It's happening in my own back-yard...

Einstein once said "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

In my own back-yard, you have an overworked, under appreciated school network admin, getting ousted from his job for switching his school district to Linux. Besides the inevitable security bonus, lowering of costs and so on, obvious to anyone that's used Linux, the fact that Linux and education simply makes sense is being tossed out.

They aren't just tossing out the idea -- they're tossing out a human being who was attempting to take them to a higher level. I'd suspect (haven't seen everything behind the scenes here -- just been following from the news headlines, which can be tricky) -- I'd suspect that this administrators choice to switch to Linux made people (teachers) in the school district second-guess a decision.

Faced with ditching the warm, comfortable world of windows, someone commissioned a "survey" by an "outside technology firm" to get results to make a new decision -- hire someone who will do what I can only imagine is this school superintendents (and probably a lot of powerful teaching staff's) "no-brainer" choice; Switch to Mac or Windows Vista (I have no idea, but I've seen a lot of stupidity in my day about what Linux can do -- this is my speculation, I'll freely admit).

Why is Linux in education so valuable, important, and likely frightening the piss out of Microsoft and Apple? Because unlike proprietary offerings by these companies -- this operating system comes with the source code (the instructions behind how to make *everything* about it happen). With the source code, some industrious students -- 12-18 years of age, could possibly do more than run the stuff given them -- they might get involved with learning about how the computer operating system works, and not only improve Linux -- they would improve their own aptitude and lives.

What I'm saying is that this guy was making more than an obvious choice for saving the district money -- he was potentially opening up a whole new world of choices to some children that would never get exposed first-hand to Linux any other way.

And that, my friends, is a crying shame. Someone who's superintendent Michael Johnson's boss needs to commission a study into *his* aptitude -- it looks to me like possibly he's micro-managing a network admin -- one who was about to change the world in a town in Ohio. Maybe with some good results, a descision about the superintendents' job shed some light on the situation. In the mean time, I'd go along with Mr Einsteins' evaluation of the universe and stupidity.

I'm not totally sure about the universe either, but I do know that Linux is changing the world -- the only thing holding it back right now is stupidity.
-=FeriCyde=-