Sorry about the delay. Here is the first draft of the meeting to be marked-up and revised where necessary. Paul On March 12th 2001 at Westwood St. Thomas' School, Salisbury, there was a meeting which took place in order to establish an official structure for the OSIE (Open Source in Education) initiative. The meeting was extremely well represented by people from across the spectrum of educational establishments, LEAs and companies involved in the distribution and support of the Linux O/S, throughout the UK. The underlying purpose of the meeting was to determine a more specific structure for the organisation, its basic principles and objectives, and the long-term aims. All of these ideas were discussed through presentations and discussions from all parties present. The initial points of discussion were introduced jointly by Roger Whittaker (SuSE, UKUUG) and Michael Brown (Fen Systems). Roger's presentation showed the developments to-date toward the creation of OSIE and the need to unify the knowledge and experience that was clearly represented in the meeting. He also mentioned the involvement of companies like SuSE and Red Hat (Malcolm Herbert was unable to attend the meeting but has been instrumental in the ground swell of interest in OSIE). While these commercial organisations are involved integrally in OSIE, they stressed that it was purely in a supportive role. One example of this is the use of the SuSE for Schools news group which has acted as a point of contact for the people present. Roger was quick to emphasise that this in itself was an 'open' forum and would be happy to incorporate this into OSIE once established. Roger also gave a brief introduction to the practical considerations needed in order to make this organisation a credible and viable one. Once the skeleton had been sketched out, it was down to Michael Brown to put some flesh on the bones. Michael has also made some in-roads into the creation of an education specific set of resources and registered an official domain name for the organisation which was one topic for later debate. Michael's tie, like Roger's, is a commercial one, though again he stressed his desire to act as a support to the organisation and not a controlling one. Michael already has a comprehensive database of information and tutorials which he proposed would be the basis for the organisation's knowledge pool and since he already had this involvement, he would like to be involved in maintaining and up-dating this resource. One proposal in relation to this was the formation of three branches that all members (who would be non-paying) would be part of: editorial, technical, and contributors. It was also noted by several participants that this resource should be carefully managed and not become an incomprehensible archive f redundant data. It should be a professional one that would be an evolving one created by practitioners for practitioners. The professional focus was a point of discussion throughout the day. It was felt by many people present that this organisation would only work, and indeed had to through necessity, as a professional one. The long-term implications were flagged up by several other participants and some sub0discussions revolved around the potential for industry based support but more importantly, for peer acceptance. It was clear that many at the meeting were firm believers in the use and promotion of open source solutions, but others stressed the difficulties of more widespread acceptance which the meeting had been called to address. Roger addressed some of these concerns which underpinned the need of a professional structure and appearance to OSIE, and for the right mix and level of support. The great difficulty with OSIE in general will be the fact that the great majority of decision makers are not technically proficient and therefore many of the advantages of open source are lost on them. What they need to see is practical working examples in the "real world". Once this happens, then the solutions will sell themselves. In order to support this it was proposed that the participation and pool of knowledge be widened throughout the UK with subsequent meetings and discussions and the incorporation of geographical points of contact to display working solutions. OSIE would act as the vehicle for this but this is essential for people not familiar with the utility of open source to see examples. In relation to this last point, the later part of the morning was taken up with a demonstration by Christopher Dawkins (Felsted School) of his own system based on open source solutions. Networking problems within the host school meant that the full potential of Felsted was not was possible to demonstrate but a KDE desktop was displayed on the host school site which was running from one of his desktop machines 200 miles away. This in itself was powerful enough as an image of the possibilities. Christopher, through open source solutions, has managed to create a "total ICT solution" that the Dutch football team would be proud of, incorporating several platforms and applications, including BBCs running teletext within the school. He talked at length to the group in terms of the inclusive nature of this solution and also the enormous cost and learning benefits. One sub-plot of the meeting was the issue of dealing with the standard response of people in education who have not seen the benefits of open source encapsulated