Re: [Hampshire] Persuading a school to start using FOSS

Tony Whitmore wrote:
> Adam Cripps wrote:
>
>> Typically, schools are not that interested in the platform that they
>> use, but are primarily concerned with the support they receive.
>> Switching to Ubuntu on a big scale is not going to happen quickly.
>>
>
> The situation is getting more difficult every day, as the ICT provision
> is included as part of the Building Schools for the Future project. That
> means a county- or region-wide contractor providing and supporting all
> the ICT equipment and software in schools. Generally the contractor will
> provide a central data centre facility and on-site support. It doesn't
> automatically mean that Linux will be excluded, after all a contractor
> could choose to base their proposal around it. (Given that the people
> bidding for these contracts are the "usual suspects" though, it's a long
> shot to find them proposing Linux on the desktop at least.)
>
> The difficulty for people like Craig is that the school has even less
> say over their infrastructure and how it operates under BSF than they do
> now. Even if a sympathetic teacher can be found, they won't be able to
> just install Ubuntu on a machine to play around with.
>

<devil's advocate mode>
I can see how that works; if you have the contract to support the ICT
for a school the last thing you need is to be in 'competition' with a
bunch keen (and possibly even competent) amateurs on site - too many
cooks and all that. And the only way you'll hope to remain competitive
is to stick to the simplest, most easily supported model, rolling it out
cookie cutter style across as many sites as possible. I can see any
level of interference in that would be unwelcome in business terms.
</devil's advocate mode>

That said, is there anything to stop a 'computer club' hooking up a
bunch of donated machines and playing around on a separate, independent
network?

Sean