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Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [William Poaster] on Saturday 14 January 2006 23:35 \__
>
>> Schools do not get good value for money from current Microsoft licensing
>> agreements, IT professionals in the education sector claimed this week.
>>
>> In a series of interviews with education professionals at the BETT
>> educational technology show in London, ZDNet UK found broad consensus that
>> Microsoft educational licensing agreements are too expensive.
>> "A lot of schools are looking at open source ? budgets come into play
>> here. Microsoft licensing takes a big chunk out of schools budgets. The
>> biggest issue is cost, basically," said Michael Allen, ICT technician of
>> Swanmore College of Technology.
>> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020381,39247005,00.htm
>>
>> One guy commented that there should be a 50% reduction in price. That's
>> still too high, IMO as a UK taxpayer.
>
> School and Open Source should be very symbiotic. What better tool will you
> have for teaching the basics of computers? Icons lead to miscomprehension
> among technical scholars.
The critical issue is lock-in, which is so often ignored. Once you get
away from the lock-in, price is something which can be negotiated, but
whilst you're locked in, which you always are with Microsoft, you're
merely the victim of their pricing policy.
>
> Deuterogamy opens the door to generic skills. And the command-line is not
> all there is to it. Ease of use is certainly offered by GNOME and KDE, not
> just Windows. There are schools around here which have already transformed
> to Linux in the classroom, as well as the server rooms. Moodle is quite a
> powerful CMS and Linux workstation that sell at GBP 150 benefit both the
> school clusters, its budgets, and the homes of the less fortunate to whom
> pricy licences are not affordable.
>
> Everybody wins.
Precisely.
--
end
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Such a fine first dream!
But they laughed at me; they said
I had made it up.
|
|
