hi all (and Derek) Great idea :-) would be very interested in a practical Linux session, setting up servers, and moving towards configuring a standard Linux desktop. This model is used with great success in Portland, Oregon amoungst the school community obviously Becta cant side with a single distribution, but we do have a 'pragmatic' approach to Linux and Open Source and its potential if you are looking for a central UK venue (as an alternative), we could host some sort of practical workshop here in Coventry, but we would like to attend anywhere Malcolm On Wed, 05 Jul 2000, Derek Harding wrote:

With the summer break approaching, anyone think a day together somewhere would be useful? I think I can get us accomodation for the day at my school 'cos there'll only be me, the admin officer and, perhaps, one site-staff member in the place most of the holiday. I could set up an empty server and loads'a ports if anyone was after a practical "workshop" kind of thing. We have a reasonable hostelry (expensive food, though) an easy stroll away and I can use the minibus to meet trains at the local station, which is easily accessible from East Croydon (southern edge of London). We're in Warlingham, Surrey which is the north-east corner of the county. -- Best wishes, Derek Harding hardingd@warlingham.surrey.sch.uk derek@lagham.zetnet.co.uk --

Dr Malcolm Herbert Head of Technology R&D Becta, Science Park, Coventry CV4 7JJ Tel: 02476 847126 Fax: 02476 847120 -------------------------------------- "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer" Farmers Weekly, 1977

Derek Harding wrote:

With the summer break approaching, anyone think a day together somewhere would be useful?

<snip> Sounds excellent!! Count me in. -- Phillip Deackes Using Storm Linux 2000

If you do proceed with a Coventry meet (or somewhere close), then could you let me know and I can publicise it in one of the local user groups, if this is something that you would find useful. Sounds like a useful way to increase the size of the Lin-edu community :) Clive, Leicester Linux User Group (Which covers Leicestershire and some neighbouring counties, next meeting on the 13th - plug plug). On Thu, 06 Jul 2000, Malcolm Herbert wrote: <snip>

if you are looking for a central UK venue (as an alternative), we could host some sort of practical workshop here in Coventry, but we would like to attend anywhere

Malcolm

Miles Berry [mailto:mberry@cccs.oxon.sch.uk] wrote:

...

Could Malcolm let us know what's happening about the OSE conference in Coventry, scheduled for 25/7 - I haven't had any details through.

OSE conference?

There has been little sign of life on the OSE website for some time.

Perhaps we should all be writing to our MPs and MEPs as individuals promoting the virtues of Open Source in education? If anyone who is a skilled writer could put such a letter on the web then I would happily download, modify and send a copy, and give it a little publicity. I understand that supportive decisions at this kind of level have been made by other EEC countries (France?). On the subject of campaigns, there is an online petition regarding the plan for European adoption of the US-type software patent laws which would also have an effect on education: More details at: http://www.freepatents.org/ http://www.eurolinux.org/ with the online petition at http://petition.eurolinux.org Hope this isn't OT, but SuSE do sponsor the Eurolinux Alliance! Regards, Clive. On Fri, 07 Jul 2000, you wrote: <snip>

given Becta's independent role. Also concerns were expressed by leading education IT companies (you can guess) that it was not within Becta's remit to promote an Operating System over any other (sic).

"Frank Shute" wrote:

By rolling over you are not `evaluating emerging technologies', you are not in a position to sensibly `advise[s] the educational IT industry' and you are not encouraging `a strong, competitive market of choices available to educational users'.

As a taxpayer, I want my money back.

Who's in charge at Becta? I want to write to them and flame them to a crisp.

Absolutely. I too was very disappointed to read the original comment from Malcolm. I think Becta needs to think long and hard about who it works for. The biggest constraint in my own school is money - lack of it is causing the students' education to suffer. I want to expand our network; the hardware is not the problem, it is all the software licenses the money-grabbing software houses want us to pay for. One software title can cost a school many hundreds of pounds. We just can't afford it. I would have hoped Becta would have been more positive about the open source movement. I am also surprised that RM et al haven't cottened on the fact that there is money to be made with open source software. If they could do with Linux what they have done with NT/Windows and their Connect networking they would be on to a winner. 'Free software-pay for support' would be a winning combination for many a school, mine included. All we are waiting for is this sort of scenario. As ICT Coordinator I am not confident enough to jump ship by myself. -- Phillip Deackes Using Storm Linux 2000

On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 08:49:53PM +0100, Malcolm wrote:

i am interested in the comments to the list about Becta's stance re Open Source. While not defending it entirely i do sympathise with Senior (non-techie) Management opinions on Linux and Open Source.

