Open Source in Education

Abstract

Today, schools across the country are making an effort to implement technology. This
effort is being hindered by issues of money, time, support and others. The author looks at
Open Source and how it effects these issues. The paper begins with a history of Open
Source and then looks into its implications for education.

Timothy D. Hart
University of Maine
Garthwait/EDT 616
May 7, 2003
 Open Source in Education 2

Introduction

This informal essay is designed to help educators better understand Open Source

software and what it means to schools using technology. While a complete

understanding of Open Source is beyond the scope of this paper, you will gain enough

knowledge to get started. This paper is meant to be a primer for educators who are

looking for better and more efficient ways to use technology in schools.

Open Source!? I don’t even know what Source is?

Before we look at Open Source, we need to look at what source actually is. Any

software that runs on a computer is created using a programming language. These

languages were created by humans as a way to tell the computer what to do. These

instructions to the computer are known as a program’s ‘source’. Before the computer can

run these instructions, it has to compile the source code. Compiling is the process of

turning a programming language into binary form (a string of 1s and 0s). Computers

only understand 1s and 0s because at their fundamental level, they are just electrical

switches that are either on (1) or off (0). This might seem like a restriction until you take

in to account that modern computers can make millions and even billions of these

manipulations in one second. Instead of communicating with the computer in binary, it is

many times easier to use a human created language and then translate (compile) it. C++,

Java, and Python are all examples of different programming languages . A great resource

for learning more about a program’s makeup is How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

by Allen Downey, Jeffery Elkner, and Chris Meyers. It is available online at

http://www.thinkpython.com. To give you an idea of what these languages look like,

let’s look at a little bit of actual code. It is tradition for every new programmer to start
 Open Source in Education 3

with the ‘Hello World’ program. It is a simple program that simply writes the phrase

“Hello World” to the screen. I have provided code for C++, Java, and Python to give you

a look at the different ways the same issue can be addressed.

Hello World Program Code Output

#include <iostream>

int main()
C++ programming language { Hello World
std::cout << “Hello World\n”;
return 0;
}

Hello World Program Code Output

class helloworld
{
public static void main(String args[ ])
Hello
Java programming language {
World
System.out.println("Hello World");
}
}

Hello World Program Code Output

Python programming print “Hello World”
Hello World
language

As you can see, this simple task of printing the words “Hello World” to the screen

can be done many different ways. There are many programming languages out there,

which all have their strengths, weaknesses, and purposes. However, they all are designed

to do one thing, take your directions and turn them into a form the computer understands.

To better appreciate how complicated and unreadable binary is, just look at a simple

binary-word translation. The phrase “Hello World,” in binary is

“01001000011001010110110001101100011011110010000001010111011011110111001

00110110001100100.” As you can see, this is not something that anyone can read, let

alone write anything as complicated as a program. Now that you have a better
 Open Source in Education 4

understanding of what a program’s source is, we can look to what the open part is all

about.

What is Open Source anyways?

Before we look into how Open Source can help educators, we first need to look at

what it is. In short, Open Source is a way to develop a project that allows anyone to look

at its progress and make changes. More importantly, for this essay, it is the ability to

look at a computer program’s source code, modify, and redistribute it. This is the basic

premise behind Open Source.

On the other side of the fence is closed-source development. This is when a

company creates a program, releases it, but keeps the source to themselves. For example,

you can use the Microsoft application Internet Explorer, but you cannot see the code that

makes it. Hopefully you are asking, “So, why do I need to see it?” or “Don’t they have

the right to keep their intellectual property to themselves?” Instead of answering those

questions directly, I will let you find them on your own when you discover a little more

about Open Source.

