Re: [school-discuss] RE: Software Freedom Day

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw@openminddev.net>]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2002 7:19 pm, John Nicholls wrote:
> > On Mon, 2002-06-03 at 15:00, Paul Nelson wrote:
> > Hello Folks,
> >
> > We're inviting you to a party. Come join us and celebrate Free
> > Software!
> >
> > http://k12ltsp.org/software_freedom.html
>
> Unfortunately we don't have software freedom in our schools in
> Australia, I offered to set up Linux servers using LTSP (for free)

> to my kid's primary School in Queensland, Australia. Below is the
> response from the headmaster and my response to him
>
> >  Hello John,
> >  Thank you for your letter of 28 May regarding the possibilities

> >  of using Linux in our new technology hub.
> >
> >  While it sounds very interesting, I need to inform you that we
> >  are bound by Education Queensland's policies on this issue.
That
> >  means we need to abide by the User Agreement that Ed Qld. has
signed
> >  with Microsoft to use standard Operating Systems - Windows N.T
4 - in
> >  all schools. I believe it is a 5 year agreement. That limits us
in
> >  terms of what you are proposing. It may be worth while to
explore the
> >  options with Central Office as they are the ones making these
> >  decisions.
> >
> >  Thanks for your continuing interest in this school
> >  Regards
>
> (The Queensland Government in Australia use the phrase "The Smart
> State" in all their taxpayer funded advertising)
>
> Hello Andy,
>
> Thanks for the reply, it is a pity that the Queensland Government
> have taken this rather narrow path. As I said, Linux is used all
> over the World with great success, I understand that your hands
are
> tied which is regrettable. Queensland, "The Smart State", I don't
> think so.
>
> regards,
>
> John

John, have you had a looked at Cygwin-XFree86
(http://xfree86.cygwin.com) and/or VNC? (Easy to install version
from http://www.tridiavnc.com/). Both of these allow *Windows*
computers to essentially act as XTerminals (like in the K12LSTP).
Now that I have finished moving house, registering my own domain
name and setting up my home webserver, I plan to return to my
project to make an install and connection 'Wizard' for both of
these.

My plan here was to promote the use of Linux in a (Windows) school
environment and also potentially in small business.  It provides an
easy, no-risk way of seeing what Linux has to offer, but without
them having to 'giving up' their current environment.  I suspect it
would also manage to get beneath the radar of the above mentioned
agreement.

The project has been stalled from November last year, but I plan to
get back into it again now.  It needs to be somewhat reworked as
Cygwin-XFree86 has progressed somewhat.  I am also in Australia
(ACT), and I think a number of the states are in a similar
situation, not just Queensland.

Anyway, email me if you would like to discuss further.

Rasjid.