Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[ian]

On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 09:22, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 09:09, ian wrote:
> > Isn't this unfair discrimination against FLOSS? They specify that MacOS
> > X 10.2 or later is acceptable so how come GNU/Linux isn't? 
> 
> Definitely discrimintation.
> 
> > Also they say an office suite with WP, SS and presentation and that
> > shareware, freeware is unacceptable. Same for E-mail. Does this include
> > FLOSS? ie is OpenOffice.org not allowed?
> 
> I would personally say it doesn't include OOo, or free software, since
> it's not shareware or freeware. However, I would bet they would say it
> does. Explicit guidelines would be useful to include free software.
> 
> > I will be writing on behalf of the OpenOffice.org community and again
> > paper letters on behalf of organisations such as GNU, AFFS, Schoolforge
> > etc are likely to be taken more seriously than an E-mail from an
> > individual.
> 
> I think we (AFFS) probably ought to write a letter. If you're writing
> already, it would be better we get our puppet^Wchairman to "write" it :)

More impact if AFFS writes independently and I write on behalf of OO.o.
We could start by writing to the Chief Exec, Owen Lynch (no relation
;-)) and asking for clarification. If other organisations do too it will
have more impact because that letter then represents a lot of people.

> Are there examples we can use of people (esp. teachers) using free
> software? 

Yes, we just had an enquiry from a teacher who said their LEA insisted
on the spec being the BECTA one and they were not sure about using
OpenOffice.org. We have other schools which use both GNU/Linux and
OpenOffice.org extensively so individual teachers might well want a
laptop with this software rather than Windows and MS Office.


> Also, I remember reading something about Bill G funding
> laptops or something - that's nothing to do with this, is it?


No, AFAIK, that was the E-learning Foundation thing.

-- 
ian <address@hidden>