Well if it is an addiction, then maybe we should find a strategy that 
will begin the Linux addiction as early as possible?  (I feel dirty 
now.  :-) )

Not so long ago (5 years) I did inside sales for Iomega (zip 
drives,etc).  My account coverage area was Government and Education.  
And the experience jogs the idea I'm about to spew. 

What about going after school districts? 

"Wanna buy zip drives OEM with your Next PC purchase?"  Is a bit tougher 
to swallow than...
"Wanna know how your school district can save thousands of dollars a 
year on license fees?" 

This is a Pain/Solution marketing dream, and all we have to do is make 
the change from Windows to Fedora less expensive than continuing to buy 
seats.  Not unreasonable to use a 5 year time frame to show the Return 
on investment. 

Pain - K-12 School districts in New York State (as an example) are 
always fighting funding cuts.  They may do well for a few years, then 
something happens and they're wondering if they cut after school sports 
or stop providing buses to bring kids to school.  

Solution - It's just not necessary to buy per-seat license for your 
computers.  Its not necessary to buy Anti-virus and malware software to 
plug the holes in OS you paid so much money for.  Breath new life into 
those older machines you'll never be able to upgrade to Vista. 

Issues that would need to be addressed to take this main stream...
New computer systems themselves.  We all know you can't buy a PC/Laptop 
from a Major Manufacturer without an OS, let alone a Linux desktop 
distro installed.  It might take some Red Hat Muscle to convince a major 
(dell, gateway, even apple for their Intel etc) to go with us, or find 
the right white-box company to back. 

Training the teachers.  This may be accomplished on a district by 
district basis, or by teaching a mix of individuals by piggy-backing on 
a conference or event.  (booth at a convention?)

I do have more ideas, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on a k-12 
educational target. 

~Karlie

[Rahul Sundaram]

On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 08:04 -0400, Karlie Robinson wrote:

>  I do have more ideas, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on a
> k-12 
>  educational target. 
>  
>  ~Karlie 

Fortunately one already exists. 

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Education

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list

Rahul

[Nicu Buculei]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 08:04 -0400, Karlie Robinson wrote:
>  
> > I do have more ideas, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on a k-12 
> > educational target. 
>  
>  
>  Fortunately one already exists. 
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Education
>  
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list 
I do not care about k-12 and education subproject enough to join yet 
another mailing list, so i will throw here my two cents: it think it 
would be useful if someone would package GCompris (http://gcompris.net/) 
for Extras. I understand it is highly appreciated by kids and teachers.

-- 
nicu