[ubuntu-uk] Could Linux (and Ubuntu) do more to encourage students?

[Andrew Price]

On 02/02/07 18:21, Andy wrote:
> It appears Microsoft are trying to buy off the young coders. Why is
> Canonical, Red Hat and other Linux vendors not doing similar things?
> If this works we will have no programmers for Linux, and we have few
> enough Linux users as it is!

I know of at least one module in my computer science course that is
being taught specifically with Microsoft tools. "Building Reliable Web
Applications" I think it's called. Makes me wonder if MS are paying the
Comp Sci department to provide that module.

To be fair there are efforts in the other direction. Google Summer of
Code springs to mind, and I'm currently being funded by the UKFSN's new
student funding scheme to contribute to free software. I can't think of
any big student programming competitions related to open source though.
I blogged a few thoughts about marketing open source to students last
September*

Basically I highlighted how university computer societies could be used
as a "point of entry" for marketing open source in universities. In a
lot of cases the enthusiasm is already there, they just need to have
access to more resources. That's the way I see it, anyway.

* http://snipurl.com/194qg

-- 
Andy Price
IRC: welshbyte
http://andrewprice.me.uk