Being a supporter of viable alternatives to 'the single supplier path' the industry has got stuck in, and having been an active supporter linux based solutions for many years, I promise I wasn't looking for a political debate, and I'm not sure that I am glad I started this debate....but there are some interesting perspectives here in the emails!!!! I would argue that there are more viewpoints than one however....and whilst some of the collective points put forwards in these exchanges may be true, some are not...and stringing them all together into a story doesnt necessarily make the story true either! There is a bigger picture than both open source/free software, and schools, and whilst many things are positive in the programme,ther are of course some that are less so! - overall for UK Plc I see the programme objectives as positive, and the impact it is making on schools positive too!.... This I believe is the most important point however, there is £100m available now, and if there is an oportunity to use some of that for the benefit of Linux roll out in schools/education and to the benefit of schools using Linux then I would not like to see that opportunity missed. Better I feel to spend the energies on trying to find a positive way to use the monies than on the negative debating on why it shouldn't have been done in the first place, or done in a different way....we are where we are!!! My understanding is that it is not intended to open out applicability for col registration to all software as you suggest......however some opening out may still be beneficial to Linux solutions.....so a question "is all Linux applicable software, content and applications free?" Rgds Chris -----Original Message----- From: Mark Evans [mailto:mpe@st-peters-high.devon.sch.uk] Sent: 09 October 2003 13:56 To: ian Cc: chris_thing-e; suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] can we stay? On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 01:17:01PM +0100, ian wrote:
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!
Government, both central and local appears to be quite happy to throw money at various proprietary software companies. At the same time activly ignoring open source alternatives.
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
It is already confusing teachers to think that proprietary software is "free software".
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.
The daftest so far is Accelerated Learning, who's "Champs" product consists of the Windows version Apache hidden inside a zip file. But they "don't support" using any other software for the content also stuck in the zip file. When all of the web servers they run, including the Internet version of the same product are running on Linux...
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
Effectivly "E-Learning Credits" equate to "Ring Fenced Corporate Welfare for Proprietary Software Companies". So maybe they should be called "RFCWPSCs"
from a certain category of supplier. So much for free markets and local management.
"E-Government" and PFIs are two ways in which local management of schools has been weakened. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com