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OSS Use Increasing in UK Education Institutions
zrq writes "OSS Watch has recently concluded its
2006 survey of UK Higher Education and Further Education institutions. From the report conclusion: A positive picture of the use of OSS (Open Source Software) emerges in both HEs (Higher Education institutions) and FEs (Further Education institutions). Although there are considerable differences between the two types of institutions, in general OSS is used more often than in 2003 and institutions have higher levels of skills and experience of OSS compared to 2003. This survey shows that it is likely that, in the future, use of OSS will continue and expand alongside the use of PS (Proprietary Software)."
Why use the acronyms if you're just going to waste further space by defining them? Either use the acronyms, or don't.
Or, for a change, define them correctly, putting the redundant acronym (RA) after the definition so we can read the summary without those ridiculous stumbling blocks.
as the economy tanks and first world countries slip into the second world, mass education'll have to cut costs somehow.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But I could be wrong...though I firmly believe all the above points are correct.
IMHO any state school that isn't using Linux and OpenOffice at least for general purpose computing (ie. web browsing, paper writing, etc) is wasting the taxpayer's money. Properly locked down Linux machines should be virtually bulletproof.
Likewise, Java dev and Oracle, MySQL and PHP can all be done on Linux, as well as some school infrastructure (forums, webpages, etc)
The only place that Windows should be needed is for windows-based multimedia and graphics applications like Dreamweaver, Flash, AutoCAD, Automedia, Digidesign, etc
And many of those are also available on the Mac.
Other than that it seem like only Powerpoint, VBA, VisualStudio and SQL Server as well as Windows Admin classes (Active Directory, etc) would really require Windows machines or Applications.
-What's the speed of dark?
Well the FE's and the PE's are taken care of. Now what about the rest of the educational system?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I think it's great that OSS is being employed in educational fascilities, but what I'd really like to see is more educators teaching programming/software engineering via examination of the source code. There's more than a few projects that are actually coded very well, I know I sure learn something whenever I look at the sources.
It;s CHEAP to install !!! what do you expect schools in the slums to be using, Windows 3.1? OSS is better than Windows 3.1 for nearly all cases.
I teach physics at a community college in California, and I wish I saw some evidence of the kind of progress the report describes in the UK. My school is virtually 100% MS. I bought my own Linux box to put on my desk, but the latest news is that IT is trying to push through a policy that would make it against the rules (and punishable by firing) to connect your own box to their network. If that happens, then I guess it's Windows or nothing for my desktop. I also have a couple of Linux boxes I use for labs, paid for with my own money, and I guess I'd have to pull the plug on those and take them home, too. All servers at my school are Windows boxes. The catalog has tons of MS-specific vocational courses. They seem to rely on Windows for pretty much all the real CS courses as well; there is one small Linux lab, run by a CS guy who is interested in Linux, but the upshot of this latest policy seems to be that he'd be forced to shut it down. Basically they seem to be so uptight about lawsuits, filesharing, MySpace, etc., that they want to lock down everything super-tight, which means MS only. Linux isn't even on the radar, really; the only people on the faculty who are kicking up any fuss are the Mac users.
Find free books.
So you are looking at OS?
What if you do not have the resources to give full computing support to all your students?
MS would have just screamed at the offending government about freedom (to profit).
Now MS can call in a new option.
A 'foundation' that will help all fiscally challenged counties with just what they need.
No more leaks about chats or rushed visits.
All you get now is caring, understanding, embracing charity of 'free' quality software solutions.
The extended upgrade path is not so 'free'.
If done in a correct way the very idea of OS can be extinguished.
Mb it not such a new plan?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I work in a UK HE establishment, sadly we seem to be bucking this trend since nearly all new projects are deployed on Windows. The VLE isn't Moodle. VNC is banned because it's "insecure". The VPN solution was purchased from a major network appliance vendor. Not too long ago, they stuck an alternative browser on the standard desktop... Opera. Yes, the pace of change in the UK public sector is slow to snail-like. There are some bright sparks who preach the Right Way, sadly they are few & far between. Wyself, I'm support small fry and I feel that that I'm not in a position to convince those that matter.
Title pretty much sums up the topic. Just seems like America hasn't done anything exciting in the last decade, unless you count beating your chest about how exciting all the stuff you're doing is.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You're quite right about the MS software costs. And it's not just the PHBs - it's the students too. Having Visual Studio/SQL Server/etc on the resume is perceived as much more valuable than any OSS equivalent. If you try and present OSS, you'll hear 'that's nice, but when are we going to do '. Very few students are interested in ideology ; most of them just want a good job and $$$ at the end of it.
