No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha..

Jerry Peters wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.networking David Brown wrote:
>> Unruh wrote:
<snip>
>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>
>> She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>> according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>> the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>> question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>> not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>> "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>> involved in teaching.
>
> Haven't been keeping up with modern "education" have you? They suspend
> & expel kids now for things like wearing a fireman's costume on
> Halloween with a toy plastic fire axe, or bringing a table knife to
> school to use with your lunch. Not to mention the "sexual harrassment"
> by 6 year olds. The modern educational establishment is run by people
> with zero common sense and a whole lot of political correctness.
>

I don't live in the USA (I live in Norway), so I can't claim to be an
expert on American education. That's part of why I won't pass judgement
on the teacher in this thread based on anything other than what I know
from her published emails.

What I do hear about regarding American schools is things like "zero
tolerance" (a.k.a. "zero thought", or, as you say, "zero common sense")
with young children being arrested or expelled for having a screwdriver
in their schoolbags, or swearing at a teacher. The other common topic I
hear about is when people insist on teaching "intelligent design"
(a.k.a. "creationism") in science classes. Perhaps I am being naive,
but I like to assume that these sorts of things are some of the worst
features of the USA education system, rather than giving an overall picture.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

Unruh wrote:
> David Brown writes:
>
>> Unruh wrote:
>>> David Brown writes:
>>>
>>>> That's pretty much what I said - her hysterical reaction and threatening
>>>> of legal action is totally inappropriate, and not just ignorance.
>>> She saw the student as handing out copyright protected software to
>>> students. As such, in her ignorance of licenses like the GPL, she saw this
>>> as an example of copyright violation and of encouragement of such. Given
>>> the mass hysteria of people like RIAA re copyright and given that obeying
>>> the law IS one of the lessons the school should be teaching, she saw the
>>> encouragement of such copyright violation as being an actionable offense,
>>> which it would have been, were it not for the license. That she was
>>> unfamiliar with say the GPL (Have you actually read the license?) IS
>>> ignorance. That she was upset with someone encouraging violation of the law
>>> to her pupils, as she saw it, was exactly what it should be.
>>>
>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>
>
>> She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>> according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>
> She also knew that software was copyright and that handing out free copies
> is illegal. That in this case it just so happened that the copyright
> license allowed such redistribution was as if the crack handed out happened
> to have a chemical formula which brought it outside the narcotics laws.
> She was ignorant, but that ignorance is not outrageous, nor malicious.
>

As I have said in each post, ignorance is not the problem (unless she
should have known better, based on her subjects).

>> the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>
> The kid was disrupting the class.

I saw no indication of that in the things I read - I have assumed that
this went on during a break or similar pause when kids have a chance to
chat together.

Clearly if a kid is disrupting a class, this should be dealt with
appropriately - and confiscating the materials involved until the end of
the school day may well have been appropriate.

>
>> question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>> not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>
> Sorry, I pointed out what her assumptions were. Under thos assumptions both
> actions were appropriate and sensible. Had she discovered that a third
> party was telling kids to distribute copies of Microsoft Word to everyone,
> her actions would have been appropriate in both cases.
>

No, sending a legal threat to a third party based on nothing more than a
confiscated CD would *not* have been appropriate. Contacting a relevant
authority (such as the school's IT folk, or headmaster) would have been
appropriate. *Talking* to the kid would have been appropriate. Reading
up a little on the subject would have been appropriate. Asking someone
else, such as the school's IT folk would have been appropriate (not that
school IT departments are famed for their knowledge of open source
software, but it would be a start).

>> "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>> involved in teaching.
>

Let me rephrase slightly:

Someone with a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no
business being.


> Nuts. Teachers are people trying to do a tough job with little knowledge
> (my father's first teaching job after he had gotten advanced placement in
> Science was history, because the school happened to need a history teacher
> and not a science teacher.) And like in war, the luxury of deliberation is
> often not there.
>

I fully understand that a teacher may need to make quick decisions
without enough time. In these circumstances, you make the decision to
get the maximal immediate effect with minimal consequences. The
appropriate action would be something like confiscating the disks and
asking the pupil to stay behind at the end of class to talk about it.
The email sent off to the distributor, on the other hand, was *not*
something that had to be done on the spur of the moment - there is no
excuse for not taking the time to deliberate on that email.