I'm afraid Malcolm I'm not sympathetic at all. Becta's bowed down to pressure from commercial interests to protect the status quo ie to carry on giving those very same commercial interests large amounts of taxpayers money. It doesn't matter how you dress it up it's *wrong* that the debate should be stifled in such a fashion by people who have got a commercial interest in preserving the status quo.

This debate is not untypical in many public and private sector organisations.

There seems to have been little debate about it, the only debate I can discern is that there was a short 'phone call from some PHB of a well known software company to the head of Becta telling him not to `promote' open source software. I think you're right when you say that this sort of `debate' isn't uncommon though.

Some other facts about the Open Source debate in UK education: - that the main tier one suppliers are aware of Open Source / Linux, and some even might see a commercial model, the existing commercial model is extremely lucrative, the schools IT market is booming.

I'd guess these tier one suppliers have done their sums though: Margin on linux with licenses = 0 Margin on NT with licenses = lots Money for old rope, no wonder they're so keen to stifle the debate and they're yet to supply a single linux box.

- that the DfEE would like to commision 'public-source software' where any commisioned provider has to allow 'free' re-use and re-development of online content material. This of course is not populat amoungst the development community who again like the existing model very much.

There is nothing stopping the DfEE commisioning an open source project tomorrow. There would be plenty of people within the open source community who would be happy to be paid a sum towards developing open source software for the public good, say through the auspices of Suse for example. This wouldn't be popular amongst the commercial development community but it would be amongst those who are a bit more publicly spirited as indeed the open source community generally are and it certainly would be popular amongst taxpayers who are currently footing the bill for the very poor products supplied by very few companies. But I guess that such a thing is unlikely to happen since these companies already have a commercial relationship with the department and they now seem to be in a position to dictate department policy. Isn't it about time that the dog should wag the tail though, rather than vice versa?

- lobbying has already been done to Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, David Blunkett and Alex Allan, with some success. Open Source is on the DfEE/DTI agenda, but maybe not very high up it

Thats Tony `blind trust/Bernie Ecclestone' Blair we're talking about; maybe if we could offer him a million pound bung he might just push it onto the agenda ;-)

- One the UK Tucows mirrors is hosted by RM :-`, as is the UK mirror for Postgresql

For downloading software I generally use sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk hosted at Imperial courtesy of Sun Microsystems; doesn't mean that Sun should be given free reign to stitch up the market for IT in secondary schools either. -- Frank Shute *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance.demon.co.uk/

I'm with Frank on this one. It's not only software manufacturers who would be applying pressure on this one, I'd bet good money that RM would hate to see schools deploying Linux as well.... Especially as the savings made would mean that they could then afford to employ ICT techies who know, and understand Open Source and what it can do. After all, it would mean that we could buy whatever computer systems we like from whatever manufacturer that we like, put whatever software is necessary on those systems and completely develop and run our own networks. No licences and if we want good support go direct to SuSE, RedHat, IBM etc. Management software for the network courtesy of Webmin..... Where it all falls down is with the School's Inspectors who can't appreciate the benefits of the Internet over the use of CD ROM's (usually written in a proprietary format - what's wrong with good old HTML for this purpose!) and have little experience of the problems of network management. Alan Harris Network Manager Bryngwyn School alanh@bryngwyn.carmarthen.sch.uk Note: The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the author and do not reflect the general opinion of the school or it's personnel. Frank Shute wrote:

On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 08:49:53PM +0100, Malcolm wrote:

...

i am interested in the comments to the list about Becta's stance re Open Source. While not defending it entirely i do sympathise with Senior (non-techie) Management opinions on Linux and Open Source.

I'm afraid Malcolm I'm not sympathetic at all. Becta's bowed down to pressure from commercial interests to protect the status quo ie to carry on giving those very same commercial interests large amounts of taxpayers money.

It doesn't matter how you dress it up it's *wrong* that the debate should be stifled in such a fashion by people who have got a commercial interest in preserving the status quo.

...

This debate is not untypical in many public and private sector organisations.