Welded Hood or Free Engine

Imagine you are in the market for a new car. You decide to visit the two

dealerships close by to decide which you will buy from. You walk onto the first lot to

see what they have to offer. The company puts a lot of effort in advertising and letting

everyone know that their cars are superior over all others. Being a smart consumer, you

decide to dig a little deeper to see what their cars are all about. You discover that they

sell their cars with the hood welded shut. They are the only ones who have access to how
 Open Source in Education 5

their cars work. Upon further investigation you also find that you wouldn’t even be

buying the car. You would instead be licensing the privilege to use the car. The

company has a detailed license process that restricts their cars use and if you break the

license, they will hit you with a severe lawsuit. Being a little disappointed from your

discoveries you decide to go to the other dealership in town hoping to find a better deal.

The first thing you notice at the second lot is that the variety of vehicles is

enormous, much more so than the first lot. You soon discover that the hoods are not

welded shut, giving you or anyone else freedom to change anything about it. Even better.

the engines this company has are free. You can replace your old car’s engine with a new

one at no cost. You also have the choice of buying one of their new cars for a fraction of

the price of the other dealer. Which one do you choose?

Any person would choose the second lot over the first for obvious reasons. This

story is meant to get you thinking about what you should expect when buying a product.

How many rights do you think you should have as a consumer? Now apply this story to

computer software. Does your decision change? Most likely, it won’t.

In the Open Source culture, software is seen as a tool rather than a way to make

money. While some Open Source projects turn a profit, the main driving force behind

the development is to create a really good program. This high priority on the software

and not the profit is enough to make some people jump on the bandwagon. However, it

might not be enough for some and there are even more compelling reasons to use Open

Source.

Probably the most popular reasons to use Open Source software is that you can

see the source code of the program you are using. You may (some restrictions may apply
 Open Source in Education 6

depending on what license it is under) freely change the code to your needs. Assuming

you have the skill to do so, you can customize the source code to do anything you want.

At first glance, this means very little to the non-programming populous. You might ask,

“I have no idea how to program, so what is the point?” I would go back to the car story

and retort, “Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut just because you don’t know

how to change the oil?” Just because one does not have the skills to program (which are

relatively easy to learn), does not mean that they should settle for a closed-source

program.

Where did this come from?

To better understand the Open Source culture and how and why it exists we need

to look at its past. Looking at its root will help you understand how it works and where

the movement is going. Since my space here is limited, I am able to only cover what I

view as the most important points in Open Sources history. If you would like to learn

more, there are many great books and websites, which can be found in the resource

section at the end of this essay.

In the 1960s, the personal computer was not even heard of and computers were

mainly used by the military and universities. It was unheard of for software to make

money. Instead, hardware is what actually made the money. There were many

manufacturers of computers and they were all different. They all had different hardware

architectures and had their own operating systems (the software that makes a computer

work). This meant that software written for a computer would only run on that computer.

The software would have to be rewritten to work on other platforms and when computers

we upgraded. This process wasted time and money on coding and training. These
 Open Source in Education 7

inefficiencies hindered technology from moving forward just because of the costs

associated. The answer to this problem came from, of all places, New Jersey.

In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson of AT&T Bell Labs had developed Unix, an

operating system designed to be able to run on different architectures. This meant that

software could be run on different computers without having to be rewritten. It also

saved time in training because it was basically the same OS running on a different

machine. Unix was originally developed just for use at AT&T, but soon other people

wanted to run it. Even though it was never meant to be a commercial product, AT&T

released Unix and the source code for a very small licensing fee. It was common in the

day to release source code for no other reason than to let people see what is going on with

the computer and to let them fix their own problems.

Time went by and Unix transformed into a powerful and flexible operating

system. Since you could basically buy the source code, many universities and

corporations made their own customized distributions of Unix, which all had different

tools and programs. These distributions were then licensed commercially as the personal

computer market started to rise. The availability of source code started to disappear as

well. Unix had transformed into what other commercially available projects were -

expensive and closed-source. This left a void for people who wanted an operating system

that was powerful, low-cost, and had the source code available. In steps the next major

player in the annals of open source, Richard M. Stallman.

In 1979, RMS (as he likes to be called) was working in the Artificial intelligence

Laboratory at MIT. This same year the lab received the first laser printer from Xerox.

