plenty of other people in the education market (Viglen, RM (?) and others) would like an alternative. Perhaps one of them can back the development.

Clearly, even with an open source solution, there is plenty of scope for companies to make money on installation and support, but I can't imagine any of the big education ICT players funding developments that their rivals would be able to take advantage of. Perhaps there is more scope for an LEA or a consortium of LEAs to do so? The fact that the project would be an open source 'good cause' might reduce the overall amount of funding required. Certainly from my background in the php community, there seem to be plenty of 'good guys' in the UK who might be persuaded to help out. Cheers -- Phil Driscoll Dial Solutions +44 (0)113 294 5112 http://www.dialsolutions.com http://www.dtonline.org