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2-Year OpenOffice High School Case Study
Michael writes "NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice. The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible. From the article: 'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty and students in the school (though some administrative staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software requirements), students are not required to use OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a presentation is given to students at the start of every school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org, the availability of free copies, and potential problems of converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"
So it seems that the same thing that happened to propritary unix apps in the 80s and 90s is starting to happen now with propritary consumer apps. I'm refering to the stories of upon setting up their workstation or server taking a day to replace all the proprietary programs with the GNU created ones because they functioned better.
From TFS:
This sums it up so well...
Actually, has anyone out there run into any issues with OpenOffice as a substitute for M$ Office? I'm considering switching everything over, especially after reading this article.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
How long will it be until Microsoft comes in with some "free" software to bring them back into the fold? There were several schools around my area that received free software from Microsoft when they considered going open source.
Although you may be right about the Linux slant, one of the reasons this may have worked is because it was in a learning environment. The learning curve for students is completely irrelevent, because that's the main goal of school. This is probably why it was feasible and why it worked. All you really need is to write essays and the odd report or presentation, and OO.o's software should be "good enough" for that. Note that they still upgraded and kept MS Office for some of the administration stuff, probably because they couldn't afford not openning certain documents. if a school can save money with using this type of software, then maybe that money could be used on books which are typically lacking in many schools.
... and I'm glad the kids like it, but I won't even think about switching until it has a wonderful, cheerful, dancing paperclip to brighten up my day.
Anyone know? Do they have plans to? I think it's only fair that if a free application saved them tons of money the school pay back at least part of the cost saved.
I think the point you are missing is that in order for any program to function as expected (hoped) in an educational facility, you will need the backing of the instructors. I am sure that most of these teachers had not ever heard of OOo prior to this experiment but had probably been users of MS Office for some time (the article states that most had powerpoint presentations). The fact that there is no mention of any complaints from the faculty speaks volumes. In fact, the only negative I saw throughout the article was that some *.ppt files would not open properly and rather than have teachers waste time rebuilding ppt presentations on OOo, they could use the *free* powerpoint reader.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
If for nothing else, the school can , for less than one percent of the MS license fees, have OOo printed to CDs for every student, no more labs full of students working furiously in the labs at 7AM as we had in our HS because so many could not afford Office and didnt want/know how to "aquier" it. We that had it shared the wealth, but a lot of people saw it as theft, I saw it as needing to get my homework done.
I know you're trying to be funny, but in my opinion (and I think in the opinion of a lot of other people here on /.) there is nothing worse than someone who learns computers by memorizing. It is far better for someone to learn the concepts of software and be able to apply them everywhere. Even if they go on to work in positions where OO.o is not used, they will probably begin to see the concepts and become better computer users as a result.
If you show a cost savings they stop giving you funding because you've shown you can operate on a leaner budget.
Yes, that's true. However, if someone in charge decides they can save 100,000$ in software, and put that money into books or teacher salaries (or an additional hire) instead, then this is a net benefit to the school without their funding being reduced.
They need to start using XP and Office, and run up their support bills.
It bothers me that you're advocating a publicly-funding institute wasting money. And we wonder why our governments mis-manage funds? It's in large part due to that kind of thinking. No, I would rather that the school not waste money, and that the savings go into other school programs, or even into other schools, or even into other sectors of the government that need funding (of which there are many).
If I was the schools administrator I'd avoid anything with the word "free" in it like the plague.
I truly hope most school administrators are not like you. Avoiding things that are "free" because that might reduce your budget for next year? What's the point of having a big budget if you're forced to waste it? I would much prefer that those in charge of spending my tax dollars do the right thing and spend my money intelligently.
It costs the school $0 [extra], because chances are they replaced the class that would have tought the kids MS Office.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Note that they still upgraded and kept MS Office for some of the administration stuff, probably because they couldn't afford not openning certain documents.
According to the wording in the article, it seems more likely that they had applications built on Access or the like. I've had to install MS Office on quite a few clients' computers because they had specialized applications dependent upon it.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
It was the staff who converted -- and (to their surprise) found that it was way better than they expected. Learning curve for the staff is quite relevant, since they all probably knew MS Office before hand.
On the other hand, you still have a learning curve for every new version of MS Office too... Probably about as much as the difference between MS and Open..
and kept MS Office for some of the administration stuff, probably because they couldn't afford not openning certain documents.
