Re: [lias] Age IT Software News: Schools open for business

["Michael H. Voase" <mvoase@midcoast.com.au>]

Ken Yap wrote:
> 
> >By the way all you linux fans will like this one. In N.S.W. it is against
> >department policy to use free software. No wonder they are stupid enough to
> >pay gates for useless software upgrades.
> 
> Really? I must start charging exhorbitant prices for OSS. For installing
> it of course, not for the software itself. :-)
> -
> ComputerBank Australia -- http://www.computerbank.org.au/

	Hrrm, somehow I think the Dept of Ed will slowly start to back away
from that policy. If one has a look at -

	http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au

	One will see where policy and advice start to diverge... I think
at this stage, if govt auditors went around trying to eliminate linux
installs from schools, they would be confronted with some very angry
teachers
and probably some very angry parents to boot, as well as contradicting
their own advisory staff...Anyways, from what I have been told from one
principal, the final decision on deployment networking technology is
ultimately left up to the principal of each school....

	In the end though, even though inital installs are sometimes met with
some skepticism and uncertainty, after a department has actually used
linux on
their server for a while and can see the incredible stability of the
system,
their veiw of linux tends to lift quite rapidly. The contrast becomes
quite
acute when they look at how much it costs to keep a Win box up and
running
compared to a linux box. The fact is, contrary to M$ propaganda, that
the TCO
for linux _is_ much lower than Windoze - mostly due to its stability. 

	Me last 2c FWIW...;)

Cheers Mik.
-
ComputerBank Australia -- http://www.computerbank.org.au/