Free Software, Open Data give more opportunities to young Kosovars

[ Thanks to Marco
Fioretti for this link. ]

“Free Software, a great opportunity for young people

“A few weeks after SFK09 I asked Mike what promoting FLOSS in
Kosova is like and what had got him to start this adventure. He
answered: “My motivation for doing this was that discussion about
Open Source was completely missing in Kosova. Now I think that we
have made some progress. The one thing that makes me happy is that
we have reached the young people. I offered a free Linux course.
Many came, but only a few finished the course. Those in FLOSSK now
are the ones who had the most interest in learning.”

“For the record, I was really impressed by the commitment and
enthusiasm of the FLOSSK people. Teenagers as young as 15 years old
who already speak English quite well and are so interested in FLOSS
to work so hard as they did to make SFK09 work well aren’t common
at all!

“Mike also had to fight an obstacle that many Free Software
advocates seem to ignore: “Everything you need to learn Linux is
online. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection and…
the will to learn how to learn online!” Unfortunately, for most
students “all software was just free as in “gratis” anyway, so for
them the effort of learning Linux was just a (major) added cost”.
(Marco’s note: this is the same attitude of many students all over
Europe and North America, isn’t it?)”

Complete Story