1. Support. The support model for Open Source & Linux is the real 'leap-of-faith' the majority of IT managers/workers in the UK. They do not see it as the easiest option and it scares them. The main benefit of support contracts/ third party organisation running your systems is that you have 'someone else' down the line to pass the blame on to, especially if you've
N.B. this is what most of the "support" model for Windows appears to be about. The ability to buck pass. When it comes to actually getting support in the sense of actually *fixing* a problem then this model fails badly. (Often expensivly too.) Being able to blame others might work in the commercial world it dosn't help much when kids (and teachers) are screaming for something to be made to work.
paid lots of money for it. If an Open Source solution fails (which is less likely) you've got to stand up and be counted. The key skills are knowing bash, Linux device drivers etc its knowing how to get hold of great resources on the web (whose using IMP web-based mail by the way ?). Acorns
Becuase open souce "support" is about *solutions* rather than *excuses*.
did educational IT harm, as many people (including me) felt that they gone up the wrong tree and most schools want to up the right tree with the corporate world.
Even if this was desirable schools simply cannot afford to play the game of "update everything every two to three years". Many commercial organisations can't either for that matter. What's funny is that an antique (in computer terms) A3000 can still be a better tool for producing a useful piece of work in one lesson than the latest Windows PC.
2. Advocacy. The K12Linux list in the States is great, and has regular postings which include things like 'how do I persaude my teachers that Word isn;t the only solution'. Good case studies is where Suse, Redhat and the other Linux distributors come in, providing solid evidence to Open Source / Linux working in the School environment. Becta would love to evaluate more Linux servers (we've already done Powys) and Linux/KDE workstations.
So when are Becta coming down :)
3. United Front. I'm a Mandrake user, i like it, got RPM etc etc, but don't get hung up on the different distributions, get hung up on overall politics of free speech and getting what you want from your IT resource, not just what people are willing to sell you. You will also have to buy some closed source software (I agree with Eric Raymond on this one), for niche applications, SIMs is currently one unfortunate example.
A very unfortunate example. Capita have taken a DOS based package which worked fairly well. Then replaced bits with Windows programs which can't do half the things the old programs could do and take 3 times as long to do essential tasks.