Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source

[Neil Aberdeen]

Under BSF SUN now runs Bradford local authority schools IT
From
http://blogs.sun.com/joehartley/entry/back_to_a_new_school

The computers were not conventional PCs, but _Sun Ray thin clients 
_. Sun Ray clients enable 
virtualized desktop sessions to run on a datacenter server, which houses 
the applications and data. ...


As the key technology partner to Bradford, Sun is not only providing the 
hardware, we're also designing the software that will facilitate 
learning. Using Sun's open source software as well as other open source 
educational software such as Moodlerooms, Sun has created an open source 
software environment for the school.


Zen wrote:
I can't see the ed sector taking on free software in any great volume 
in the near future ... the issues around support and compatibility 
(with workplaces and what parents have at home) are just too great.


If there was to be a shift away from MS/Windows, I think it is more 
likely to be in the direction of Apple and OSX. Apple are hooking kids 
with iPods and iPhones and the step from using an iPod (and iTunes on 
Win or OSX) or an iPhone to using a Mac running OSX is tiny. OSX with 
iWork does virtually everything people need. Someone mentioned earlier 
on that kids don't even get taught how to type in schools, but I think 
that's a minor issue ... I know plenty of kids who haven't been taught 
to touch type "properly" but who can whizz around their keyboards, 
mice, iPods, touch screens, etc faster than most touch typists. The 
keyboard as an interface will be less and less important as 
technologies develop (especially voice inputs).


The total cost of ownership of a Mac is (in my experience) far lower 
than running Windows machines. The hardware purchase price is high, 
but the OS is MILES cheaper (and miles more reliable) and iWork can do 
pretty much everything the average user needs for a lot less money 
than MS Office. If MS want to compete in the years ahead, they 
radically need to drop their prices.


Also, society is becoming far more creative and interactive  
socially and job wise. People need tools to get the job done simply - 
they don't care how those tools are made and they don't want to learn 
how to make the tools. Apple gives people software that works. They 
boot up and are productive more or less straight away. There's no need 
to learn how the OS works. There's no need to learn how to use MS 
Office. If people can use iTunes, they can pretty much intuitively use 
any part of Apple's core software suites (iWork and iLife). And the OS 
doesn't break all the time and it doesn't need a lot of IT support.


A UK school example from Apple:
http://www.apple.com/uk/education/profiles/bryanston/

And another thing is the growth of Apple not just in the iPod youth 
centred market, but in the Mac/PC market in the US - especially in US 
universities  where the US is today, we often follow. An example:


http://blogs.eweek.com/applewatch/content/macbook/is_apples_mac_u_pic_worth_a_thousand_words.html 



Apple have been so smart in grabbing the attention of the iGeneration 
... so long as they don't lose momentum, they have the potential to 
surpass MS in many markets.


There was a TV docu the other day about newspapers in the UK - 
virtually every office shot showed banks of people using Apples. Media 
based, I know - but half the population want  a media related job 
these days.


People don't want free software. They want software that 'just works" 
and which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. They don't want the confusion 
of tons of MS Windows' flavours. Apple ticks all of those boxes and 
with the iPoders growing up and buying PCs the Windows market share 
will fall. People won;t switch to free OS platforms.



On 11 Feb 2009, at 12:10, Matt Barber wrote:

What about all the jobs that people have when they develop software 
that is paid for and licensed? If the switch to free software were to 
suddenly happen, would these people find themselves out of work?
This isn't a stab at anybody, it's just an observation that I'd like 
to put in there. And I'm genuinely interested in the response from 
enthusiasts to the idea.


Also, I am a fan of both closed, and open software, using Microsoft 
and Mozilla products, enjoying and consuming DRM-Free media content. 
I don't often enjoy getting involved in open/closed/free/however 
discussions because I find they are very one sided a lot of the time.


Speaking of Linux in schools - I do find that out of the many Linux 
distributions that I have used, Ubuntu included, none were up to 
scratch to use in either a production or play environment for me. 
Flaky support - annoying buggy features that waste time instead of 
saving time, just unusual ways of working. That's my 'used to XP' 
side shining through. XP does what I want now - and to be frank, is 
reliable and fast. At least how I have it set up.


I do see the fun in being able to tweak the OS, and

Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source

[Neil Aberdeen]

Interesting as all these discussions are schools will have what's given 
to them and supported under BSF monoploy IT provision (see 
http://www.edugeek.net/wiki/index.php/List_of_awarded_ICT_contracts) 
unless there is resistance and/or failure (see 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7841850.stm)


Gareth Davis wrote:

Something not being discussed, is that there can be any amount of take
up of open source platforms within a school - you don't have to go 100%.

Way back in my sixth form days (1996) between the Head of Learning
Resources, a former student who was now at university and myself - we
replaced the ageing Econet/SJ MDFS network with Ethernet and Slackware
Linux fileservers over a period of several months. The Acorn Archimedes
and Risc PC boxes all had Omniclient to NFS mount the Linux filestores,
and the Win 3.1/95 PCs used Samba. The Linux boxes also provided the
usual central network services such as DNS, DHCP, email and a proxy
server to allow internet access. Later we managed to convince the local
cable TV company to give us a 2Mbps/G703 circuit between us and the
local university for next to nothing to replace the ISDN line coming out
of one of the servers.