>
>
>> As I say, ignorance is understandable and excusable (assuming it is not
>> part of the subjects she teaches) - hysterical reaction in ignorance is
>> not excusable.
>
> Now, where exactly is the hysterical reaction? As I have pointed out to
> you, on the basis of her assumptions all of her actions are reasonable.
> That those assumptions happened to be wrong makes her guilty of ignorance,
> not of unreasonableness (or hysteria).
>
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

David Brown writes:

>Jerry Peters wrote:
>> In comp.os.linux.networking David Brown wrote:
>>> Unruh wrote:
><snip>
>>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>>
>>> She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>>> according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>>> the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>>> question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>>> not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>>> "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>>> involved in teaching.
>>
>> Haven't been keeping up with modern "education" have you? They suspend
>> & expel kids now for things like wearing a fireman's costume on
>> Halloween with a toy plastic fire axe, or bringing a table knife to
>> school to use with your lunch. Not to mention the "sexual harrassment"
>> by 6 year olds. The modern educational establishment is run by people
>> with zero common sense and a whole lot of political correctness.
>>

>I don't live in the USA (I live in Norway), so I can't claim to be an
>expert on American education. That's part of why I won't pass judgement
>on the teacher in this thread based on anything other than what I know
>from her published emails.

>What I do hear about regarding American schools is things like "zero
>tolerance" (a.k.a. "zero thought", or, as you say, "zero common sense")
>with young children being arrested or expelled for having a screwdriver
>in their schoolbags, or swearing at a teacher. The other common topic I
>hear about is when people insist on teaching "intelligent design"
>(a.k.a. "creationism") in science classes. Perhaps I am being naive,
>but I like to assume that these sorts of things are some of the worst
>features of the USA education system, rather than giving an overall picture.

Yes, they are examples of the worst, not the typical. They get trotted out
by people who do not want to think but rather parrot their prejudices. (I
guess if youtake them as examples of the US education system you would come
up with the conclusion that it was pretty poor as well.) As
in any country, there are a huge range of teachers and teacher competence.
Some are brilliant, some pretty poor-- but most try hard to do a good job
in pretty high stress circumstances.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

David Brown writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> David Brown writes:
>>
>>> Unruh wrote:
>>>> David Brown writes:
>>>>
>>>>> That's pretty much what I said - her hysterical reaction and threatening
>>>>> of legal action is totally inappropriate, and not just ignorance.
>>>> She saw the student as handing out copyright protected software to
>>>> students. As such, in her ignorance of licenses like the GPL, she saw this
>>>> as an example of copyright violation and of encouragement of such. Given
>>>> the mass hysteria of people like RIAA re copyright and given that obeying
>>>> the law IS one of the lessons the school should be teaching, she saw the
>>>> encouragement of such copyright violation as being an actionable offense,
>>>> which it would have been, were it not for the license. That she was
>>>> unfamiliar with say the GPL (Have you actually read the license?) IS
>>>> ignorance. That she was upset with someone encouraging violation of the law
>>>> to her pupils, as she saw it, was exactly what it should be.
>>>>
>>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>>
>>
>>> She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>>> according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>>
>> She also knew that software was copyright and that handing out free copies
>> is illegal. That in this case it just so happened that the copyright
>> license allowed such redistribution was as if the crack handed out happened
>> to have a chemical formula which brought it outside the narcotics laws.
>> She was ignorant, but that ignorance is not outrageous, nor malicious.
>>

>As I have said in each post, ignorance is not the problem (unless she
>should have known better, based on her subjects).


>>> the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>>
>> The kid was disrupting the class.

>I saw no indication of that in the things I read - I have assumed that
>this went on during a break or similar pause when kids have a chance to
>chat together.

You needed to read the followup post.


>Clearly if a kid is disrupting a class, this should be dealt with
>appropriately - and confiscating the materials involved until the end of
>the school day may well have been appropriate.

