__/ [ 7 ] on Thursday 23 November 2006 21:01 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> MPs criticise government roadblocks to Open Source adoption in schools
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | UK Members of Parliament have identified Department of Education and
>> | Skills (DfES) and Becta policies as favouring proprietary software
>> | vendors thereby blocking the adoption of Open Source software by schools
>> | and colleges. An Early Day Motion tabled by Liberal Democrat MP John
>> | Pugh, has called for a fair approach to ICT procurement in the
>> | education sector.
>> `----
>>
>> http://sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=28349&hilite=
>>
>> Some folks at the Manchester Linux Users Group have taken action to the
>> Parliament a couple of days ago (related to the above, according to the
>> mailing list). Open Source (and Linux) will come to schools sooner or
>> later. It already prevails in some local schools and it proves to be
>> rather successful.
>
>
> I told you long time ago from the press release made by Becta
> that their pro-open source sounding banter was a hideous lie.
> They are game keeper and poacher at the same time and should
> not be trusted for the press releases they make.
I fully agree with you. Anyone who is responsible for acquisitions has got
hidden motives and companies to promote and be pressured by.
Last year I had long arguments with those who are responsible for software
acquisition in the University (it's the largest one in the UK). I advised
them to give more choice in the clusters by having Linux workstations, or at
least a few dual-boots. It was all in vain at the time because they waved
those dependency hell myths (GNOME packages). But at least the proposals and
the arguments will, in due time, make it seem more reasonable.
Anyway, I soon lost the desire and ceased putting any more pressure. It
wasn't my turf to invade either, but I think that students and staff have
the right to decide how the budgets get spent. I just don't think that
students should be taught how to use commercial products and then be tied to
and dependent on a company. Some of them won't be able to afford it and some
will pirate to gain access to their /own/ data, which is stored in
proprietary formats.
All in all, despite other annoyances like (paid-for) posters adverts in the
clusters, we are not doing too badly. There is Opera/Firefox/IE choice on
all the machines (with adjacent icon for each, in order to promote choice).
As you would imagine, most would associated the Internet with a blue E,
however, so the effort is, overall, not as effective as it could be. Still,
come to consider the fact that 75% of the universities in the UK use Open
Source (or was it Mozilla Firefox?). I was only hoping to find more of Linux
in the non-scientific clusters (science oriented ones include physics, maths
and CS, maybe even engineering by this stage). There's a lot of Linux on the
desktop and the server rooms. It should be natural for the University where
the first Linux distro (MCC) was developed and deployed. There's also the
first UK LUG that thrives here, so support should not be an issue. Sooner or
later, all machines (even in the Arts Faculty) should become dual-boot, or
at least cater for Apple fans.
For what it's worth, some more information can be found in the following
URI's.
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31752&SESSION=885
http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2006/11/mps_question_uk.html
I also have some E-mails from the people who initiated this (bless them!).
Owen Le Blanc is indirectly involves as well, but it seems like Ted Harding
take the lead.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Open syntax, Open API's, OpenSuSE
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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