Ok, what is the difference between HE's and FE's? In other words; what would be the equivalent to US based educational system?
Not so. I just designed and am about to install a system in a school using GNU/Linux. I used these features to reduce capital costs and future costs:
- thin client/server (no licence fees, no server CALs, fewer fans and hard drives)
- some custom made thin clients seating six (Google for multi-seat X)
- gigabit/s network to custom clients, so less cabling costs
- HA (high availability cluster) and multiple terminal servers
Basically, the money saved on licences was partly used to beef up the servers for greater power and redundance. This centralized system is very easy to maintain and there are so many drives in RAID 1 arrays, I could let a few die and run for a year.The software is not isolated. The flexibility of GNU/Linux permits getting much more value from the expenditure on hardware while reducing maintenance. An example of that was a school division in Saskatchewan that had 300 Windows thick clients and three techs running themselves ragged. After switching to thin client/server technology, they went to 1400 clients and the same three techs had time to breathe. There is little advantage to using this technology with Windows because Windows just becomes less stable running more processes and the per-seat and per-CPU licencing is a killer.
A problem is an opportunity http://mrpogson.com
Both UK universities I've studied at over the past 3 years have been gradually dumping unix servers and workstations for linux. The report mostly talks about "proprietary software" rather than Windows specifically.
Besides, unversities are such sprawling and diverse organisations that it's unlikely you won't find someone using any given OS in it somewhere, even if it's just a netbsd box controlling some piece of research equipment or an OS/2 machine on the desk of a professor who doesn't want to learn a new GUI ever again. Schools tend to me much more regimented and locked-down environments, so that part of the report is more interesting.
The college I went to had 50 MS Office licenses on 200 computers. In a way non OSS companies are their own worst enemy because they are cracking down on colleges at the moment and the colleges are dumping the license model and going to OSS. one nearby college got done for not having enough licenses.
Well, we aren't allowed to browse the internet* and we have to write assignments at home, so...
*This started when they put new machines with properly locked down win2000. Before that we could browse the web and even see the transexual porn (I AM NOT KIDDING) in the vice-principal's computer.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Uh, huh. Groupthinked again. Here let me spell it out for you. FE and HE is education for 16 and above (about high school and better in the states). That still leaves 'lower' education which consists of the Windows world gauntlet. Which would you all rather have? The mindshare of impressionable youth? Or undoing the damage after the fact?
> Why use the acronyms if you're just going to waste further space by defining them?
Or better, use the acronym and make it a link to definition. Use the Web for the original purpose. Or better, use some of the new junk to a good purpose and make acronym do a little yellow popup when the mouse hovers over them.
Democrat delenda est
"We also tend to embarass the heck out of the Windows IT staff by bringing better knowledge of the underlying problems and protocols to the staff meetings, and pointing out fixes that they may not have been aware of."
Or maybe it's your impressive modesty that has them running scared?
"Also, I've noticed that competent Linux and open source admins at small sites tend to get hired away as their skills grow."
And not stick around and impress some more Windows admins?
"This is particularly true of middle managers who are worried about their jobs: the open source people tend to scare the tar out of them by blowing their pet projects sky high."
With that on your resume, I'm surprised you're not in managment already?
"It's incredibly frustrating to try and get them to loosen their grip: it takes presenting them, and especially their managers, with hard numbers on the benefits of open source software to their productivity and especially to their costs."
'Trust me! I can spend your money better than you can'
Using Linux is all well and good, but what happens when students don't sign up for courses because employers want people who know Windows and Office?
Let me tell you how UK educational establishments think. Firstly they get whopping discounts from Microsoft on site licenses. ~£17K per year for a reasonably large organisation (~2000 desktops) and they can install whatever is the current version of Windows and Office on all desktops, and CALs are effectively free.
Most courses (and software used in courses) are written for Windows and Office. We still use Office 2000 because every time we try to upgrade you would think the sky is falling because a menu option has changed or the window looks slightly different. Lecturers are whiners and lazy when it comes to updating course material.
