Back a couple of years ago, I was IT coordinator at a public school district. At the time, we were aggressively rolling out new computers, and we had a mixed environment of Macs and PCs. I had always used Open Source software on my personal computer, and on my office computers at work. Being a poorly-funded school district, which had just spent a considerable ammount of our budget on the new machines, I advocated the use of Free Open Source software as a way to bring functionality to the users while keeping costs down. Prior to this, I had been making sure OpenOffice.org was installed on all of our machines, alongside MS Office (even though we didn't have enough licenses for MS Office as it was, Management told me to "shut up and install it anyway, not like they are going to audit our little district"). I started a pilot project in the Elementary school where I only made available OpenOffice on computer lab machines, and provided teachers with basic training on how to use it. It worked fine, and there were few complaints. I did this with approval from Administration. After a successful school year running an OpenOffice-only Elementary school, I decided that I had sufficient data, cost/benefit analysis, etc, to make the push to do the same at the High School. I was given go-ahead from the Administration to make both Office suites available, and to encourage use of OpenOffice. I did not anticipate what would happen next... students and teachers started to complain about the new Office software, and that the district was being "cheap" and that "no one in the real world uses OpenOffice". Despite me pointing out the advantages of the new software, and pointing out other instances of Governments and Businesses using the software, it didn't matter. I was even providing free CDs with the OpenOffice software on it for students to take home and install, and there were several students who were grateful for this. It increased their ability to do homework - at home! Alas despite my best efforts, with the best interests of the students and taxpayers in mind, the Administration reversed their decision.
They announced that starting immediately, we would only be using Microsoft Office software, and that they would be diverting funds to purchase enough licenses to install it on every computer in the whole district, including our successful Elementary school implementation. I protested that this was a waste of funds, especially in the Elementary school, where we had no problems, and that it wouldn't be good for the users there to change ships in the middle of the school year. So I was told that I was to immediately begin installing Office 2007 on all district computers, and removing any OpenOffice software.
Guess what? A few weeks later I was fired. My grounds for dismissal? Insubordination. Installing un-approved OpenOffice software on district computers. Failure to remove OpenOffice software from district computers. I protested and said that I didn't have enough time to make the requested changes, as we have over 500 computers, and I'm the sole IT person. I explained that I have to make new computer images, and test, and deploy those images, and that can't be done overnight (although I usually did my ghosting overnight when no one was there/pun). Alas, they wanted me out of the door, because I dared to think differently, and because "the Open Source software you installed was not good for the school."
And the funny thing is, this is the same Administration that adopted an official policy (with little input from me) that all school computers must run Firefox. To this day at that school, users aren't allowed to run IE. At all. I believe that started from people complaining that our Google Apps and Google Email systems didn't work well with IE. No one complains about Firefox, everyone loves it, and that seems to be what drives the school board. They don't respond well to people complaining, and unfortunately, the people complaining about the OpenOffice software were outnumbering the people co
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On my Mac, Safari starts up a lot faster than IE.
Back a couple of years ago, I was IT coordinator at a public school district. At the time, we were aggressively rolling out new computers, and we had a mixed environment of Macs and PCs. I had always used Open Source software on my personal computer, and on my office computers at work. Being a poorly-funded school district, which had just spent a considerable ammount of our budget on the new machines, I advocated the use of Free Open Source software as a way to bring functionality to the users while keeping costs down. Prior to this, I had been making sure OpenOffice.org was installed on all of our machines, alongside MS Office (even though we didn't have enough licenses for MS Office as it was, Management told me to "shut up and install it anyway, not like they are going to audit our little district"). I started a pilot project in the Elementary school where I only made available OpenOffice on computer lab machines, and provided teachers with basic training on how to use it. It worked fine, and there were few complaints. I did this with approval from Administration. After a successful school year running an OpenOffice-only Elementary school, I decided that I had sufficient data, cost/benefit analysis, etc, to make the push to do the same at the High School. I was given go-ahead from the Administration to make both Office suites available, and to encourage use of OpenOffice. I did not anticipate what would happen next... students and teachers started to complain about the new Office software, and that the district was being "cheap" and that "no one in the real world uses OpenOffice". Despite me pointing out the advantages of the new software, and pointing out other instances of Governments and Businesses using the software, it didn't matter. I was even providing free CDs with the OpenOffice software on it for students to take home and install, and there were several students who were grateful for this. It increased their ability to do homework - at home! Alas despite my best efforts, with the best interests of the students and taxpayers in mind, the Administration reversed their decision. They announced that starting immediately, we would only be using Microsoft Office software, and that they would be diverting funds to purchase enough licenses to install it on every computer in the whole district, including our successful Elementary school implementation. I protested that this was a waste of funds, especially in the Elementary school, where we had no problems, and that it wouldn't be good for the users there to change ships in the middle of the school year. So I was told that I was to immediately begin installing Office 2007 on all district computers, and removing any OpenOffice software. Guess what? A few weeks later I was fired. My grounds for dismissal? Insubordination. Installing un-approved OpenOffice software on district computers. Failure to remove OpenOffice software from district computers. I protested and said that I didn't have enough time to make the requested changes, as we have over 500 computers, and I'm the sole IT person. I explained that I have to make new computer images, and test, and deploy those images, and that can't be done overnight (although I usually did my ghosting overnight when no one was there /pun). Alas, they wanted me out of the door, because I dared to think differently, and because "the Open Source software you installed was not good for the school."
And the funny thing is, this is the same Administration that adopted an official policy (with little input from me) that all school computers must run Firefox. To this day at that school, users aren't allowed to run IE. At all. I believe that started from people complaining that our Google Apps and Google Email systems didn't work well with IE. No one complains about Firefox, everyone loves it, and that seems to be what drives the school board. They don't respond well to people complaining, and unfortunately, the people complaining about the OpenOffice software were outnumbering the people co