I have been banging on about the advantages of open source software for schools for years, giving talks, writing green ink letters to civil servants, even (thanks to Patricia Hewitt) meeting some senior mandarins. Sadly, most politicians’ and bureaucrats’ understanding of information technology barely extends to email. This last fact, incidentally, might have something to do with the complete inability of government departments to bring in any IT project successfully on time or within budget—or, indeed, at all. [As if you needed reminding, it’s billions of pounds your money paying some gonk consultants to play Minesweeper while Windows XP “Professional” Service Pack 2 installs on a roomful of over-burdened server PCs.]
One of my allies in this futile struggle to infest British classrooms with communist software was a guy at Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Association). He resigned in frustration at the clueless resistance from his colleagues and superiors to work for one of the biggest private sector open source software companies. I gave up plodding around government departments.
Now, according to The Times Educational Supplement Becta is either starting to get a clue
“Primary schools could cut their computer costs by nearly half if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from the world’s largest software company, government research has found.
“Secondaries could also slash their information technology overheads by a quarter if they moved away from Microsoft and other commercial programs, according to an analysis carried out by the British Educational Communications and Technology Association, the Government’s ICT agency.”
or is pretending to do so in order to get a better deal from Microsoft in the government’s next round of negotiations to licence the giant’s horrible software. My well-worn money is on the latter.
This post, like all PooterGeek posts, was brought to you entirely by open source software. Viva la revolucion!
We can no more blame Microsoft for the intellectual laziness of the programming classes than we can blame the drug baron for the fecklessness of the junkie. We can and should blame those who support this behaviour with public money. Yes, Windows is the Turkey Twizzler of the software world.
[BTW, you lose points for using “tax” when you know it’s wrong.]
We’ve had the same issues round here over attempts to improve – allegedly – communication between voluntary organisations which resulted in £20 grand of public money being pissed down the drain by the local CVS, on the recommendation of a total gorn working for the local authority, on a super dooper Exchange-based webmail system which hardly anyone ever uses.
The guy even pitched it to them at the time they bought into it – only a couple of months after the realease of Exchange Server 2003 which is what it uses as being ‘proven technology’ because it ‘comes from Microsoft’.
Of course they ignored me completely when I pointed out that we could do the whole shebang, with far more features and flexibility than the Outlook Web Access system they’ve now got, for less than £4k using either phpgroupware or egroupware – and that’s with a managed linux box on a 10K pipe.
Exchange is great for biological diversity – all the latest viruses and worms delivered fresh to your office in half the time.
Disappointing.
I agree entirely. As a Linux user, I can’t live without my operating system and the superior applications it supports – it’s disturbing to find myself in love with a web-browser, but I have some pretty ardent feelings about Konqueror…..
Unfortunately, at work I have to endure Windows and all its inadequacies as the Council I work for, though excellent in most of the things it does, is committed to Microsoft. Its especially galling as my desktop is delivered through a terminal server running on embedded Linux. As I boot up I swear that I can see just the faintest hint of Grub, and then its gone, like a pretty girls you’ll never meet again!
The root of the problem is the inertia of so many techies. Just as our techies told us in the early 1990’s told us that PC’s were a fad which would never catch on, and refused to support them, so they now cannot see beyond the incentives and conferences that Microsoft gives them.
There simple things that might help. Should more people learn HTML? I tend to think it it should be taught as part of any IT training in schools; and should be a mandatory element of the ECDL which is the mainstay of most introductory IT training for adults in Colleges and Adult Ed centres.
The trouble with your theory is, that for most of the world – including pre-school children now – Windows is The Way Computers Work. Anything else will just be seen as odd and stupid and wrong, and they’ll find it too strange and won’t use it.
“Should more people learn HTML?” Coding? Most of them can’t even use the mouse to shrink and expand a folder, nor do they have any clue where their saved files are.
And as for the ECDL, I’m afraid it is just a babies’ miniature training course in using Microsoft’s office apps. People don’t learn anything about computers, as such, from it. Arguably they shouldn’t need to anyway – the GUI is the computer, to most end-users.
I know Linux has many technical advantages, but this argument is between (a) people who want to use computers and (b) people who want to get their work done, possibly using a computer as a tool if that’s not too hard. The two groups hardly overlap, and may well never find agreement. Different premises, as the fellow said.
But Windows comes in such a pretty box! And the customer service is the best!