The theory behind open-source software is that it avoids many of the pitfalls - including cost - of closed alternatives. But Steven Buckley, who runs Christian Aid's common knowledge programme, prefers to buy software from the likes of Microsoft. Is this not odd for a charity? "Open-source doesn't mean free," he told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme. "Quite often, if you install open-source software within an organisation, you have a support contract that goes with it - it's an essential part of operating that software. Over time, that can actually cost more than having Windows on an enterprise machine."
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Member since:2005-08-16
While it is great that you have the luxury that you can switch to FOSS, I can hardly imagine that the school where I currently work switches to linux/open-source. There are some 40 programs that come with educational methods, or that are used as resources in the education programme, that aren't offered by the publisher under linux. It really is a chicken/egg problem, and for publishers there is no compelling need to be flexible.
Member since:2005-07-11
We have a very pro-OpenSource school board, all the way to the Superintendent. As such, one of the primary criteria for any software purchase is "will it run on FreeBSD or Debian?" If it won't, then we ask if it will run on RedHat? If not then we look around the marketplace to see if there are any alternatives that could be used instead. Finally, if there is nothing else that can be used, and it is absolutely critical that we have this software, then we'll look at getting a Windows server for it. So far, we have only two pieces of major critical infrastructure software running on Windows servers (our library software Follett Destiny, and our Heating maintenance software).
Without the top-down support, though, I could see it being difficult to use non-Windows or non-OpenSource (we're not so-called Free Software fanatics, and actually prefer BSD software) software. I hear horror stories from IT people in other districts where a teacher wants to use OSS to save money, and the school board going behind their backs to spend money they don't have on a Windows solution.
Granted, we also have a "build knowledge capacity inhouse" attitude, so we support all our own systems, only contracting out for hardware support. If we can't find the time to learn enough about a system to support it, we won't implement it. And we certainly won't buy something we can't support.
It's really a mindset thing ... and we have the people above us with the correct mindset. 
Member since:
2005-07-11
Our school district runs diskless Linux clients in all the elementary school labs (30 - 60 computers per elementary * 37 elems).
We also have one complete secondary school without *any* Windows computers. The entire school runs diskless Linux clients. We have several other secondaries in the planning stages for moving toward the same setup.
The hardest part was getting teachers out of the "we have to teach the programs that are used in the business world" mindset and into the "we need to teach concepts not software" mindset. Once that happened, the move to OpenOffice.org was easy.
Our IT department was filled with Novell certified techs. Most of those certifications have expired, and we are all now LPIC-2 certified (Linux Professional Institute Certification).
There are several other school districts in the province that have looked at our setup, and have started to use similar setups (LTSP thin clients and diskless clients).
We used to have an annual IT budget over $4 million CDN. That was the year I was hired, 5 years ago. Since then we've had the budget chopped almost in half every year (our current budget is $200,000). And yet we have the lowest student to computer ratio in the province. Have fully operational labs in every school. And have students that are actually excited about using the computer labs. We've received several comments from new secondary students wondering why they can't use Linux in the secondaries.