What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?

[Alex Shnitman]

Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what
isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but
certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking
in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care.

The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has excellently
mentioned. "Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of
people all over the world." That kind of thing talks to kids. The second
thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get
help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an
expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really cool.

--Alex


2011/1/10 Etzion Bar-Noy <ezaton at tournament.org.il>

> These kids are used to these four freedoms, illegal, but works fir them.
>
> You may want to stress that their current (probable) actions are illegal,
> and that the existing model of selling software is one which changes into
> selling services. Talk about the ability to avoid vendor-lock, as part of it
> (give them an example of a bug in the software and what they can do with it
> - commercial software vs OSS software).
>
> These kinds of things, I think.
>
> Ez
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Uri Even-Chen <uri at speedy.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 08:35, Gabor Szabo <szabgab at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > hi,
>> >
>> > in the school of my son they are interested in getting some 1 hour long
>> > presentations from parents about various interesting subject.
>> >
>> > I could talk hours and days about Linux and Open Source in general
>> > but I wonder what do you think. What would be interesting to 13 year
>> > old kids?
>> >
>> > I am not sure "free speech" is interesting to them and unfortunately
>> > they are probably used to that every software is "free beer".
>> > Given the cheats and cracks.
>> >
>> > So what do you think?
>>
>> I would recommend speaking about the "free as in freedom" concept of
>> Linux and open source software - the 4 freedoms a software user should
>> have, and that copying a software and giving a copy to your friend,
>> modifying software etc. are basic freedoms anyone should have. Then
>> speak about how Linux evolved, history of Linux and the status of
>> Linux today.
>>
>> When I first started to learn programming, in 1983, I didn't know
>> nothing about free software, open source software etc. Only after
>> participating in open source conferences in 2001 and 2002 and reading
>> the book "free as in freedom" (about Richard Stallman) I realized the
>> "free as in freedom" concept and its advantages.  Even today I'm still
>> using non-free software such as Windows and Microsoft Office, but
>> today I understand more about it than 10 years ago.
>>
>> Uri Even-Chen
>> Mobile Phone: +972-50-9007559
>> E-mail: uri at speedy.net
>> Website: http://www.speedy.net/
>>
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>>
>
>
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