[ubuntu-uk] EDM179

[Toby Smithe]

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 12:16 +0000, James Tait wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> There's been quite a lot of discussion about this while I've been away
> over the Xmas period, and since I've been so vocal on the subject in the
> past (I'm like a dog with a bone!) I'd like to offer my tuppence worth
> on the subject.
> 
> Beginning with the article from Computer Active, I agree that it starts
> off sounding very positive before trundling off into the
> already-discussed Becta press statement, but I'll believe it when I see
> it.  It's no secret that this country has a pretty appalling record when
> it comes to Government-led IT projects and I wouldn't expect a wholesale
> switch to FLOSS in education to be any different.  If it does go ahead,
> we can only hope that we are able to help make it a raging success, or
> risk tarnishing the image of our community terribly.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Government policy change to make
> FLOSS the preferred solution except where not reasonably practical.  I
> just think that with the history of Government IT cock-ups, this might
> just become another one, and FLOSS could end up being a very useful
> scapegoat.

It wouldn't be run by the government. As I have discovered through my
various communications, schools will not accept "solutions" where there
are no "support providers". Of course, open source is different to
proprietary, where there are many readily available support providers.
There are some for open source applications (Canonical), and we should
take advantage of that at least. Or provide our own, cost-effective
support, and I hardly see IRC as not cost effective!

I find it astonishing that people are more prepared to support software
which they cannot see the code. I don't understand how debugging
happens. It doesn't, and this is why people are always complaining that
support departments are terrible. We can fix this!

-- 
Help me get to Venezuela!
http://tibsplace.co.uk/venezuela