While the printer was nice, it tended to jam. This required employee intervention, which
 Open Source in Education 8

was not that big of a problem except for the printer did not let the user know when it was

jammed. Seeing this as a problem, Richard Stallman thought he would go about fixing it

himself, as was custom in the AI lab. When he asked for the source code from Xerox his

request was denied. The story goes that RMS went to Xerox himself to get it and was

rudely sent away. This laid the foundation for Stallman’s belief that software should be

free. “Free as in freedom, not as in free beer,” Stallman once said regarding which

definition was meant when using the word free with software.

Eventually RMS resigned from MIT to spend his time creating free software. He

founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985 to do just that. Some of the most

popular products to come out of the FSF were the GNU (pronounced guh-noo, standing

for GNU’s Not Unix) suites of free products. This included the GNU C compiler and the

Emacs text editor, which are still widely used today. Even these products are

overshadowed by what is arguably Stallman’s greatest contribution to the computer

world, the GPL.

Free software in itself was a commendable act but it was not enforceable. With

the source code available there was not any way to prevent people from hording this free

code and taking advantage of the work of others. RMS solved this issue with the GNU

Public License or GPL. It created the legal backbone to free software that granted certain

freedoms. These are as follows:

1. The freedom to use the software and have access to the source code.

2. The freedom to modify the software.

3. The freedom to redistribute the software.

 Open Source in Education 9

4. The freedom to ensure that all modifications must be redistributable.

(Pavlicek, 2002)

This license created an avenue and protected people who wanted to create free software.

It also did not prevent people from making money off software either. Instead of taking

the idea of selling some secret intellectual property, the document aligns itself with

selling the convenience of providing the freely available code in and easily accessible

form. (Pavlicek, 2002, p. 20)

Even with all this free software, there was something missing: an operating

system. The FSF was working on making their own OS, but its development was slowed

by a number of reasons. One being, GNU was mainly used only in academic circles,

businesses ignored the FSF as a bunch of weird idealists. Another was that even though a

person could download the source for a GNU program and even change it, they had no

say in the development of the programs themselves. This was done by the small team at

the FSF. By 1990, a GNU OS seemed like it was never going to be released. The fill to

this void came from an unlikely young man in Finland.

Twenty-one year old Linus Torvalds, a student at Helsinki University, began a

project that would spread to become the poster child of Open Source. In 1991, Linus got

his first 386 computer (which would later become what we call a PC). He didn’t like

MS-DOS and the other Unix’s were all commercial based and beyond his means as a

student. He wanted a Unix-like operating system that was fun to work on. Since

programming was his forte, he began writing his own operating system for fun. This

emphasis on fun is key to understanding why people use and develop open source.
 Open Source in Education 10

Linus posted his work on Usenet groups and slowly other people started to notice.

They looked at the code and started suggesting changes and submitted patches. Linus

took these ideas and put them into his project and gave credit where it was due. This

process caught on like wildfire and before long there were people from all over the world

helping in the process. Later that year, Linus released version 0.1 of the Linux kernel. A

kernel is the foundation of an operating system that controls base functions that make the

computer work. Programs like the GNU C Compiler and Emacs are the programs which

round out the Linux OS.

Linux gained in popularity and by 1994, when version 1.0 was released, it had

over 1 million users world-wide. (Pavlicek, 2002, p. 20) Since Linus began this project

for fun and wanted others to use it he released it under the GPL. Linus did not sell his

creation or get paid directly for it by anyone (though he did get stock options from

companies who used his creation which eventually got him seven figures). Time went by

and Linux started to become a major player in the OS market. In 2001, in his

autobiography Just For Fun, Linus Torvalds mentions that there were hundreds of

thousands of developers and a user base of 25 million.

There are many other projects and people that contributed to make Open Source

what it is today. It is not my goal to write a complete history, but instead to give you

enough to understand why Open Source exists.

