Ingotian

I have a school in the NW looking for a new network manager. Previous was a new graduate with a specific interest in FOSS who is now moving on having gained a few years experience. Anyone interested send me an e-mail (ian dot lynch at theingots dot org - or if you know anyone who might be. Very good school, will be a nice working environment! Thanks

I'm on Ubuntu. Started on Mandrake, had a brief fling on Linspire then Ubuntu. Does everything I need and more. Been on broadband now for about 6 years with no anti-virus software. Try doing that on Windows :-)

This rather illustrates a problem that has been building up over several years. Capita chose a highly vertically integrated Microsoft Solution at a time when few people were questioning IT monopolies. The world has changed and the law that has been applied zealously to eg supermarkets is now turning its eyes to technology. It could turn out to be simply a bad business decision to ally one monopoly with another. Being a monopoly is not illegal but leverage of the monopoly to block competition is. So is colluding to block competition. Only a court can really decide in individual cases but ironically, what was probably seen to be the low risk option of a MS track could well turn out to be very high risk indeed. The OFT can fine up to 10% of the entire company turnover not just the bit that infringes competition law. Capita could well rue the day they decided to go down the .net route. Moral of the story? In future stick to Open Systems and Open Standards because if you don't you might well be storing up a lot of future pain.

The old chestnut of difficulty in support. Capita can get commercial support for OpenOffice from Sun. All the details of every release are fully published - it would be easier not harder to support than closed source. As pointed out, the issue is not so much support for open source but for open standards (ISO 26300). The government and international trade agreements mandate the use of open standards where they exist. In addition, the collusion of two undertakings, in this case Capita and Microsoft, to block competition by adopting proprietary standards when open standards exist, is probably illegal under Chapter 1 of the 1998 Competition Act Competition Act 1998 (c. 41) This is especially so if both players have a dominant market share. Maybe an issue for the Office of Fair trading. E-mail [email protected] if you believe it is.

I'd say more likely ISO 26300. It's the internationally agreed ISO standard for documents and is extensible so I can't see any problems with "innovation". You also benefit from very powerful free and open source tools with massive market presence to edit files in the format with existing applications support from Sun, IBM, Google, Novell and KDE among others. Mostly what is needed is education so people have the capability to use the free resources arouond them before being seduced into proprietary lock-in. Openoffice.org Draw is more powerful in many respects than IWB proprietary flip charts etc and produces files supported by applications from Sun, IBM, Google, Novell, KDE to name but a few. So start there and save a lot of time and effort. I can't see the value of a viewer if you want interactivity. If interactivity isn't important what is all the fuss about IWBs anyway? Just use a projector.

Quite so and its worse because with BSF, many LAs will end up colluding with MS only suppliers to make sure that they stay on familiar territory. Next they will be bleating about lifelong learning :-)

Thanks for this. The responses they've come up with so far are particularly useful. I'm certainly finding it difficult to argue against my friends at the educational ICT errr, well, business unit I guess. I did use a substantial amount of the points that were raised to argue against them and failed miserably because they kept waffling on about the 'bigger picture'. Tell them the bigger picture is Global IT. That is what governs standards not what the DfES says let alone one LA. The overwheming Global trend is a shift away from proprietary products to open systems and open standards based on the Internet, W3C etc. Even office file formats are moving to XML and many web based office apps are springing up Google Apps for example. These are tending to support ISO 26300 the XML based office standard. MS is having great difficulty getting its OOXML standard to ISO ratification despite chucking hundreds of millions at it. Look at the take up of Moodle globally and its growth rate (stats on Moodle web site) show me any other VLE that has this global take up and growth. That is what decides standards, not ignorant ill-informed IT officials. Look at the social networking sites where kids learn from each other (some bad as well as good) If you want to prepare students for the future and this is what education is about, give them experience of Web based apps and safe social networking because that is where it is all moving. The desktop is likely to become less and less important so basing a long term IT strategy on a single desktop operating system and its vertical lock in to proprietary network applications is sheer folly. Get them to read some of Prof. Clay Christensen of Harvard Business Schools work - eg "Seeing what is next". Its not IT specific but it explains why what is popular now is not a good guide to what is going to happen in the future. That is understanding the bigger picture. The LA is a small insignificant player in this. However, at the end of the day the only person I have to justify myself to is the headteacher and then to sincerely hope that she listens to me over them. Explain things in terms of learning and why you are preparing students for the technological future they are moving into. In the end they are already doing it. They will have their own accounts on You Tube, My Space etc. We have to educate them about the dangers and benefits of these rather than feeling obligated to support particular commercial technological interests and the fact that the LA IT staff are 10 years out of date. Open Source software is a growing and important part of that future not just because of the technology but because of the collaborative communities working to support the technologies they all use. These communities arise from the internet and they enable greater scope for students to participate in the development of their own learning resources too. This is the way in which government policies such as the personalised learning agenda can be made to work. You are ahead of the game so being forced to conform to mediocrity by the LA is not good for the school and will limit the childrens learning opportunities in the longer term. Your school is above average in its IT vision don't let it regress, support excellence!