Where Linux is mainly used in UK education is basically anything that the staff and students don't get their hands on and where you need reliability - in other words servers. Firewalls, proxies, email relays, DNS, DHCP, web servers, moodle, storage, network managment, spam filtering, web filtering, streaming media - you name it, if it runs on Linux it will get used as quite frankly it's free, and there are no stupid user license issues. User licenses can kill a project at a University or large college for one simple reason - an organisation with say 2000 desktops will have around 20,000 students enrolled. Many commercial systems will actually expect you to buy a license for every user rather than every desktop. For example a commercial web filtering system like Websense expects a license for every user, regardless of how many can actually use the web at once - simply not going to happen, especially when there are just as good free solutions like the superb Dans Guardian.
...you go to Coventry University, where they've just moved from Novell Netware to Windows for their networking solution (no problem there, you might think) and used it as an excuse to rip out all of the dual boot Red Hat/Win2K machines and replace them all with shiny New XP boxes, and use hideously expensive proprietary software to teach their courses (such as Rational Rose and Avid) which you then have to go and rip off so you can work outside of the labs.
Mention Linux or Novell to them and you'll get your head ripped off.
Ofsted have just finished a multi-million pound 'upgrade' from a mixed Novell, Linux & Microsoft environment to a pure Windows 2003 setup.
I really couldn't believe the money thrown at this thing, for a Government department! They are trying to run it like a commercial business but the core problem is it isn't revenvue they are spending - it's MY MONEY.
Oh, and all of their inspectors got aproval to have a portable sat nav for their cars, to find schools... I din't think they moved around that much!
For those who don't know, Ofsted is the inspectorate for children and learners in England, who police standards in educational facilities.
Users don't need to use Windows to write term papers or do research. Nor do they need Windows to learn networking, java programming or any other general IT or General Ed coursework.
Except for advanced users, Word (tm) and OpenOffice Writer are practically the same.
Moreover, Office is completely fragmented -you have diehard Office 95 types and you have the people who are going to be dragged to what will eventually be an incompatible new version of Office -Office 10 or whatever it will be. Most users use such a shallow set of features in Word that file compatibility is really the only important thing.
I'm not saying that Open Office is an application for application replacement for MS-Office -Excel and Powerpoint are definitely needed and used in most businesses until OO improves and gains traction -but I have had pretty good luck using Impress.
I do realize that excel macros/VBA is something of a dealbreaker as far as spreadsheets go..
But what sort of job is going to care whether you know how to write using Word or Writer? Not a writing job -maybe a secretarial job. Learning how to write effectively period is a lot more important. Half the resumes that I see, even from educated people, are filled with sloppy writing, misspelings and typos -and at that point I don't care WHAT they wrote it on.
I write stuff for work all the time in OO. I don't buy the argument that you need MS for web browsing and writing.
-What's the speed of dark?
I agree with you, however as we know, employers look at buzz words and titles rather than ability.
For example from a random job specification I just looked up:
Applicants are expected to have evidence of secretarial/PA experience at a high level and hold relevant typing, word processing and I.T. qualifications. Experience of using Microsoft Office is essential. You will be highly organised and have the ability to prioritise workload and work with minimum supervision. The post also requires excellent interpersonal, communication and organisational skills.
The bulk of Education is driven by employers and their needs. It's that simple. Microsoft knows this which is why they give education huge discounts as if education didn't use Office, then eventually we would have a workforce that had *shock horror* different skills and that understood that the computers != Microsoft Windows.
Some of the biggest gains for open source applications are still to be had, particularly in areas with strong relations with IT but historically less technical backgrounds such as in libraries (both public and coporate). The mother of a friend of mine witnessed some very 'wolly' thinking when at a meeting to plan the next generation of IT infrastructure for a large part of Londons public library system. She was representing the libraries in one borough of London (despite having next to no computing experience). On the subject of which office package they should purchase my friend had already primed his mother with a suggestion of Open Office. However, the technical advisor (who represented a company which resold Microsoft products) told the committee that such 'toy' free software may be OK for smaller endeavours but wasn't appropriate for a professional and highly important environment as theirs. They all agreed, the matter was dropped and several thousand MS Office license purchased. Now whatever the truth of their needs and the total cost of ownership etc I'm still a little concerned with the sidedness of that debate. Bascially MS Office was bought out of habit and convenience. My friend informs me that, having spent time working in the library with his mother, he thinks there is actually little argument to deploy anything more than a good electronic typewriter.
