Dave Pawson wrote: > 1. Please note that odf is now an ISO standard :-) >
This is something worth pushing. > 2. And that Open Office is working hard to become fully accessible > to eyes free users. > Do we know how it compares with (eg) MS in this regard? Ie is OOo playing catch-up or leading the field? > 3. If I can help, I'd love to. > I'll no doubt come back to the list on this one! It appears that this guy is respected well beyond the bounds of his school, so there may be the opportunity to kick off a domino effect. MJ Ray wrote: > FREEduc used to be good, but I've not seen it recently. Same with > other debian-derivatives - why do you say Edubuntu is established? > Do LEAs use it yet? That's good news. I've not been watching. > I should be more careful with my language! Established = I've heard of it :-) Actually, what I really meant was that Ubuntu is established and they seem quite keen on developing Edubuntu, so from that point of view it ought to go somewhere useful. Which really isn't what "established" means so I apologise. I have no knowledge of what any LEAs use, Linux or otherwise. > Criminalisation of all sharing is much easier for government: > see Gervase Markham, "Free software? You can't just give it away" > http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html > in The Times, 2006-02-21 This does raise an issue, and that is mainly that the lady in question (and maybe the whole of Trading Standards) have no idea about licensing in general. It would be very naive to assume that all commercial software has the same licence, which she appears to be doing. A single licence for some commercial software, for example, can legitimately be used both at home and at work, but a lot cannot. And of-course, not all open source licences are the same (so you can't necessarily take code from one project and use it in another, which rather defeats the point of OSS). Therefore the lady in question must surely learn that it is indeed "difficult for [them] to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted" (her words), even in a world without (F)OSS. -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555 _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