Free Software versus Open Source

Even though it sounds trivial, free software and Open Source software are not the

same thing. The FSF used (and still does) the word free, meaning freedom. Their main

focus was on the moral and ethical reasons behind creating “free” software. On the other
 Open Source in Education 11

side, Linux developers were only interested in the benefits of creating a free operating

system. Even though the goals were alike, the philosophies were different and a new

term was needed. The term Open Source was coined in 1998.

This also helped the Open Source community continue to grow. The “free” in

free software had become a problem. The media and others were always confusing the

free with the monetary definition. While lower cost is a byproduct of this type of

development it is not the main reason behind Open Source. The word “free” scared

executives who thought these people were crazy for giving their programs away. When

“Open Source” was used, it became easier to teach people why is exists and how it was

better than developing a closed-source product. According to Russell Pavlicek in

Embracing Insanity, there are four key benefits from the term Open Source.

1. Open Source emphasizes quality.

2. Open Source stresses flexibility.

3. Open Source decreases development time.

4. Closed Source is characterized ad non-competitive, rather than immoral.

Whew

This whirlwind tour of Open Source should give you a good start into

understanding its existence. If you would like to learn more, turn to the resources of this

paper for a list of the best print and web materials out there. Now that you have this base

knowledge, you should be able to apply its basic belief structure to education. As you

will see, there are many benefits of Open Source for education.
 Open Source in Education 12

So What Does This Mean For Educators?

Now that you have a little background in Open Source, you may be able to think

of ways it can be used in schools. There are many issues facing educators who want to

use technology and I feel that many of them can be addressed by using Open Source.

Just so it is clear, I am not suggesting that Open Source is a silver bullet or that it is right

to use in every situation. I am just pointing out that it should, at least, be a consideration

when making any decisions about technology that can effect schools or the community.

Let’s now look at some of these issues and explore the effects Open Source can have on

them.

Lack of Money

This is probably the biggest problem facing schools today. The current system for

funding schools is just not working well. The reliance on local taxes is always causing

huge budget cuts and technology is usually one of the first areas effected. A school can

save a huge amount of money by using Open Source.

The high cost of licensing software is the main issue at hand. One of the most

licensed products in schools is Microsoft’s Office Suite. The normal version goes for

$497 per license, as of May 2003. Teachers and students get a discount though, at $149

per license. At first look, this might seem like a deal. The only problem is that you still

have to pay that price for every computer you put it on. Well, technically, you could put

it on more than one computer, but that would be illegal. Let’s say a small K-5 school has

a total of 20 computers. To get Microsoft Office on them they would have to pay $2980

(not including taxes). To a small school this can be a heavy blow to the school budget,
 Open Source in Education 13

let alone any technology budget they may have. One also has to take into account the

price of upgrading when a new version comes out as well. Another issue is the license

itself, which if you read will tell you that you have almost no right using the software. It

makes very clear that you do not own the software but are buying the privilege to use it. I

could list many other products that charge exorbitant licensing fees, but I think you get

the idea. If schools were to consider Open Source they might think twice before

spending money on a closed-source solution.

There are many programs in the Open Source world that are designed to be office

applications. One of most popular and most powerful is OpenOffice. It is a full fledge

office suite from OpenOffice.org. It includes full-featured word processing, spreadsheet,

and presentation applications that can do the same thing that its Microsoft counterparts

can. It also has support for other file types, which means it works seamlessly with Word,

Excel and others. OpenOffice is certified Open Source and is free to download from

www.openoffice.org. It also works on all major platforms including Windows, Mac OS

X, and Linux. There are no licensing fees nor support fees. The only price you pay is for

the Internet connection to download it or you could even spend five dollars to have a CD-

ROM sent to you.

The Open Source world is full of these types of alternatives. Most of the big ones

do not even require you to be using Linux. I will discuss some these other Open Source

projects a little later on. It is clear with Open Source, schools can more wisely spend

their money while remaining current with technology. Whether rich or poor, every

school system should at least look into using Open Source, if only to spend taxpayer’s

money more responsibly.