How do OSS representatives get to the table in situations like this? I guess the answer must be through ensuring that anyone at that table could represent OSS.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
From http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migratio n.uk.html
(From what I have heard the immigration since 2003 has increased greatly because of the new Eastern European EU countries)
2003 512,600 361,500 151,000
2002 512,800 359,400 153,400
2001 479,600 307,700 171,800
2000 483,400 320,700 162,800
1999 453,800 290,800 163,000
1998 390,300 251,500 138,800
1997 326,100 279,200 46,800
1996 317,800 263,700 54,100
1995 311,900 236,500 75,400
1994 314,400 237,600 76,800
1991 328,000 285,000 43,000
1986 250,000 213,000 37,000
1981 153,000 233,000 -79,000
1976 191,000 210,000 -19,000
1971 200,000 240,000 -40,000
Sorry, the format messed up, just see the table in the link http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migratio n.uk.html
You have clearly never met a type which I shall describe as "agressively pathetic".
By which I mean, "will go to such absurd lengths to avoid doing something new that it would have been less hassle to just do whatever it is they don't want to in the first place".
"I can't use this new PC, I haven't been trained on it!"
"It's exactly the same as the old one, only the case is a different colour."
"Well I still haven't had any training on it!"
Said person refuses to use the computer until such time as they have been trained, causing immense hassle for themselves and everyone in their department. I saw the exact same thing in students when I was at Uni - on a computer science course(!), a vast number did everything in their power to avoid using Unix (where everything had already been set up for them), even though the classes were often taught on Sun boxes.
Now, transfer that exact same attitude across to a Linux PC, or even just OpenOffice. Even if you lock it down and pretty it up to look almost identical to Windows running Microsoft Office, you'll still get that kind of trouble from a large chunk of your staff - some of whom handle nice things like "making sure everyone gets paid" - and your students, and without students it's remarkably hard to get any money out of central government.
The Open University now recommends OO.org.
There was a time when they mandated Office, but I guess enough students talked sense into them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I work in academia, and my box runs Linux. I'd love to never touch a Windows box, but in a university environment it just isn't possible. I currently have three major stumbling points:
- Producing slides. When I present at an international conference, the standard specification is Powerpoint. Yes, I can produce my slides in OpenOffice, but we all know that OO and MS Office don't quite interact. I want my slides to look right and it's important that those diagrams and equations appear exactly as I intended. Hence I borrow a machine and use Powerpoint.
- Writing papers. More and more journals are demanding papers are submitted as MS Word files, and do not accept LaTeX. I need to publish my work. Most of my collaborators use MS Word - they like the track changes option. Again, borrow a Win machine.
- Email. Yeah, that's right, email. My university is currently doing everything it can to stop rogue users with weird, non-standard machines running odd software. To improve security (I know), Information Services have decided to move email to use Outlook, exclusively.
We have three problems. One is that the university doesn't pay much for IT support, so we get monkeys. The second is the MS Campus license, which means MS software doesn't really cost anything (once the campus license has been paid for, which is generally a different pot of money). Third is the admin staff, who make sweeping decisions like what standard software the university will support, use Windows and don't like software they don't know.
I am currently allowed to run Linux, as long as I agree that I get zero technical support. I can do that, but many users can't/don't want to. In a years time, I may well be running Windows. For the time being, I'm ordering a copy of VMWare.
When I was at university (in the UK) they had in the computer science department six large computing labs. When I started, two were running SuSE Linux and four Windows. The next year, one of the Linux labs was converted to Windows. The year after that, the remaining Linux lab was converted to Windows. During the year when there was only one Linux lab, it was rarely used. I used it often because it was quiet and there was no queue for the printer.
In all my time there, there was only one class scheduled to be in that lab each week, which I was a member of. It astounded me that students would come into the class, sign in to say they had arrived, and then go and sit in the nearest Windows lab -- on the other side of the building -- just to avoid using the Linux system. This caused some upset because that lab was being used for a different class at the same time and so it got very busy. When the students were asked not to do this, they protested very loudly saying that they didn't know how to use Linux. This was ridiculous since the class pretty-much just involved researching stuff on the Web and writing a report. Once you'd figured out how to start up Firefox and either KWord or OpenOffice Writer you were golden. (It was a pretty crummy class -- it was one of the mandatory business/ethics/whatever classes that they had to have to get the degree BCS certified.)
You're falling for the common fallacy that all software is either "office software" (WP, graphics, etc.) or "Internet software" (e-mail, web stuff, etc.).
In the academic world, this is far from true. There are countless specialist teaching programs out there, many of which run on Windows.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
OK, here's how it works.