>>
>>> question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>>> not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>>
>> Sorry, I pointed out what her assumptions were. Under thos assumptions both
>> actions were appropriate and sensible. Had she discovered that a third
>> party was telling kids to distribute copies of Microsoft Word to everyone,
>> her actions would have been appropriate in both cases.
>>

>No, sending a legal threat to a third party based on nothing more than a
>confiscated CD would *not* have been appropriate. Contacting a relevant
>authority (such as the school's IT folk, or headmaster) would have been
>appropriate. *Talking* to the kid would have been appropriate. Reading

She DID talk the the kid. That was in the original post. It was through
talking to the kid that she discovered that he was encouraged to hand out
the disks by the third party she wrote to. Given her knowledge, she felt
that this was criminal activity-- encouraging youth to flout the copyright
law. Her knowledge was defective, and her anger at what she preceived as
counciling young people to break the law caused her to do insufficient
research.

If every time someone shot off their mouths in these newsgroups without
adequate knowledge, they were shot, we would have very very few posters
here. "He that is without sin...."

>up a little on the subject would have been appropriate. Asking someone
>else, such as the school's IT folk would have been appropriate (not that
>school IT departments are famed for their knowledge of open source
>software, but it would be a start).

Yes, more research would have been good. Especially since we know that her
assumptions were wrong. Mind you had she delayed acting when she found a
kid handing out crack-- because maybe it was OK under the special
circumstances-- we would all be screaming at the incompetence of the
teacher. Copyright violation is far less serious than drug law violation
(although I suspect I would get some argument on that from some people) so
more deliberation would not be remiss, but under the pressure of a teaching
day, I can understand it not happening. She now knows that there
is such a thing as a software license which permits redistribution,
something that would NOT have happened had she not written that letter. So
it was actually a good thing.

>>> "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>>> involved in teaching.
>>

>Let me rephrase slightly:

>Someone with a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no
>business being.


>> Nuts. Teachers are people trying to do a tough job with little knowledge
>> (my father's first teaching job after he had gotten advanced placement in
>> Science was history, because the school happened to need a history teacher
>> and not a science teacher.) And like in war, the luxury of deliberation is
>> often not there.
>>

>I fully understand that a teacher may need to make quick decisions
>without enough time. In these circumstances, you make the decision to
>get the maximal immediate effect with minimal consequences. The
>appropriate action would be something like confiscating the disks and
>asking the pupil to stay behind at the end of class to talk about it.
>The email sent off to the distributor, on the other hand, was *not*
>something that had to be done on the spur of the moment - there is no
>excuse for not taking the time to deliberate on that email.

>>
>>
>>> As I say, ignorance is understandable and excusable (assuming it is not
>>> part of the subjects she teaches) - hysterical reaction in ignorance is
>>> not excusable.
>>
>> Now, where exactly is the hysterical reaction? As I have pointed out to
>> you, on the basis of her assumptions all of her actions are reasonable.
>> That those assumptions happened to be wrong makes her guilty of ignorance,
>> not of unreasonableness (or hysteria).
>>
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

SODDI wrote:

>
>> <http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html>
>>
>
>How about an actual news story? Not a FOAF story from a blog.
>
Sorry, that is not a FOAF blog, that is *the* blog of the guy who had
the personal experience. Not hearsay.

--
Bart.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 18:28:20 UTC, Bart Lateur
wrote:

> SODDI wrote:
>
> >
> >> <http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html>
> >>
> >
> >How about an actual news story? Not a FOAF story from a blog.
> >
> Sorry, that is not a FOAF blog, that is *the* blog of the guy who had
> the personal experience. Not hearsay.

I posted a link to a news story...

