Colin McCarthy wrote: > Smart Technologys the makers of 'SmartBoards' one of the two popular > interactive whiteboards already do a linux client. Its almost exactly the > same as the windows version and works perfectly. I have used to many times at > our LUG meeting which occasionally meets in a school. > > Capita recently bought Ramesys (a large education IT provider) so there is > little chance of BFS, Building Schools for the Future, schools to have any > local control and choose Open Source software. > > FOSS does stand a chance in private or indepenent schools. > > Mark Thomas and SiruisIT do a lots of FOSS stuff in schools. Maybe they > could be on the Ubuntu UK podcast to talk about it. > > Colin > it is Mark Taylor (@Mark_Antony on twitter, Antony is his middle name) and yes, he would be a good interviewee for the podcast. Becta have done some good stuff relating to Open Source, if you look through the 152 downloadable publications they have produced several are advocating open source technologies and they have made several advisories about the risks of being locked in to high cost proprietary software. I think they were influential in getting Microsoft to offer an alternative site license to the one that means that you have to pay by the total number of computers in the building, regardless of what they were running (under the standard scam if you install a media suite of 30 Apple computers you would have to pay Microsoft for each and every one of them even if they run no Microsoft software). Becta also set up the Open Source Schools project and you can read more about the Becta close there http://opensourceschools.org.uk/bectas-closure.html Ultimately I don't think Becta did enough to justify their cost, and that seems to be the view of the new government too.
The interesting question is what, if anything, fills the void. Stuff like the home access program will go or be managed by the department of education (no great loss if it goes). Publications and advisories will be pumped out from all directions. Not sure how good this is going to be. Schools will have to make up their own minds a little bit more (which they did anyway, but could just point at a Becta publication to abdicate responsibility for poor purchasing decisions). Microsoft may put up their prices in the absence of a collective bargaining point (a role which Becta tried to do with limited effectiveness) personally I think Microsoft prices going up would be a good thing, too much effort has been put to saving pennies in that direction rather than looking about for real savings. Just to clarify a few points made: BSF schools can tell their system integrator what they want and that can include open source software. A few have done so to a limited extent (I think just insisting on Moodle). SIMS is a problem, Capita do not appear to be interested in supporting open standards at this time. It is a big application, it was big when I was using it 18 years ago on Novell Netware 3.1.1 and it must be huge by now. There are alternatives, but I don't think anything with the level of maturity that would be required for deployment. Schooltool is the one I would look to, and interestingly enough that is supported by the Shuttleworth foundation. RM is quite Microsoft focussed, but they have been around forever and used to actually build their own computers, remember the 480Z? They also were one of the largest suppliers of the eeePC running Xandros. I had an RM branded one for a bit. They are actually less dependent on Microsoft marketing money than the regular box shifters. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