Schools in my area get Windows XP for £30 and Office for £45 per seat. I'm currently setting every PC in the school to dual boot XP and Ubuntu as there are just too many apps that are Windows based that teachers would be lost (or at least very confused) without.
We saved a fortune on Windows 2003 server licences and using E-Groupware saved £5 per seat exchange licences for 800 people. All of our servers run Redhat academic licences (£35 per server + no CALs) and have almost zero maintenance save the odd reboot when a kernel security upgrade comes along which takes about 3 minutes after school closes. Hell, I can VPN in, update the thing and reboot from home with confidence in the fact that the server will not have been stuffed by the latest updates.
All this will be irrelevant soon though as the the UK government has plans for the education system system in the UK called Building Schools for the Future. Look it up on Google and then be prepared for a sinking feeling.
BSF involves replacing every school building in the country using PFI (Private Finance Initiative) money and services. PFI basically means the lowest bidder and BSF schools so far have been mainly judged to be of poor or mediocre standard. More interesting to Slashdot readers though is the fact that ICT services will be removed from the control of the schools where it currently rests and will be tendered out to private companies on a county wide basis in order to take advantage of the bulk buying power that huge companies can obtain. One of the the lead trial areas however has yet to release the specs that companies tendering for the work will have to meet. This makes it very difficult for any company attempting to bid to see what it is they are required to provide. Funnily enough the County Council in that area has its own Educational ICT provider which is a strictly Microsoft shop.
If you look at the situation regarding BSF it looks like the ICT section provides a huge bias in favour of large corporations, particularly those based in Redmond.
Of course the payload of this will be the standardisation of ICT across large areas with no room for originality or independant thought but then that sounds that New Britain to me.
BTW, Check out the BSF PDF file that has an illustration of the perfect school design. It bears a strong resemblance to a factory production line. Raw meat in at one end, and a long stream of identical tasteless nuggets out at the other.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
The bulk of Education is driven by employers and their needs
If it was, then we would really have a problem. Fortunately, the 1984-type scenario where people are groomed throughout childhood to be a suitable drone to increase the GDP is not quite there yet.
Speaking for the UK, the bulk of your education (perhaps about 70%) of your education will be (aimed at) providing you with basic building blocks of knowledge and skills for your life in general. A small amount is not, and is driven by outside interests, limitations in the system, etc. Religous education is one of those - it might provide a much more in depth view on one religion, depending on the school. Physical education has a preference for sports that can be done in groups in a field. And so on.
IT is an area that schools are pretty poor at, probably due to the number of new concepts involved. As a result, they are susceptible to marketing abuse, poor curriculums and limited skills of teachers. Imagine a cooking course sponsered by ASDA (Walmart), limited to cakes only, and taught by someone who's only been cooking for a couple of years, and is still a bit unsure how the oven works.
In time, IT will adjust to the level of traditional subjects, and basic skills and knowledge will be taught, and domain-specific training will be handed off to employers. In the mean time, ill-informed citizens will continue to suffer at the hands of the softwide and hardware manufactures, malware writers, etc, in the same way that they pay the price for lack of social skills, personal finance skills or other poorly taught or untaught skills.
which is why they give education huge discounts
The huge discounts are there to perpetuate the current awkward situation. Anyone who has worked with public sector knows that discounts are more important than the eventual price. This went for a hardware a lot until recently. UK education supplier RM made many millions by selling 'education specific' PCs with 'huge discounts' - if you signed an exlusive deal. The discounts didn't make them any cheaper than the competition, but a £3500 RM box reduced to £1000 sold much better than an identical £1000 IBM box. In the same way, schools would not dare risk their '£300 MS Office for just £60' deals, although a objective viewer might notice that kids can learn word processing just as well on £0 openoffice, or even on £0 last years unreplaced MS Office.
School teaching stands alongside vendor lock-in and OEM coerced bundles as the pillars of monopoly support.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Yeah, but don't forget Eclipse for Java, PHP, perl and other non Windows dev tools -sure there's a little lockin if you are programming for .NET
There is no commercial equivalent for Eclipse -it is the current defacto standard -same for the others I mentioned and MySQL, etc
and even if they're not interested in ideology they probably still understand that windows products are fragmented, incompatible and often buggy, as well as expensive -even $150 is a lot for a student to pay for an OS or an Office Suite.
-What's the speed of Dark?
When I said 'education' I was referring to higher and further education in the UK, which is mostly driven by employment.