--
Bob Eager
UNIX since v6..
http://tinyurl.com/2xqr6h
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

Unruh wrote:
> David Brown writes:
>
>> Jerry Peters wrote:
>>> In comp.os.linux.networking David Brown wrote:
>>>> Unruh wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>>>
>>>> She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>>>> according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>>>> the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>>>> question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>>>> not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>>>> "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>>>> involved in teaching.
>>> Haven't been keeping up with modern "education" have you? They suspend
>>> & expel kids now for things like wearing a fireman's costume on
>>> Halloween with a toy plastic fire axe, or bringing a table knife to
>>> school to use with your lunch. Not to mention the "sexual harrassment"
>>> by 6 year olds. The modern educational establishment is run by people
>>> with zero common sense and a whole lot of political correctness.
>>>
>
>> I don't live in the USA (I live in Norway), so I can't claim to be an
>> expert on American education. That's part of why I won't pass judgement
>> on the teacher in this thread based on anything other than what I know
>>from her published emails.
>
>> What I do hear about regarding American schools is things like "zero
>> tolerance" (a.k.a. "zero thought", or, as you say, "zero common sense")
>> with young children being arrested or expelled for having a screwdriver
>> in their schoolbags, or swearing at a teacher. The other common topic I
>> hear about is when people insist on teaching "intelligent design"
>> (a.k.a. "creationism") in science classes. Perhaps I am being naive,
>> but I like to assume that these sorts of things are some of the worst
>> features of the USA education system, rather than giving an overall picture.
>
> Yes, they are examples of the worst, not the typical. They get trotted out
> by people who do not want to think but rather parrot their prejudices. (I
> guess if youtake them as examples of the US education system you would come
> up with the conclusion that it was pretty poor as well.) As
> in any country, there are a huge range of teachers and teacher competence.
> Some are brilliant, some pretty poor-- but most try hard to do a good job
> in pretty high stress circumstances.

That is what I have always assumed, at least for the teachers
themselves. Like many workers in important but underpaid and
underappreciated jobs, most do their best because they believe in what
they are doing - often with far too little resources.

What stands out about the US system, at least as far as the news that
travels internationally, is almost always critical of people higher up
the system. We don't often hear about a teacher who insists on teaching
their own bizarre theories about the world - but we *do* hear about the
teachers who get in trouble for rejecting a state education board's
bizarre theories.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:01:59 GMT, Unruh wrote:
> Yes, more research would have been good. Especially since we know that
> her assumptions were wrong. Mind you had she delayed acting when she
> found a kid handing out crack-- because maybe it was OK under the
> special circumstances-- we would all be screaming at the incompetence
> of the teacher. Copyright violation is far less serious than drug law
> violation (although I suspect I would get some argument on that from
> some people) so more deliberation would not be remiss, but under the
> pressure of a teaching day, I can understand it not happening. She now
> knows that there is such a thing as a software license which permits
> redistribution, something that would NOT have happened had she not
> written that letter. So it was actually a good thing.

Very well said. Thank you

It is amusing in a very twisted way to see people write that the teacher
was too quick to "shoot then ask". Especially if these very same people
have failed to read the entire story through, to see that the main
problem (not knowing that there *IS* such a thing as free software) has
long been resolved by the original parties.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

David Brown writes:

> I don't live in the USA (I live in Norway), so I can't claim to be an
> expert on American education. That's part of why I won't pass judgement
> on the teacher in this thread based on anything other than what I know
> from her published emails.
>
> What I do hear about regarding American schools is things like "zero
> tolerance" (a.k.a. "zero thought", or, as you say, "zero common sense")
> with young children being arrested or expelled for having a screwdriver
> in their schoolbags, or swearing at a teacher. The other common topic I
> hear about is when people insist on teaching "intelligent design"
> (a.k.a. "creationism") in science classes. Perhaps I am being naive,
> but I like to assume that these sorts of things are some of the worst
> features of the USA education system, rather than giving an overall picture.

That's right. There isn't a USA education system as such. Education
is still almost entirely a local matter, with little standardization
from the states and almost none from the US federal government. So
some schools are very good and others horrible.

