The Argument For F/OSS In Schools

pfaffman sends us word of a two-part article in LinuxInsider that lays out to an audience of non-tech educators a cogent argument for using F/OSS in schools. The piece was written by a University of Tennessee professor for the education journal TechTrends. It makes the case that proprietary software is inconvenient and that when schools choose to use proprietary products they spend their constituents' money. The article won't contain a whole lot of surprises for Linux initiates (save perhaps some software recommendations for educational use), but it's interesting to see these ideas presented so clearly to a wider, and influential, audience."

Comments

He missed one point.

[khasim]

If the students are using F/OSS throughout the K-12 years, some of the students will go on to college to study programming.

What better projects for them than enhancing / bug-fixes for the software they've been using for so long?

In essence, the educational system ends up teaching students to write software for the educational system. So it just keeps evolving and improving.

Worst possible argument

[El Cubano]

It makes the case that proprietary software is inconvenient and that when schools choose to use proprietary products they spend their constituents' money.

There are so many reasons to prefer F/OSS (and yes, lack of up front licensing costs is really nice). However, this is the worst "benefit" to pitch. In reality, the software will very likely require the same amount of support as other software (which many times Adobe or MS will give gratis or close to gratis). In any case, sysadmins and tech support people cost more than software (unless your software is built by Lockheed to NASA safety specs or you are using custom production and manufacturing control software).

Some better arguments include: freedom to roll out additional seats without tracking licenses; freedom support something yourself if that is better for your organization than upgrading (upgrades often being forced by proprietary vendors); the money spent stays in the local economy instead of going off to some software company's home state/county/whatever; heck, even altruism.

The point is that even F/OSS requires that "they spend their constituents' money."

MSFT pays for FOSS in all Calif public schools

[christian.einfeldt]

For those who do not already know it, Microsoft has settled its anti-trust case in California, resulting in a settlement fund that allows every school district in California to get a set dollar allotment per student per school district. This website has all the deets:

http://www.edtechk12vp.com

So if you have been wanting more FOSS in your school district, but haven't had the budget, step right up!

Re:True.... but not important

[FJGreer]

No, the problem I hit is 'must have' software that has to have Windows
As a happy employee of a broke private school most of the 'must have' edu-apps I've tried (Mavis Beacon, Accel. Reader, some crufty legacy apps) work just fine in WINE, so thats a several grand site license for Windows that wasn't spent. And you wouldn't believe how easy it is to train teachers to use linux boxes:

1. Turn on computer
2. Double click on the application you need (named after their Windows equivs (OOwriter is labeled word, firefox is labeled IE, etc)
3. Done

The ones that even noticed a difference all complimented me on how much more quickly the computers ran. Re-training is easy when there is little to no knowledge to 'unlearn.'

Now the few teething problems got noticed, but since I had them all dloading updates automagickally with cron, it was easy to propagate fixes.

Now if your school has a cargo-cult mentality to teaching computers, I can see how you would have a problem.