[Newark] Getting Free Software Into Schools

[Chris Hayes]

Hello LUG members!

Some of you likely have heard that I am now working at ForLinux, and those
of you around Newark may have heard that recently, to mark the forth
Software Freedom Day, ForLinux created a competition to give schools in
Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire the opportunity to receive
a years worth of technical support for Free and open source software. This
is to help a school experience the benefits that open source software can
give - such as paying less on licenses - as well as making it easy for the
pupils to use exactly the same software at home as they do at school without
having to pay anything. And with the help of this award, the school is free
to do this without having to worry about the technical nitty-gritty side of
it. Which when considering applications that are considered to be new and
not the usual standard proprietary stuff that they know they can administer,
must be an large issue for most schools. The winning school was Newark High,
a school that has had a fair amount of problems over the last few years -
but has begun showing some very positive signs. Hopefully this prize will
help the school even further in becoming better.

Anyhow, from a personal standpoint - this strikes me as a really valuable
way that companies involved in open source solutions can give back to the
community - and not the open source community, but rather get Free software
into the local community.

Anyhow, I'd love to know what you guys think about this award.


Chris Hayes / cbhworld
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