-- Patrick
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

In comp.os.linux.networking Unruh wrote:
> David Brown writes:
>
>>Unruh wrote:
>>> David Brown writes:
>>>
>>>> That's pretty much what I said - her hysterical reaction and threatening
>>>> of legal action is totally inappropriate, and not just ignorance.
>>>
>>> She saw the student as handing out copyright protected software to
>>> students. As such, in her ignorance of licenses like the GPL, she saw this
>>> as an example of copyright violation and of encouragement of such. Given
>>> the mass hysteria of people like RIAA re copyright and given that obeying
>>> the law IS one of the lessons the school should be teaching, she saw the
>>> encouragement of such copyright violation as being an actionable offense,
>>> which it would have been, were it not for the license. That she was
>>> unfamiliar with say the GPL (Have you actually read the license?) IS
>>> ignorance. That she was upset with someone encouraging violation of the law
>>> to her pupils, as she saw it, was exactly what it should be.
>>>
>>> Had she seen the student handing out free crack samples and being told that
>>> someone had encouraged him to do so, would she have been overreacting?
>>>
>
>>She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting
>>according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or
>
> She also knew that software was copyright and that handing out free copies
> is illegal. That in this case it just so happened that the copyright
> license allowed such redistribution was as if the crack handed out happened
> to have a chemical formula which brought it outside the narcotics laws.
> She was ignorant, but that ignorance is not outrageous, nor malicious.
>
>>the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in
>
> The kid was disrupting the class.
>
>>question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are
>>not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a
>
> Sorry, I pointed out what her assumptions were. Under thos assumptions both
> actions were appropriate and sensible. Had she discovered that a third
> party was telling kids to distribute copies of Microsoft Word to everyone,
> her actions would have been appropriate in both cases.
>
>>"shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being
>>involved in teaching.
>
> Nuts. Teachers are people trying to do a tough job with little knowledge
> (my father's first teaching job after he had gotten advanced placement in
> Science was history, because the school happened to need a history teacher
> and not a science teacher.) And like in war, the luxury of deliberation is
> often not there.
>
>
>
>>As I say, ignorance is understandable and excusable (assuming it is not
>>part of the subjects she teaches) - hysterical reaction in ignorance is
>>not excusable.
>
> Now, where exactly is the hysterical reaction? As I have pointed out to
> you, on the basis of her assumptions all of her actions are reasonable.
> That those assumptions happened to be wrong makes her guilty of ignorance,
> not of unreasonableness (or hysteria).
>
The hysterical reaction was threatening legal action in the email
*without* bothering to do the slightest bit of research. I mean, how
hard would it have been to google "linux" or "free software"?

Jerry
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

On 2009-01-02, Unruh wrote:

> Sorry, I pointed out what her assumptions were. Under thos assumptions both
> actions were appropriate and sensible. Had she discovered that a third
> party was telling kids to distribute copies of Microsoft Word to everyone,
> her actions would have been appropriate in both cases.

"When you make an assumption, you make an ASS out of U and ME."

Her actions were neither reasonable nor sensible. All she needed to do was
spend about five minutes on Google to find that were was no legal problem
with the kid handing out that software. Its fair enough to discipline the
kid for being distruptive, but to make silly assumptions and threats
regarding the legality of the software without taking the most basic steps
to check her "facts" was another matter entirely.

It's a good thing she's not working in a field like intelligence assessment,
where basing decisions on assumptions without any fact checking or evidence
can cause really serious damage.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

Matt Giwer wrote:

> Crack is criminal. Copyright violation is civil.

No, you should review the DMCA. It's evil, but it's real.
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha.. 

David Brown wrote:
> Matt Giwer wrote:
>> David Brown wrote:
....
>>> I agree on that - lets try to identify the problems, not just find
>>> someone to blame.
>> And if I am a teacher and from my experience with linux I describe
>> Windows as a rip-off, which it is, am I liable to civil suit from MS?
>> A teacher of a subject is presumed to know the subject. There is
>> are no excuses permitted when the teacher acts as an agent of to
>> school system which she did. If she wishes to publicly proclaim
>> ignorance of the subject she teaches fine with me. That is not in the
>> report.

> Was the teacher in question a computer science teacher, or some similar
> subject? From what I read, I have not noticed anything saying the
> subject taught by the teacher - ignorance of operating systems or free
> software is reasonable in a history teacher, but not in a computing
> teacher.

Have you forgotten the reaction of a teacher when another teacher is quoted?
They don't give slack. They don't get slack.

--
Seems to me becoming a POW is second only to getting killed on the
list of screw ups a military man can make.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4073
http://www.giwersworld.org/holo/nizgas3.html a4
 >> Stay informed about: No software is free and spreading that misconception is ha..