Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 13:54:25 -0600 (CST) From: Arturo Espinosa Aldama <arturo@estadistica.unam.mx> To: gnome-list@gnome.org, gnome-hackers@gnome.org Subject: Mexico's Educative System Goes for GNU/Linux + GNOME Greetings, beloved GNOME users and developers. I work as the proyect leader of the "Scholar Net", a program that aims to bring computers and the net to every elementary and mid-level school in Mexico. We expect to install from 20 to 35 thousand labs per year to a total of 140,000 centers in the next five years. Due to matters of cost, reliability and configurability, we plan to use GNU/Linux to replace the propietary server options and, now thanks to GNOME, the propietary desktop application options. We will develop GNOME to a point where we can get a useful and friendly enough desktop for the elementary and high school student. There are some aspects of GNOME, such as uniformity, spanish translation, bug fixing and application development which we will address to achieve this. At an average of 20 users per machine, and being all of them school children and teachers, GNU/Linux will become, at the long term, a major influence in Mexico. In the short term, GNOME will get an additional impulse from us and those who will contribute following our guidelines, and GNU/Linux will prove to be a real-world option for the end user. For further information and details on the Scholar Net and, specially for GNOME developers, on how to contribute to GNOME for us to arrive to deployment stage, please contact Arturo Espinosa <arturo@nuclecu.unam.mx>. Arturo Espinosa Aldama Proyect Leader Academic Services Coordination National Autonomous University of Mexico The text above may be copied in any way provided that it stays with this parragraph and unmodified.