The case of an American student given a detention for using the Firefox browser has been exposed as a hoax.

The student had claimed that a teacher had given him a two-hour detention after he used the popular open source browser on a school computer.

As 'proof' of the incident, the student submitted a scanned form in which a teacher described the student as "launching the browser while doing a school assignment".

When the teacher asked the student to use another, unspecified, web browser, he contended that Firefox was better and that he was still doing his work as assigned.

The incident was reported across the web, drawing the wrath of readers and bloggers who saw it as a thinly veiled attack on open source software and an example of ignorance about Firefox.

The outrage, however, was unfounded. Big Spring School District said that the incident was a hoax and that the form had been altered by the student after being scanned.

Big Spring High School principal John C. Scudder said that the student was given detention, but not for using the wrong browser

The student had been disciplined for not listening to the teacher and talking back. The assignment in question was to write a CV in Microsoft Word which did not involve the use of a web browser.