[Malvern] BECTA suggests schools should prefer open source to M$

[Richard Smedley]

On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 12:45 +0000, Tony Sumner wrote:
> I wonder if there may not be a problem with schools switching to an OS
> operating system. 

Problem? All changes of platforms involve problems -
whether you're moving to MS Vista or Ubuntu GNU.

However BECTA's statement was not about moving to
Open Source, let alone Free Software, operating
systems, nor even applications: rather about using 
agreed international standards [1] for document 
interchange.

This can be used with proprietary software like
MS Office (with a Sun plug-in), and StarOffice, as
well as Free Software like KOffice 4 and, obviously,
OOo.

> I know someone who makes a living writing
> educational software. When I asked her if she considered writing linux
> versions she said no because the schools run Windows. I imagine (sorry
> I know nothing about how schools function) that there must be lots of
> software not from Microsoft (and that is one reason the schools run
> Windows). It could probably all be converted but who is going to pay
> for the conversion and for the suppliers writing two versions of
> everything?

Sorry - this is a bogus argument against change
(not that BECTA support change but, well, one or
two of us do). For each of the last three years,
over and above the ca. 100k each high school spends
on IT, DfES has given GBP110 million for curricular,
non-office, software. Much of the software sits
in cupboards unopened.

Roughly one per cent of this expenditure would pay
for the development of Free Software to cover *every*
area of the curriculum, centrally served in schools
and LEAs, and accessible (via a browser) on any
platform.

The government doesn't owe a living to companies
writing Windows apps for schools, unfortunately it
does feel it owes a living to MS - particularly 
evident in the specification of needing a MS Windows
PC to access various government services.

 - Richard


[1] ISO 26300 a.k.a. Open Document Format

-- 
Richard Smedley,                                          rs at m6-it.org
Technical Director,                                      www.M6-IT.org
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