 Open Source in Education 14

Lower Cost Equals Better Spent Money

As you have seen, Open Source can save schools thousands of dollars. Where

should this money go? If you are an educator, I am sure you could create a list of at least

a hundred places.

Staying with technology, the money could go to buy even more computers. This

would give schools a chance to bring the ratio of computer to student down. Then maybe

schools would be able to get away from having only one central lab. Technology should

be integrated into the curriculum and having to sign up for lab time makes this difficult.

Teachers should have the opportunity to have the tools they need at their fingertips.

The money could also be spent on staff development in using the technology.

Training is usually the first thing to go in a technology budget. It is my personal belief

that fifty percent of a technology budget should be spent on training. Most of the time

schools figure they should get as many computers and as much other “stuff” as possible.

To these schools, staff development is seen as an extra. A school can spend a million

dollars on the latest and greatest technology, but it is worth nothing if the teachers do not

know how to use it and more importantly how to integrate it into their curriculums.

While time is still an issue with training, money no longer has to be.

The money could also go into paying teachers more. It wouldn’t be much spread

across a whole school, but it is something. There are schools in the United States that are

turning their savings into teacher salaries. In the United States, the average new teacher

is receiving $27,989 (EAN, 2000). There are avenues to raise this level and Open Source

is one of them.
 Open Source in Education 15

The Digital Divide

The digital divide is a problem facing schools and society. For those without a

knowledge of this phenomenon, here is a great definition from whatis.com.

The term 'digital divide' describes the fact that the world can be divided

into people who do and people who don't have access to - and the

capability to use - modern information technology, such as the telephone,

television, or the Internet. The digital divide exists between those in cities

and those in rural areas. For example, a 1999 study showed that 86% of

Internet delivery was to the 20 largest cities. The digital divide also exists

between the educated and the uneducated, between economic classes, and,

globally, between the more and less industrially developed nations.

Educators need to be aware of this when they use technology. One of the major reasons

schools do not have equal access to technology is lack of funds. The lower cost of Open

Source does a lot to bridge this gap.

Schools that are on the poorer side can use Open Source to get access to

technologies that would be impossible using the usual routes. Buying computer parts,

putting them together, then installing Linux can cost as low as $200. A comparable

computer through a vendor would cost around $900. A school that might think it can’t

afford anything, when taught about Open Source, might reassess their budget. A school

that takes this approach can and should also be a center for getting this word out to the

community. Low-income families might realize that they can afford a computer when
 Open Source in Education 16

going this route and use the school as a support. Looking at these possibilities, Open

Source is most likely the best weapon we have against the digital divide.

Technology Support

One misconception about Open Source, it is that there is a lack of support for

products. This could not be further from the truth. Closed-source solutions usually have

a line of support that they either provide for free or more likely charge for. A lot of the

bigger Open Source projects also sell support, but the best support solution is usually the

Internet.

Since it is in Open Source’s nature to have every facet of the project shared,

support is also for free. This support could either come from the developers themselves

or just other people using the product. Chances are that if you have a problem, someone

else has had it before you and their solution is out there. If you are missing a file, a

simple Google search will most likely return its location. The Open Source community is

full of listservs, mailing lists, and web sites devoted to supporting users. Linus Torvalds,

when he was developing Linux, was often known to release a fix within hours when

made aware of a problem. The community has only gotten more supportive in the years

since then. Justlinux.com is a forum-based site designed to give beginners and advanced

users a place to give and get support. A post on one of the forums can return an answer

within minutes. If one does just a little bit of research and finds these places, they will

have many times more support than they would through a closed-source vendor.
 Open Source in Education 17

Open Source Technologies

It is clear that the Open Source community has a lot to offer educators. There are

thousands of projects that are currently being used in schools and many more that could

be. Below is an overview of just a few of the Open Source projects that educators may

be concerned with.

