On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 12:39, chris_thing-e wrote:
My focus was on 'an opportunity' and how to use the govt funding to further enable/support Linux roll out rather than on another point of complaint.....the issue of free and open source is of course a problem in this context......but any money a school could save from it's own budget by using elcs would be spare money for other things...like linux support!
If it's too hard then so be it!
I run a small business based on open source so I tend to be a bit less
willing to say so be it when the government funds my (Often foreign)
competitors to the tune of £100m using my taxes!
At the moment I don't see much scope for ELCs to help free software. If
there is an opportunity, believe me I'd be the first to exploit it. The
fact is that quite the reverse is true. Rumour has it that ELCs will be
opened up to buy *any* software. This simply means to the school MS
Office etc is free so there is not much incentive to try anything
different. Ok, we could register OO.o discs at say £500 each for ELCs
but who would bother when they can just download and cut a disc? If they
allowed support to be included it might be a different ball game. If not
the £100m that could have been spent on some Linux development or OO.o
content is entirely tied to licensed non-free software.
Not so much a point of complaint as the fact that people need to realise
that ELCs are a political sop to licensed software vendors who lobbied
massively because of the BBC initiative to spend £160m on on-line
resources. The government is taking school money and only giving it back
to them conditional on them spending it on something the government has
decided in its vast wisdom about ICT that schools need, and then only
from a certain category of supplier. So much for free markets and local
management.
Ok, you were looking for an angle to promote free software but its a bit
naive to think of schools "saving" from their own budgets by using ELCs.
Who does this money belong to? Its money that could be delegated direct
to schools so they could spend it on what they judged to be the highest
priority. The best way to support Linux roll outs is to let the end-user
see the true costs to them personally and the opportunity cost of having
to pay for the alternatives. The more that is hidden, the less likely
anyone will change.
--
ian