On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 10:36:12PM -0000, Bruce Miller wrote:
<snip>
I have reservations too, about Sun Microsystems making a monoploly of my network and taking over where Microsoft left off either. I wouldn't want to invest curriculum development and good time into possibly buggy and soley office based moves forwards either.
I'm not too sure where you get the idea that Sun will monopolise your network. Gnome is GPL (but going to be used by Sun as their standard Solaris desktop), StarOffice is a Sun thing but freely available; OpenOffice on the other hand is GPL AFAIK. NFS was developed by Sun as was Java & they've got a pretty good track record of publishing the specs and allowing others to re-implement. Microsoft on the other hand don't publish specs & don't allow others to re-implement which is why you're now locked-in & your XP network will cost you an arm and a leg in licensing costs and maintenance. I quite understand your desire to go with the flow though, not upset the apple-cart etc. and spend the budget. I guess we'll just have to keep pressing until our Stalinist Leader T.B wheels out another 10 yr plan with instructions for schools to stop wasting money on proprietary software & use open source. The depressing probability is that they'll do it just to cut the schools budget & not make the money saved available to hire/train people to make best use of the software. Somebody should tell him that 10 yr plans never work. Although I guess he already knows that and really works to a 4 yr plan: re-election at all costs. -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is. -- Kierkegaard, 1813-1855.