Spanish Government Reconsiders School Laptop Project
A widespread project to equip Spanish primary students with laptops was under attack by the free software community for being an undercover operation from Microsoft to take over the educational system in the country. Now the government is considering a kind of dual booting system.
As we reported some days ago here, a widespread project to equip Spanish primary students with laptops was under attack by the free software community for being an undercover operation from Microsoft to take over the educational system in the country. In the ongoing flurry of official announcements since then, the government has back-pedaled several times, changing its original agenda to include regions that are already using free software, and then again to announce that the systems would be dual-booting devices.
Note that dual booting does not mean in this context what it means to the rest of the world, the idea being that recipients of the machines would choose the OS they want to use during the first boot and the non-selected OS would be erased from the device automatically. However, this would still mean paying Microsoft for licenses on all laptops, even though in many cases their software would be jettisoned. This would be against the law in Spain, because the government would be paying for products and services that it is not receiving. This was pointed out by HispaLinux, which led to more backpedaling. The latest announcement, coming from Leire Pajín, Secretary of Organization of the ruling socialist party, explicitly states that "we are going to make sure that those computers come with open source."
But it still seems that the powers that be in Spain haven't given this new focus much consideration: publishing school textbooks in Spain is a multimillion-euro business and many publishers have insisted that the digital books that go on to the laptops be DRM-protected. How exactly this would be technically and legally implemented on an all FLOSS-based device remains to be seen.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus
Issue 266/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux newsletters
News
-
Alpine Linux 3.17 Now Available to the General Public
The developers of Alpine Linux have officially announced the release of the latest version of the security-focused Linux distribution.
-
The New StarFighter Linux Laptop Now Available for Preorder
A new, completely customizable Linux laptop is now available to preorder from Star Labs.
-
Critical Escalation Vulnerability Found in the Linux Kernel
A new local privilege escalation vulnerability has been discovered in the Linux kernel and users are encouraged to upgrade/patch immediately.
-
AlmaLinux 8.7 Now Available
The developers of AlmaLinux have released the latest version of the OS, named Stone Smilodon, to the general public.
-
New Arch-Based Linux Distribution Aims to be Beginner-Friendly
CachyOS has been created to serve as a Linux distribution for everyone, even while being based on the more complex Arch Linux.
-
elementary OS 7 Getting Closer to Release
The team behind elementary OS has announced they are now focused on putting the finishing touches on the next major release of the Linux distribution.
-
Nitrux 2.5 Released with Kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26
Nitrux 2.5 has been officially released and is the first systemd-free distribution to include both kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26.
-
Zorin OS 16.02 Now Available
Zorin OS 16.2 has been officially released just seven months after the first point release of the user-friendly Linux operating system.
-
Linus Torvalds Considers Dropping i486 Support
In a message to the Linux kernel mailing list, creator Linus Torvalds indicates that it's time to jettison support for i486 machines in with Linux kernel.
-
Firefox 106 Lands with Back-Forward Swipe Gesture Support
The latest release of Firefox is out, and it adds two important new features to the open source browser.
Corruption = Microsoft = ROBERY
For me is a question of Europe independence, honesty, progress and evolution. Hope the Spain people, make a good example, of this, to all Europe and stop Microsoft invasion in schools... The future is the children, and is very important they begin to use Linux or other computer solutions besides Microsoft. So they can growth healthy and open minded adults, to a bigger universe of solutions.