Quoting "adrian.wells"
Unfortunately many of these decisions are made ultimately by bursars who like to be able to point the finger at listed companies rather than a group of like minded geeks (no insults intended). It's about accountability (pun intended). When it goes down the tubes for whatever reason, "..but we pay them £1000's for the software" has much more clout than "... yes, but it was free!" or "...every other school in the country uses it" as opposed to "but our computer whiz said that we ought to try it out"
Hopefully there would be a rigorous evaluation of ANY software that is being considered for adoption by an organisation. The fitness of the software for the purpose intended, support options and cost would all be evaluated according to their relative importance to the organisation. If a product is chosen that isn't up to the job, I would be inclined to take issue with the process. If a product is chosen on the say-so of a 'computer whiz' alone, then the parties responsible for the decision ought to be looking for alternative employment. I'm not sure why you suggest that because you pay £1000s for software, you would have more clout with the software vendor. Real world experience says that a company in a near monopoly position is not going to be too bothered by complaints if enough units continue to be sold.
It's not the users that you have to convince; you can teach monkeys to do anything
If your users find a computer system too difficult to use, they will simply find ways not to use it. I would contend that you DO need to convince the users in order to ensure that you gain measurable benefits from the computer system instead of paying for a system that hampers staff.
it's those taking the flack if it goes wrong, bursars and governors. Not the most dynamic of audiences!
Having said that, we do appear to be getting more IT literate/happy governors on boards as time goes by.
The school budget is one of the major issues in many schools at present. If governors/bursars can be shown a positive improvement of the bottom line over a reasonable period of time as a direct result of introducing free software, I think they may be interested. Regards Chris