"Frank Shute"
By rolling over you are not `evaluating emerging technologies', you are not in a position to sensibly `advise[s] the educational IT industry' and you are not encouraging `a strong, competitive market of choices available to educational users'.
As a taxpayer, I want my money back.
Who's in charge at Becta? I want to write to them and flame them to a crisp.
Absolutely. I too was very disappointed to read the original comment from Malcolm. I think Becta needs to think long and hard about who it works for. The biggest constraint in my own school is money - lack of it is causing the students' education to suffer. I want to expand our network; the hardware is not the problem, it is all the software licenses the money-grabbing software houses want us to pay for. One software title can cost a school many hundreds of pounds. We just can't afford it. I would have hoped Becta would have been more positive about the open source movement. I am also surprised that RM et al haven't cottened on the fact that there is money to be made with open source software. If they could do with Linux what they have done with NT/Windows and their Connect networking they would be on to a winner. 'Free software-pay for support' would be a winning combination for many a school, mine included. All we are waiting for is this sort of scenario. As ICT Coordinator I am not confident enough to jump ship by myself. -- Phillip Deackes Using Storm Linux 2000