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

[ian]

On Wed, 2003-12-24 at 00:13, Simon Waters wrote:
> ian wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-12-22 at 00:49, Robin Green wrote:
> > 
> >>A pro-private-sector bureaucrat is, I would guess, likely to reply along
> >>the lines of "Assuming what you say is true, why won't/hasn't some 
> >>corporation
> >>do/done that already - they could then sell it to us to recoup their
> >>investment?"
> > 
> > Sun has already done this in effect by buying Star Corp and releasing
> > the code. The reason why they haven't sold to the DfES I guess is that
> > the DfES has not asked them and they don't know what the DfES want. If
> > of course the DfES put out a tender for the work to be done, proving
> > there was a demand I guess there would be many bidders probably
> > including Sun.
> 
> SUN use a licensing scheme that allows them to charge for value added
> components of the product undr Star Office.

They will also provide commercial support for OpenOffice.org if
required.

> Also SUN were on a fairly safe bet with an Office clone that there was
> demand for such a product.

There is demand from Sun itself. It needed an Office Suite for deals
like the recent one with the Chinese Government.

> It is less obvious there is demand for a Linux based School
> Administration system, 

This is really a different issue. SIMS has a monopoly but CMIS is eating
into it and there is at least one FLOSS solution fairly well developed.
The problem is more that individual schools choose their admin packages
often directed by their LEAs, a lot of the cost of such admin is support
contracts anyway. Control over admin systems tends to be by people who
are unlikely to know anything about FLOSS and there are well-established
relationships between the likes of Capita and those responsible for
admin. OpenOffice.org is a much better candidate to get widely into
schools than specialist admin software because it will ultimately be
used by a lot more people for a much wider range of applications.

> so I'm not about to risk many months of my life
> creating it, especialy under a licence where I can ony guarantee selling
> one copy.

You could potentially get a lot of support business, but it would be
very difficult/expensive to break into that particular market. Many have
tried and failed.

> Tom on our list strongly advocates sharing the Curriculum related
> material teachers produce themselves. Making sure if someone scratches
> an itch, that it is recorded (and shared), so to speak.

A good way to do this would be through Schoolforge UK. There is a lot of
teacher produced stuff about, its just fragmented. Presenting it for
download from one recognised site would help.

> > Quite so, but they have to make the transition to seeing things in this
> > way. Mind I would prefer software not to be under Crown copyright. GPL
> > would be much better. 
> 
> Ay, that's the key. Where the software has already been written, let it
> free.

> Rightly or wrongly I fear too many civil servants think if there is
> "value" in their code their department should extract the maximum
> possible value. The result a lot of perfectly good software rots on
> government computers because the departments are set up to sell this
> "property". I know I wrote plenty of it.

I don't know too much education software like this. I think the main
problem is knowing how and where to find it. Not just software but
lesson plans and other resources. A useful DfES project would be to
spend £100m a year setting up a structure mirroring the National
Curriculum for teachers to contribute resources to so that there is
clear continuity and progression supported by FLOSS content from 5-16,
all freely downloadable. ie a standard core. If commercial companies
want to sell "better" stuff they are free to do so but the main
Government obligation is to provide all the basic content to support the
National Curriculum. I should think with £100m a year investment, it
would not take long to get this in place. 

> There was an iniative at one point to share software between
> departments, did anything become of this?

No idea. I should think a lot might be fairly specific stuff not that
helpful to others.
-- 
ian <address@hidden>