It's only a matter of time. Since profits began rolling in at the dawn of the personal computer era, the big players have been tripping over each other to be the first to indoctrinate children into the Apple universe or the Windows universe, or the fill in the blank proprietary profit universe. Microsoft has always had an edge because kids love games but Apple has always been the school friendliest of the bunch. IBM and other leaders in the mainframe universe had their spotlight moment as thin client, "who cares what it looks like since it's just education anyway" providers.
Open source is quickly becoming the place to be in education. The community element promoting the advancement of open source through individual contributions is very similar to the advancement of sciences in general. However, I'd throw in a caveat to this overwhelmingly popular trend: cloud computing. Sure the cloud can be
open, or the cloud can be
closed. But if we're not careful, we meaning free software advocates along with our open source cousins, the ROI of a thin-client approach (brought to you by Carls Jr.) could hand the keys to our children's educational path generation back over to the IBMs once again
And the angels of God saw that the clouds of men were fair so they took them to be their clouds and produced glorious lock-in. The intoxicating allure of savings and profits over freedom and education is our challenge.