MS Office couldn't open some MS office documents, and OO couldn't open some MS Office documents -- so overall, I'd say we're about equal here.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
OOo is quite similar to Office, and I doubt most people will find the differences to matter in business. Frankly, if students do learn these differences and are able to adapt to Office, then they will be ahead of the tech curve by knowing more than one interface and thus being able to generalize, making them more effective at learning new features/programs rather than being paralyzed by change. It is the fear of something different that makes OOo and other MS alternatives unacceptable, not any practical business or money-making rational.
I don't know a single person I'd call technically competent who is only able to use one word processor, spreadsheet, IDE, CAD tool, whatever to the exclusion of all others. The tech curve is not static, and knowing one thing (even if it is the most popular) is to handicap yourself when that curve moves beyond what you know.
MS Tax or no, I consider this to be doing the students a favor.
The enemies of Democracy are
This is going to be a typical scene of geek masturbation, with a single common theme in mind: It worked for me, therefore it must be perfect for everyone in the world
Wow how is that precognition going? This thread is already several hundred posts long and I haven't seen anyone (aside from you) voice that assertion. This is a typical straw man argument, ...weak.
One of the best quotes I've ever seen on the whole OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office debate:
I think the point you are missing is that in order for any program to function as expected (hoped) in an educational facility, you will need the backing of the instructors.
I know you meant this is the sense that a major group of users supported it, but it also works in the sense that they were actually able to give instruction for its use.
One of the reasons F/OSS has such an uphill battle is because existing software has such huge support in terms of classes on it's use, informal help on its use, and the availability of certifications. The reason this project worked for this school was because they actaully taught classes on how to use OOo and there was also plenty of informal help, both from teachers and other students.
This is one of the few comparisons I've seen of the two platforms that actually comes close to being "apples to apples." Many people who give MS Office the edge are actually counting in this status quo educational edge, either consiously or subconsiously. On the other hand, many proponents of OOo either consiously or subconsiously give it an edge simply because it's open source rather than because it's actually superior. These guys gave classes on it's use and noted at least two areas where OOo was superior, cost and backward compatibility. That's a very good thing for this product.
TW
Consider for a second that OpenOffice.org has a silly name for legal reasons. They can't use the more obvious "OpenOffice" name because of trademark conflicts.
Now consider OpenOffice adopting your strategy using a blue-W icon. Or Mozilla using a blue-E icon. How will will that wash with Microsoft's lawyers?
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Most of the time I'm sending them PDF's by posting them on the web server, which is as easy as saving them to a network folder, which I do right from OO. And I really like being able to use the same application on Windows or Linux.
I've also known some small offices that have switched over, very few problems. All those FUD talking points MSFT uses are absolute crap. There is no massive learning curve or training costs and anyone who can open a PDF can read what you create.
A $100,000 to a school district is a lot of money. That could pay for an after school program for a whole year, equipment for a sports program, an extra teacher. Even if OO was a vastly inferior product, which it's not IMHO, it would seem like the things you could do with the money in a school far outweigh having the latest and greatest software.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I like it how down the left of the screen we have an article which states that the costs over $100,000 cheaper than going with microsoft and down the right we have a microsoft ad saying "META Group found in a study that Linux costs are not lower than Windows" (refresh the page a few times if that ad is not there!). .
hahaha
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
I agree with you on the naming of the installation file (and many other orgs are guilty of this). I also agree that it should be packaged as a .exe for Windows (although most dumb users already know about winzip). The rest...
... You stumbled on "W" by chance, but W is for "Write" not some weird "sounds like a kitchen appliance" name. Same goes for "Green X". Where the hell did you get "X" out of Spreadsheet??????
The file I download should have been as small an EXE as possible -- perhaps a small simple app that downloads the big file for you in a friendly way.
That sounds more like a personal preference, and actually a bad idea with dumb users who might be running software firewalls. First, if they download a small file, they believe that's all there is and get confused when it starts downloading more and more. Worse, if the setup.exe tries to download more, the software firewall will alert the user that SETUP.EXE (or some other confusing program) is trying to access the internet, that creates uncessary stress for the user. And probably the dumb user has been instructed to "deny" access to all unrecognized programs, so they get stuck. It's best to let the DUMB user do one thing at a time: 1. download, 2. install, 3. try it out, 4. setup preferences. At best, your small download thing should be offered as a "power user" option.
A "Blue W " icon needs to represent the Word Processor, a "Green X" icon for the Spreadsheet.
WTF??? Why "Blue"? Why "W"? Which dumb user knows about a "Word Processor"?? Dumb user wants to write things, not process words. WTF is a Word Processor??
Dude, you're making recommendations based solely on your own preference and your influence from Microsoft Office. That's bad. Really bad. Sorry but you need badly to brush up on your usability.