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

[Shlomi Fish]

On Monday 10 Jan 2011 08:35:36 Gabor Szabo 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?
> 

Now that I've read this, I think it is important to stress that using free and 
open-source software (FOSS) does not require a complete buyout into it - you 
can still use a lot of such cool programs on your existing system, be it 
Windows, Mac OS X or an X-windows-using Unix. Tell them that there's a lot of 
FOSS applications out there that the can download for free and use on their 
existing computer systems:

* https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ListOfOpenSourcePrograms

If you'll have the resources demonstrate such programs with a lot of "wow 
factor", that will be good.

Next I may tell about the freedoom and openness aspects of this programs: that 
anyone can download it and redistribute it legally, at his choice of payment 
or not, and that anyone can modify it, contribute to it or even fork it. While 
not all of them are aspiring to be programmers, tell them that they can always 
convince someone else who is compotent in software development to perform the 
desired modifications for them.

You can also tell about the Internet-based collaboration model, where 
everything is coordinated through the Internet, and everything is open, and 
people can ask questions on online forums, or report bugs on publicly 
accessible, web-based bug trackers. This may appeal to them as well.

For more information see:

* 
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software

* http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/foss-other-beasts/

* http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ListOfOpenSourcePrograms

* http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

* http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Welcome_to_FOSS_-_2009

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
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