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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 $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible. From the article: 'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty and students in the school (though some administrative staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software requirements), students are not required to use OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a presentation is given to students at the start of every school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org, the availability of free copies, and potential problems of converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"
From TFS:
This sums it up so well...
Actually, has anyone out there run into any issues with OpenOffice as a substitute for M$ 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.
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.
Do you use OO.o ?? Have you donated?? Free software is free to use. Like it or not. I would say that the school is doing more than its share by giving classes and getting the product know to young prospective users. Fair?? fair is using the product even if for free. Unfair would be taking the source code, rebranding and selling a propietary product. Unfair will be redistributing without the corresponging credit to the authors. Donating is beyond fair. Congrats to the school.
please excuse my apathy
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 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
One of the best quotes I've ever seen on the whole OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office debate:
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