Linux

Linux is an obvious Open Source solution for educators. It is free and can be

easily installed on almost any computer. Red Hat Linux is the most popular distribution

(version) of Linux in the United States. It offers ease of set-up, use, and maintenance.

Another popular distribution is Yellow Dog Linux. It is based on Red Hat and made to

run on Apple computers. Both of these methods can be used to breathe new life into an

old computer. Linux has a reputation of running very well on older machines. This is

good news for schools since a lot of the time they have older equipment.

OpenOffice.org

As discussed earlier, OpenOffice is a great alternative to Microsoft Office. It runs

on all major platforms and is free monetarily and liberty wise. There are almost no

excuses for a school to spend money on MS Office when this alternative is available.
 Open Source in Education 18

There are also other Office solutions as well. Koffice and AbiWord are two that are also

popular among the Open Source community.

The Gimp

The Gimp is an image manipulation tool. It is an Open Source counterpart to

Adobe Photoshop. This popular tool has been rapidly gaining features and support in the

last year. It is as powerful as Photoshop and some say even more so. As of this writing

the current price for a single copy of Photoshop is $609. That is a lot to swallow for a

school system on a tight budget. There is no reason they have to if they knew about the

Gimp.

Darwin

In 1999, Apple computer was the first major computer manufacturer to build its

future around Open Source technologies. Darwin is the core Unix base of OS X. It is

Open Source and freely available. Apple realized the benefits of Open Source and now

have claim to the highest user base of any Unix based operating system.

Fink

Since Apple’s OS X is a Unix based operating, it makes running pure Unix

applications relatively pain free. Fink is a package management tool that allows a user to
 Open Source in Education 19

install these Open Source programs on a computer running OS X. With this tool schools

running OS X have access to thousands of Open Source programs such as OpenOffice

and the Gimp.

Apache

Apache is most widely known as an http server, which takes care of hosting web

sites. It was created by a few hobbyists who were not happy with the closed-source

solutions available. They started “patching” (hence the name) a program together to fill

their needs. Long story short, as of May 2003, Apache serves 63% of all Internet web

pages. (Netcraft Web Server Survey, 2003)

This is a very incomplete list as there are thousands of Open Source projects

available. To find an Open Source project that fits your needs, visit some of the sites

listed in the resource section of this paper.

Conclusion

By now you should be able to see the implications of using Open Source in

schools. It cannot only save money, but it also provide an avenue to the latest in

technology. The community behind Open Source is concerned with creating the best

products possible and they do it for fun. This method of development brings out the

importance of the program, rather than the money that can be made off of it.

One of the most common arguments against Open Source in education is “In the

real world my child is going to need to know Microsoft Word (insert any closed-source
 Open Source in Education 20

program here) so that is what they should be learning.” At first glance this seems like a

valid argument, but upon further though, it doesn’t align itself with good teaching

practices. It is far better to teach the concepts behind word processing than it is to teach a

particular program. Spell checking, cutting and pasting, margins, and tabs are all

concepts are implemented in all word processors. When a child is taught the concept

behind these, they will be able to adapt to new programs when they come along. For

example, learning to use Linux will only help a student get better at Windows and vice

versa.

Schools can benefit from Open Source in so many ways, it is hard to see why

more aren’t using it. The main reason behind this is lack of knowledge about Open

Sources. Most people do not even know what it is. I hope this paper has done its part to

introducing those people to Open Source and its possibilities.

 Open Source in Education 21

Resources

Works Cited

Columbus Networks Corporation. Starring Teacher Salaries in Each State. Retrieved

May, 01, 2003, from http://www.aft.org/press/2001/download/111-1.pdf.

Netcraft. May 2003 Web Server Survey. Retrieved May, 01, 2003, from
http://news.netcraft.com/.

Pavlicek, Russell C. Embracing Insanity. Indianapolis, IN: Sams, 2000.

TechTarget. Digital Divide definition. Retrieved May, 01, 2003, from

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci214062,00.html.