With the central infrastructure changed it really didn't matter what the
machines ran. At the time it made sense that the rooms teaching
vocational courses used Windows OS and Microsoft applications, and other
areas could continue to use the Acorn machines as the software was
perfectly up to the job. If you could format a document in say,
Impression Publisher on an Acorn, then using Microsoft Word or
Wordperfect on a PC afterwards really wasn't a big learning curve.
Although some of the Acorn Risc PCs did have Intel coprocessor cards so
could run Windows 95 as well as Risc OS. Quite what they are using now I
don't know, I expect Active Directory has made things a little more
complicated to maintain the single sign on environment we had set up
then.

Things have moved on in the last 12 years, but I think if Acorn were
still in existence then schools probably would still be using them, as
the skills are transferable - and the machines are designed to be used
in an classroom environment. But once they were no longer available
schools had a choice, either bring in another platform to teach
'transferable skills' (Mac, or PC/Linux), or get the PC/Windows platform
and teach the 'correct' skills first time. As has already been
mentioned, the knowledge of the staff has to be taken into account so
chances are PC/Windows was the comfortable choice. But schools have
already made a transition away from Risc OS to Windows, so another
transition may not be out of the question.

IMHO if the Linux environment was as well developed as it is today when
Acorn closed down, then I can see how a lot of schools could have moved
straight across. As it was common practise to teach 'transferable
skills' from a non Windows platform then. Now I think there would have
to be some very clear cut benefits to convince schools and parents that
it was a good idea.

  

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Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source

[Neil Aberdeen]

Although this rant is impassioned and detailed it's almost comically 
misinformed. What's happening in education IT(C) is the imposition of a 
£45bn corporate cash cow called Building Schools for the Future (BSF) - 
through which the government is shamefully entering into yet more PFI 
relationships. The scorched earth Christopher suggests is impossible is 
already happening as more than 20 local authorities have struck deals 
with managed IT service suppliers such as RM under BSF. As a consequence 
local control, flexibility and in-school knowledge about IT services is 
evaporating. BSF schools will have what the supplier supports 
(essentially Microsoft) at prices determined by long-term monopoly 
contracts. The issue of Open Source remains important - Btw it is not 
true that OS is unknown in education - Moodle.org is a good 
example


Christopher Woods wrote:
Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all 
find this interesting...


"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the 
primary operating system used in state schools free and open source"


http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/




I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this
concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools.


I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final
year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that
my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only
person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long
time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in
part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that
Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got
one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most
part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the
administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the
staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics
department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the
photocopiers I think, but that was about it.


So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and
managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet
system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D), a gradual move from Acorn to 95
machines, then to 98 with more and more intricate networking infrastructure.
He had little money and worked with what he had available to him within
budgetary constraints him local and national suppliers. This meant that, by
the time the school got proper wedges of funding for IT, the school already
had a firmly established userbase of Windows 9x machines, gradually making
the move to 2000 then to XP as time went on.


Site licenses for educational software are costly, and I would put money on
the fact that just about all educational software is still written solely
for the Windows OS. Chicken and the egg scenario here, but if you want
definitive figures just go to BETT and do some empirical research to find
out. (I bet I'm right). Also, historical investment in infrastructure cannot
be ignored, and quite often you have scenarios where you build up
relationships with suppliers and distributors and so can secure good deals
for all sorts of things. When you have limited manpower and man hours to
maintain a network used all day every day by hundreds of students and staff
alike, you can't afford to have 'exotic particles' introduced into even a
closed loop system. Plus, there are so many other outside influences and
requirements (right down to the cacheing systems many schools used back when
ISDN was the only reality for connectivity, before the Grids for Learning
were properly established) that you could not expect to have a system being
migrated over to some bizarre and funky FOSS alternative OS.


Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would
use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody
curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were
tied. Other times, it was a cost/benefit analysis. Sure, FOSS alternatives
to "CAD/CAM" were available, I'm sure, but did they work as well as CAD/CAM,
play nice with all the hardware the graphics and control tech departments
had, AND fully support all the old work and files students had created? You
can't just rip and replace in an educational scenario.



Given that many schools' IT infrastructure development was so organic and
self-funded throughout the 90s, they are now in the situation where it is
almost completely impractical to start from scratch with a FOSS OS and FOSS
software, making sure that interdependencies aren't broken, networking works
as well (or as expected) as prior to the switch, and students - and staff
alike - aren't 'de-familiarised' with the setup. With any major transition
such 

Re: [backstage] Percentage of License fee going towards DRM?

[Neil Aberdeen]

I would like to I would like to know what percentage of my license fee 
will go towards funding of Seb Potter's employment - so that
I can withhold that amount from my payment, or seek a refund of that 
amount back from the BBC.

;-)


Seb Potter wrote:


On 27/02/07, *Jim Gardner* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:


I would like to know what percentage of my license fee will go
towards funding the proposed iPlayer services which are only to be
made available to people stupid enough to be using Windows - so that
I can withhold that amount from my payment, or seek a refund of that
amount back from the BBC.

If anyone knows a reliable way of working out this figure, please
discuss.



This is just my personal opinion, and not that of my employer.

Are you a BT customer? If so, you could try to demand a refund of the 
part of your line rental that goes towards providing phone boxes for 
those people that don't own a mobile, or towards provision of 
telephone services in rural areas for those that don't live in a city.


Pay council tax? Why not ask for a refund for provision of social 
services to those people that require social services.


Pay income tax? All those people that don't have jobs or need medical 
care or use any of the thousands of public services that you don't. 
You could cut your payments down to only those services you use.


If you're actually interested in protesting in a productive manner, 
you could join the public consultation and raise the issue of platform 
independence: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consult/open_consultations/ondemand_services.html.