in the almost universal dictate "they don't use it in companies, therefore it is not useful". Michael had discussed this point earlier and Christopher had addressed it more fully in his practical displays. Most present felt that this was a difficult one to address and the key factor which determined it, and again reinforced the need for OSIE, was ignorance. As an educator myself, I believe that it is inherently wrong to train 'Microsoft proficient units' and not educate students into a deeper understanding of the machines that know form the backbone of the Information Age. The emphasis of the meeting was not a commercial one, but one designed to address the need for solutions that are challenging, education specific, affordable and reasonable. If students can learn the principles underlying using a word processor, spreadsheet etc., then they can cope with any application in the market place, MS or otherwise. Christopher also poignantly noted that if students struggle with something like Star Office, they are still learning and perhaps that is more important than making them "ready for industry". Perhaps a useful analogy to illustrate this would be if you told a history teacher that they had to teach a Stalinist interpretation of history because this is "what everyone else does", they would tell you what you could do in no uncertain terms. Why then must ICT teachers teach computers through the lens of Microsoft? This point was discussed in some depth and carried on through lunch and into the afternoon. The term "free" has some rather negative connotations in society at large. Many people that control the purse strings like the idea of saving money but "free" denotes "no good". It was felt by the group that the emphasis should rather be on "open", as in accessible for all. A more detailed written explanation in line with something like the GPL could accompany this for anyone wanting to dig deeper. Also, to reiterate, the strong emphasis must be on the UK schools specific nature of OSIE. Once the organisation becomes the defacto and dejure organisation that schools turn to for these solutions, then it will take on its own life and grow and expand. A more focused debate in the afternoon targeted some of the practical considerations of making the organisation move to the next phase. It was agreed that the help with infrastructure being offered by UKUUG, SuSE, Red Hat, Fen Systems and others would be a useful basis for development toward a wider incorporation of the aims and objectives put forward. In light of this, it was provisionally accepted to work on the title and destination of the next meeting. Members present from Leeds University suggested their venue as did the Welsh contingent. Though all agreed that this was positive and necessary, no formal decision has yet been made. The next few weeks will entail more detailed discussion, preliminary through the SuSE for Schools forum, to begin implementing the preliminary ideas and findings that came out of the meeting. The afternoon wrapped up with another practical demonstration of the available solutions that help to answer some of the criticisms that currently exist. Phil Jones was an independent developer that had created an instructive web site using a Linux server and Windows client in order to teach students more complex elements of web design including PHP and SQL. All of this was accomplished in a clear and understandable way which had some real potential in schools. Though he used a commercial application to integrate the machines and not something like VNC, he was able to show a working version of GIMP running in native Linux on a Windows desktop, including the KDE task bar sitting on top of the Windows one. It was felt that these solutions are central to the success and up-take of OSIE and should be incorporated into the official site. They can also be developed alongside the structural and administrative considerations such as localised technical support and on-line learning resources in order to increase the user base of OSIE solutions. The first official meeting of OSIE was therefore well represented, informative, and generally felt to be successful for all participating with a great deal of future potential. I strongly believe that this is the beginning of a necessary and timely intervention into the growing needs of education not currently served by the "closed source" alternative. Members present Company Roger Whittaker SuSE Michael Brown Fen Systems Paul Taylor Westwood St. Thomas School Steve Berry Westwood St. Thomas School Michael Robinson Westwood St. Thomas School Matthew Summers LJ Group Colin Davies Meadow School Gavin Lee Innovation-X Rob Maltey Rosemary Musker High School Mark Frans St Peter's High School Philip Hands Alcove UK (Debian) Adrian Carey Dialnet Bob Gautier Aleb Ltd Carol Tough Ysyol y Gwendraeth Miles Berry St. Ives School Steve Rochford College of NW London Christopher Dawkins Felsted School Richard Smedley Its Linux ?????? (illegible hand writing, sorry) Learning Lab Giles Nunn Carms LEA Alan Harris Bryngwyn School Kevin Taylor Northants LUG Andrew Ray Computer Park Limited Ian Lynch IRL Computer Systems Ltd. George Coxhead Leeds Metropolitan University Tony Moan Univentures Phil Jones??? Apologies for my bad interpretation of your hand writing if I have made a mistake. I also did not have the name of the person that did the last presentation but I know his name was Phil.