Torvalds, Linus., and David Diamond. Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental
Revolutionary. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Books on Open Source

DiBona, Chris., Sam Ockman and Mark Stone. Ed. Open Sources: Voices from the Open
Source Revolution. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly and Associates, Inc., 1999.

A collection of essays from some of the most important people in Open Source
today.

Negus, Christopher. Red Hat Linux 8 Bible. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc,
2002.

One of the many “Bible” books out there and it is very well written. It covers
everything you need to know to get up and running and then some. It starts off
 Open Source in Education 22

with how to install Linux and ends up showing how to set up DNS servers and
such.

Feller, Joseph., and Brian Fitzgerald. Understanding Open Source Software

Development. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2002.

A great book to start with. It explains the process and theory behind Open Source
in non-technical language. It gives a basic introduction and will give the reader
enough information get going in Open Source.

Pavlicek, Russell C. Embracing Insanity. Indianapolis, IN: Sams, 2000.

Another introductory book that is a little more on the technical side. It includes
explanations of licenses and different resources available.

Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly and
Associates, Inc., 2001.

Includes a number of essays by Eric Raymond. He is pretty much the philosopher

of the Open Source world. His paper “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was a
landmark in the world of Open Source.

Raymond, Eric S., ed. The New Hacker’s Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1998.

A dictionary of terms that is popular in the computer world.

 Open Source in Education 23

Taylor, Dave and Jerry Peek. Learning Unix for Mac OS X. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly
and Associates, Inc., 2002.

The purpose of this book is to teach people who are familiar with OS X about its
Unix base. It is a good introduction, and the information gained is transferable to
other Unix based OSs.

Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond. Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental
Revolutionary. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

The story of Linus Torvalds and his Linux kernel that is changing the way we
compute.

Williams, Sam. Free as in Freedom. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly and Associates, Inc., 2002.

The story of Richard Stallman and how he came to create the GPL and Free
Software Foundation.

Web Sites on Open Source (in no particular order)

Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org)

The home of the free software foundation.

The KDE Edutainment Project (http://edu.kde.org/)

The software that KDE is creating for education and descriptions of all of them.
 Open Source in Education 24

Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org/)

A non-profit corporation founded by Eric Raymond to promote Open Source

through OSI certification.

Linuxiso.org (http://www.linuxiso.org)

A site designed to bring the best Linux distributions in the world to one place. It
also contains a lot of information about what Linux is.

Linux.com (http://www.linux.org

A site aiming to teach the masses about Linux.

Freshmeat (http://www.freshmeat.net)

A site that hosts many Open Source projects for different platforms.

K – 12 Linux (http://www.k12linux.org/)

A collection of 3 sites that aim to help educators deploy Linux in schools.

Contains information of how to buy computers and how to install software.

Just Linux (http://www.justlinux.com/)

A site devoted to helping people figure out the problems. Great site for newbies.
 Open Source in Education 25

Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org)

The “water cooler of geek culture.” A site where news and posting about all
things geek can be found. It is a great place for understanding the Open Source
culture.

Schoolforge (http://schoolforge.net)

Schoolforge is a cause for getting open source into schools. People making sites
or software for education through open source means, usually join schoolforge to
show that they are serious about creating good software for the right reasons.

Open Source Schools (http://opensourceschools.org/)

A news and reference site for educators interested in Open Source in schools. A
subsite of schoolforge.

SEUL/EDU (http://www.seul.org/edu/)

Simple End User Linux/edu is a site dedicated to furthering the use of Linux in an
educational setting.

Sorceforge (http://sourceforge.net/)

The self-proclaimed worlds largest repository of Open Source code and

applications.
 Open Source in Education 26

Dr. Dobb’s Tech Net Cast (http://technetcast.ddj.com/)

A great site containing tons of net casts concerning technology. It is a great place
to learn about Open Source (and other technology topics) from the people who are
speaking out about it.

Netcraft (http://news.netcraft.com)

Netcraft is a company that collects web statistics and reports them to the world.