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Re: [school-discuss] Answering Rasjid




cfiaime@cfiaime.com wrote:
On Friday 05 December 2003 10:53 am, Marilyn Hagle wrote:


This is sort of Jerry Springer stuff, but in reality, much of the
resisitance to Linux/Open Source in education comes from power stuggles,
professional jealousy and other ridiculous motivators.  Common sense,
cost, efficiency . . . what is good for the students . . . these things
are not factors.

Greetings,

You write the truth. I'm on the K-8 school board in Hartford, Wisconsin. 'Tis a job, let me tell you, to get the tech director and teachers to even LOOK at open source, much less to buy into it.

I am convinced that common sense, cost, efficiency, and the good of the students are the last things on the minds of many teachers and staff while making decisions both about technology and other topics. (These are my opinions, and I do not presume to speak officially for the school board!)

We shall continue to fight the good fight because, in the end, I believe that truth will win. More and more people are getting hacked about the cost of software -- and the lack of compatibility between versions of MS packages.
You might consider a startegy we're using in local governments.

We're finding everything from Intel 386 machines running Win 3.11 with Office 4.2 to Win95 with Office 95 to Win98 with Office 2000. Then newer machines wind up in the managers and directors hands. So, a new machine gets purchased and Joe Blow gets a new XP with Office 2003.

When they send a word document out, their staffs can't open them.

So, in a few locals people have installed OpenOffice. According to one of my associates, locals have about 65% compatibility within the enterprise. But with OpenOffice it goes up to 95%.

Here's the more interesting part - some people have started using OpenOffice as their default. This happened in an engineering department with whom work. And, the admins have just put Linux on the desktops of the people who have familiarity with OpenOffice and they just liked it. Something about the old metal running faster.

OpenOffice 1.1 runs well and it is free as in beer and as in software.

Does this mean, I just spammed you? Funny, people have different opinions about what spam is, but I'm past that.

If this works, please send a donation to Openoffice. Now, it's official.