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Laura, this sounds so much like my school district. It's comparable
to the world of athletics in that decision makers seem to need big
corporation backing, in this case, for their technology. It's
almost like it's a security blanket, or perhaps a valid scapegoat.Â
If things don't go as planned, you can hang the blame on a big
company and let their tech people fix it. I don't know that this is
the reason, but I know how much money my district has spent on
Microsoft when open source could have done the job just as well (and
with significantly fewer security vulnerabilities) and it's sad
considering the condition of some of the middle school textbooks
that could've have been replaced with that money.. Christopher Whittum On 10/07/2015 08:20 AM, LM wrote:
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Christopher Whittum <cdwhittum@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Charles, this unfortunate and expensive venture by the UN is that kind of thing that we're that leaves us shaking our heads, wondering "Why?". I am frankly appalled at how many bureaucracies on all levels steer away from open source in lieu of proprietary technology. This mentality wastes money and is shockingly shortsighted.I seem to run across these types of decisions a lot where I work. When I ask why we're going with "brand names" over free alternatives, I'm told the main issue is support. They're trying to get a computer for every student and are still a long way from that goal. I mentioned the idea of using Raspberry PIs or similar inexpensive devices so that each student could experiment with them and have their own device. They didn't like the idea because there wasn't a large company to back supporting every device in case anything went wrong or had to be maintained. They're using a lot of Apple ipads in the district and they're only now finally going to start using Chomebooks as well because they're working out a contract with Google to support them. (I mentioned less expensive alternatives like Chromebooks or Ubuntu tablets a few years ago.) Unfortunately, it's the same mentality that leads to out-sourcing. They'd rather have someone else be responsible than do it themselves. Unless an Open Source product is backed by a large stable company like Google or Red Hat, they don't want to use it. That means they miss out on all the wonderful programs and products that don't have a large support force or do you require some DIY work. Cost isn't the main issue in these cases, it's who's responsible if something goes wrong. ### To unsubscribe from the schoolforge-discuss mailing list: Send an e-mail message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with no subject and a body of "unsubscribe schoolforge-discuss" |