<div dir="ltr">Jim...  I just had an idea. I browsed over to <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html</a> for a starting point to develop rhetoric in explaining why providing and encouraging FOSS is good...  and while there I couldn't help but laugh at the horrible arguments that RMS makes to what I had thought was a page for the "everyday computer user". I don't know of any school teachers or administrators, let alone even network administrators, who would actually appreciate the ability to "study, change, copy, and redistribute [word]."  It seems to me that when these people are shown such technical reasons for anything, they simply ignore it based on inability to comprehend...  Not that we use such silly arguments, but I think that often times our arguments and points come across not only as elitist, but also as over-technical and as not addressing the simple issues at hand.  (I think I'm generally more elitist-sounding when it comes to this than most, so I take the blame on that front)  : ) In any case, it would be a good project for this LoCo team to begin to build and create a set of rhetoric and arguments, backed up by solid facts and statistics, to promote the use of FOSS in schools and other educational institutions.  I think a lot of other LoCo teams could definitely use this, and it would also prove to really bolster our demonstrations at TIE each year. Anyone interested in heading up such a project or collaborating with others?  I'll be honest and say I have little to no time  available right now, but that could change very much in the coming weeks. Let me know, David <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 3:05 PM, David Overcash <<a href="mailto:funnylookinhat@gmail.com">funnylookinhat@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Those are great sources... thanks Richard! Jim, while I don't have any good arguments or ammo for you right now (other than common sense, which your admins seem to lack), I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for you.  As I am going into education I figure it'd be a good idea to prepare myself for these seemingly idiotic yet very necessary arguments.  Sorry you're getting stuck in a lame beaurocracy. :( -David <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"> On 7/26/08, Richard Guenther <<a href="mailto:richskyline@gmail.com">richskyline@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Jim Hutchinson > <<a href="mailto:jim@ubuntu-rocks.org">jim@ubuntu-rocks.org</a>>wrote: > >> >> If anyone has any ammo for this or similar arguments please share. This is >> the year we write a new tech budget and I am going to speak very loudly >> against spending money on software for which there are free alternatives >> and >> some real data/research would help. >> > > Here's a start, although you may have seen some of these.  More stats from > England and Europe in these, I believe.  The second link has it's best > sections near the bottom of the page. > > <a href="http://spidertools.com/oss.php" target="_blank">http://spidertools.com/oss.php</a> > > <a href="http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html" target="_blank">http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html</a> > > <a href="http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=A0CBF910-D629-4ABA-86D7-590D2590A521" target="_blank">http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=A0CBF910-D629-4ABA-86D7-590D2590A521</a> > > Also, this is cool: > > <a href="http://www.k12openminds.org/" target="_blank">http://www.k12openminds.org/</a> > > > Richard > </div></div>-- Sent from Gmail for mobile | <a href="http://mobile.google.com" target="_blank">mobile.google.com</a> </blockquote></div> </div>