LUGOD Letter to Schools

(working title)

October 22, 2003

What follows is a generic version of a document created on behalf of the Linux Users' Group of Davis by its president and public relations officer Bill Kendrick (bill@newbreedsoftware.com) in October, 2003, with help from Richard Black, Nicole Carlson, Terrell Prude, Jonathan Stickel, Caleb Wagnon, Lee Welter, Steve Wright, and others from LUGOD, SVLUG and the K12 Open Source NOW mailing lists.

The letter, in its October 22, 2003 incarnation, was mailed to the principals (and sometimes other contacts) at over 30 K-12 level schools in the Davis Joint Unified School District (Davis, California), Woodland, Knights Landing and Yolo.

In most cases, enclosed with the letter was a 2-page brochure geared for schools that advertised the OpenOffice.org suite, and/or a folded pamphlet advertising Kendrick's Tux Paint program for young children.

Changelog:

October 22, 2003 – First release of the generic version

Copyright (c) 2003 Bill Kendrick

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt

To Do:

Fix issues with quotes and dashes appearing as (?) character under some fonts in OpenOffice.org 1.1.

Enjoy!

Sender

LUG or Organization

Address

City, State ZIP

Contact Name

School

Address

City, State ZIP

Date

Dear Name,

School administrators and faculty, as well as government officials, have the opportunity – and fiduciary responsibility – to consider alternative software in place of more expensive, less reliable, and more restrictive products. One such alternative is called 'Open Source' software.

Open Source provides to people an ability to share ideas and work together freely. It is much like the publication of research for free discussion, criticism, verification, and further extensions – a method that works well for physicists, doctors, and others involved in the advancement of science. This process is ideal for software advancement, too!

In fact, Open Source software is being embraced by schools, governments , corporations , and individuals all over the world. The Internet itself has always been built on such open software, but today more Open Source software is being created for non-expert users, including teachers and children.

What is known as the 'Open Source' software movement began over 20 years ago as a formalization the information-sharing tradition that computer programmers had been taking part in since the 1960s. Software that is released under an Open Source license is available freely to everyone. The human readable source code behind the program is freely available, permitting any interested user to fix bugs, add features, and even create completely new software based upon the existing code.

Along with cost (it's free), the Open Source model can have a number of other advantages over commercial software:

Extensibility
Authors of Open Source software are often amazed at the uses other find for their work. In their Mac OS X operating system, Apple replaced Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser with their own browser, based on an existing Open Source program. IBM took the Linux operating system and made it run in a wrist-watch.

Security
Because the source is available for peer review, bugs and errors are found more easily. Open Source software has a very good track record for having its problems repaired quickly. (Even if the original creator of the software is unable or uninterested in fixing it, others are free to do so – to the benefit of all of the users.)

Interoperability
Open Source software does not just mean programs for Linux! Countless Open Source programs are available for Windows, Mac, Unix, and other operating systems you've probably never heard of! They run on all sorts of hardware, from the ubiquitous Intel-compatible PCs, to hand-held PDAs, to multi-million dollar mainframes. And nobody likes software that won't work with other software; the Open Source movement is also about open file formats, that can be used anywhere without paying royalties or dealing with patents.

Control
Open Source, like Linux, can't be controlled by a single company. You are not at the mercy of a single vendor. There is no forced upgrading, and no pay-per-user licensing policy. Your school is freed from the obligation of tracking license certificates, and freed from the risk of audits for improperly licensed software. Open Source provides true free-market products – an alternative to monopoly.

My name is YOUR NAME, and I'm with the YOUR ORGANIZATION, a group dedicated to the promotion and support of 'Open Source' software. I would be happy to sit down with you and tell you more, if you are interested. Feel free to contact me via e-mail at: YOUR EMAIL; call me at home: (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ; or explore our website at ORGANIZATION-WEBSITE.

For now, I will leave you with a small list of some useful Open Source software - for Windows, Linux and Mac - that you can download today, and begin using on your computers tomorrow:

Celestia	http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

“Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.”

OpenOffice.org	http://www.openoffice.org/

“OpenOffice.org 1.1 gives you everything you'd expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyze data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software.”

Tux Paint	http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/

“Tux Paint is a free drawing program designed for young children (kids ages 3 and up). It has a simple, easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and a cartoon mascot who helps you along.”

Tux Typing	http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/

“Tux Typing is an educational typing tutor for children. It features several different types of game-play, at a variety of difficulty levels.”

Wikipedia	http://www.wikipedia.org/

“Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by the readers. It contains over 165,000 articles. Every day hundreds of contributors from around the world make thousands of edits and create lots of new articles. All of the site's content is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License, a form of 'Open Source' for texts.”

Thank you for your consideration, and enjoy

YOUR NAME

England, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, Brazil, Israel, and the state of Massachusetts, to name a few.

IBM, Oracle, HP, Sharp, DreamWorks, Intel, AMD, Apple, Amazon, and Google all use the Linux Operating System, for example.

2003-10-05T16:49:20