There seems to have been little debate about it, the only debate I can discern is that there was a short 'phone call from some PHB of a well known software company to the head of Becta telling him not to `promote' open source software. I think you're right when you say that this sort of `debate' isn't uncommon though.

...

Some other facts about the Open Source debate in UK education: - that the main tier one suppliers are aware of Open Source / Linux, and some even might see a commercial model, the existing commercial model is extremely lucrative, the schools IT market is booming.

I'd guess these tier one suppliers have done their sums though:

Margin on linux with licenses = 0

Margin on NT with licenses = lots

Money for old rope, no wonder they're so keen to stifle the debate and they're yet to supply a single linux box.

...

- that the DfEE would like to commision 'public-source software' where any commisioned provider has to allow 'free' re-use and re-development of online content material. This of course is not populat amoungst the development community who again like the existing model very much.

There is nothing stopping the DfEE commisioning an open source project tomorrow. There would be plenty of people within the open source community who would be happy to be paid a sum towards developing open source software for the public good, say through the auspices of Suse for example.

This wouldn't be popular amongst the commercial development community but it would be amongst those who are a bit more publicly spirited as indeed the open source community generally are and it certainly would be popular amongst taxpayers who are currently footing the bill for the very poor products supplied by very few companies.

But I guess that such a thing is unlikely to happen since these companies already have a commercial relationship with the department and they now seem to be in a position to dictate department policy.

Isn't it about time that the dog should wag the tail though, rather than vice versa?

...

- lobbying has already been done to Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, David Blunkett and Alex Allan, with some success. Open Source is on the DfEE/DTI agenda, but maybe not very high up it

Thats Tony `blind trust/Bernie Ecclestone' Blair we're talking about; maybe if we could offer him a million pound bung he might just push it onto the agenda ;-)

...

- One the UK Tucows mirrors is hosted by RM :-`, as is the UK mirror for Postgresql

For downloading software I generally use sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk hosted at Imperial courtesy of Sun Microsystems; doesn't mean that Sun should be given free reign to stitch up the market for IT in secondary schools either.

--

Frank Shute

*-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance.demon.co.uk/

I'm with Frank on this one.

It's not only software manufacturers who would be applying pressure on

Would these be the likes some of the ones who exhibit at BETT and claim that writing software for Linux/*BSD is too difficult. (But then manage to produce something they *claim* will work with Win95(version 0) through to Windows 2000 and everything in between.)

After all, it would mean that we could buy whatever computer systems we like from whatever manufacturer that we like, put whatever software is necessary on those systems and completely develop and run our own networks. No licences and if we want good support go direct to SuSE,

To be honest if someone like TechSoft (who already have a sensible licencing policy) were to port their software to Linux and *SELL* it then we wouldn't be advese to *buying*. What is unsustainable in a school is per machine licencing.

Where it all falls down is with the School's Inspectors who can't appreciate the benefits of the Internet over the use of CD ROM's

IMHO the blame cannot be layed at the feet of Ofsted entirely. LEAs, local and central government, as well as those auditing school finances must take a fair part of the responsibility. However I can't really see a minister going on TV and saying "If schools wish to use expensive software then they must justify their choice". -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On 8/7/00 Phillip Deackes wrote: I am also surprised that RM et al haven't cottened on

the fact that there is money to be made with open source software. If they could do with Linux what they have done with NT/Windows and their Connect networking they would be on to a winner. 'Free software-pay for support' would be a winning combination for many a school, mine included. All we are waiting for is this sort of scenario. As ICT Coordinator I am not confident enough to jump ship by myself.

How I agree. I have recently been on RM courses and tried to push the idea of their developing a Connect-style topping for Linux. Surely they would be better off not having to pay Microsoft. Though I read recently that Microsoft is planning to switch to a processor based licensing system rather than user based. This would have to benefit schools. EB -- Elizabeth Bentley Head of Learning Resources Northbrook C of E School Taunton Road Lee London SE12 8PD Tel: (+44) 020 8852 3191 Fax: (+44) 020 8463 0201 email: info@northbrook.lewisham.sch.uk ------------------------------------------------------- School Librarians Network is a forum where UK school librarians (and MROs and support staff) can exchange news, views and ideas and give each other mutual support. To subscribe send a blank email to: -------------------------------------------------------