Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]]

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

> -------- Original Message --------
> 
> From: Jim Thomas <jthomas@bittware.com>
> To: seul-edu@seul.org
> Subject: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]
> 
> I keep hearing this (that public schools spend other people's money) and
> I feel compelled to respond to it.  I agree - it's very difficult to get
> a public school (in the US at least) to adopt open source.  The "free"
> argument doesn't go very far.  We have to tout *other* benefits of Open
> Source to get into that sector, such as stability, viral resistance, an
> actual security model, and capabilities.
> 
> It might be easier to start with private schools - especially non-profit
> denominational schools, which operate on tight budgets and are somewhat
> smaller than the public behemoths down the street.
> 
I think that we may need to develop a variety of advocacy documents for
promoting the use of Open/Free software in schools, since we'll be
talking to a number of differently-formed groups.  In the US, the public
schools have a distributed administration, where each school district
and sometimes each school (and there can be many of each within a given
city or county) has broad authority to decide how they wish to spend
their funds.  In many other countries, the school administration is
centralized, where the Ministry of Education (or the equivalent) makes
those decisions for all the schools.  And then there are the private
schools, which are generally either independent or church-affiliated. 
They have different needs yet.  Material addressing the specific
concerns of each of these three types of organizations will be at least
moderately different.

> Unfortunately, this strategy takes more time, and we're trying to
> "strike while the iron's hot."
> 
I think it's OK if we don't have a full-blown organization and sheaf of
documents by next Saturday so long as we're moving forward and not
letting ourselves get bogged down.

> I still think the community needs to come out with an Education
> Distribution to ease installation.

I agree with Roger on this.  It would be a major effort to keep such a
distro up to date, and would duplicate work that's already being done. 
Additionally, you would measurably reduce the chances of any of the
major distros being interested in supporting the the coalition if they
saw it as in competition with them.

> As I see it, there are three types
> of installations required in an edu environment: student machines, staff
> machines, and servers.

Having said what I did, I agree that there should be easy installations
of each type of machine.  But from a RedHat standpoint, you're just
talking about a Kickstart setup, and I'm sure similar customizations are
available for the other distros.

Doug Loss
drloss@home.com