Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Cross party support for Open Source grows

Back in November, Liberal Democrat MP, John Pugh, put down an Early Day Motion (179), calling on the Government and the Department for Education and Skills to move away from expensive proprietary computer systems in schools towards Open Source solutions, and the motion has garnered significant cross party support.

Importantly, what this means is that we might yet see Linux with OpenOffice.org and the multitude of free software available out there in schools instead of the insecure, overly bloated, and stupidly expensive Windows.

Now, I wonder if there is any chance of convincing people like the Home Office that having thin client based Linux systems will make more sense than Windows Vista? Tux the Penguin looks better than the Windows logo too.

6 comments:

Jeremy Jacobs said...

I think there's too much emphasis on computers in school. Our youngsters need to more active.

Competitive sport is what is required.

Anonymous said...

So championship Tetris is right out then ? I feel like I've wasted my life now.

Jeremy Jacobs said...

it's never too late

James Higham said...

How cost effective would Linux based open sourcing be?

Serf said...

Like all such issues, if all schools were truly independent, such decisions would have been made long ago, on a school by school basis.

Nich Starling said...

At my old school we put Open Office on all the PC's whilst Norfolk County Council tried to insist we bought 40 copies of MS Office 2003. Then again, Norfolk COunty COunil make a profit from the school's own budget from each software title we order via them, so its a nice little earner for them to sell us stuff rather than give us advice on free stuff.