From Silicon.com we get news of this pending report from the British education sector:
I noted this report a few days ago and bookmarked BECTA, anxiously awaiting its release. If you read the Silicon.com article a bit more you see that the counterattack has begun:
"There are some 5,000 third party applications available to run on Microsoft Windows operating system but only a handful of applications supported by the open source community. We offer free support and training materials to help teachers and students make the most of their technology."
Of course MS does not discuss the cost of upgrading your applications, the operating system or the database – all at the whim of the proprietary software vendor. The fact is that open source software for all learning applications is cheaper. I say all, because these applications are not mission critical, so even if the open source application only does 80% of what the costly software does, then it’s still good enough. However, in many cases the open source version is even better than its proprietary counterpart. Take for instance OpenOffice, which can save a slide presentation as a PDF or even a Flash file (with no extra software), making it a great tool for school projects. You can install as many versions of OOo as you want on all of your school computers and students’ home computers for free. Beat that.
Update: The report, "Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs" is now available as a PDF. The conclusions are favourable towards open source, but not overly enthusiastic.
