Math hasn't changed since Isaac Newton

Sun's McNealy Leads Non-Profit Open-Source Drive - Forbes.com: "Sun's McNealy Leads Non-Profit Open-Source Drive"

Greg Levine, 08.04.06, 4:42 PM ET

'Math hasn't changed since Isaac Newton,' declares Scott McNealy. So why, he asks, is California paying some $400 million annually to 'update' grade-school textbooks?

That's just one of the practices questioned by the Sun Microsystems chairman. And one of the problems he believes can be solved.

McNealy, who handed Sun's chief executive reins to Jonathan Schwartz earlier this year, is now applying his know-how to steer the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC). That's a non-profit entity, spun off from Sun in January, which aims to make open-source software available to the world's kids for free--just as Sun sought to distribute its Solaris operating system and other wares to businesses, for profit. "

Citing instances of California schools "afraid to tell you their test scores," the Sun co-founder declared that the 2001 No Child Left Behind act championed by the George W. Bush administration should really be recast as "no child held back" by physical and economic data constraints.

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