• less pressure on the instructors and students as well
• tools they could play around with and not be too afraid to make mistakes
• there are tools that could be fitted within her budget

It is awesome to read case studies that show us that installing Linux on their school computers, etc. It is never easy to just switch. (Is proprietary software an addiction? A habit? Sounds like it sometimes.) In any case, setting up a new system could be tricky and those who see the need to change into a completely free and open source software the management and staff who would be in charge of it will need assurance of these changes. Unixmen gives us an article about Desktop4Education.

Schools have a limited budget and licenses do cost a lot. In this case a teacher started a project to provide a solution to free the school from paying licenses as well as have something that is easy to network and administer. Helmuth Peer was the one who launched it. Eventually, there have been perceived economic benefits of using open source software in schools.

There have been extensive research on software packages. What’s good about them is that they highlighted the needs of each grade level. I think that these are valid points of consideration.

In this study in Austria, they note that slow migration is practical, as seen in the case of the secondary school of Rechte Kremszeile. This study is encouraging when it comes to migrating to open source software. Another lesson learned from this is that goverment intervention is a factor too. If government will help in the preparation of migration to open source software. This is something that might be critical because public schools will be the beneficiary. If there will a good adoption plan that’s supported by the government, that will influence other schools as well.

Post from: New Linux User

Matt Asay’s blog entry challenges this idea of an open-source apps store. He pointed out:

But this almost seems counterproductive for Novell. For years open-source companies have had to combat the idea that “open source” is synonymous with “free.”

So with that, would a store be really helpful to new users who have been used to Windows and buying software from online stores?

I think that the pressing issue here is how do we address the mentality of users. Opening a store with totally free software might be counterproductive indeed, as pointed out by Asay. If you have a store with everything on its shelf is free, would that lead to users always thinking about software being free as in free beer? Well, repositories do have free for download and installation software so people could think that it’s free as in free beer and that’s that.

Will Novell be selling software eventually? I wonder. What do they see that repositories do not address well?

I think that repositories are good enough to meet the needs of users. A store might get confusing because the analogy is skewed if they will offer only free (as in free beer) software. Some stores do offer freebies but they still have something to sell that is their specialty.

Also, this store and repositories issue is a reminder that as advocates of free and open source software, we should find ways to teach others about it well. If it involves making better analogies for the new users, then we should do that. We cannot let people be confused these things.

Post from: New Linux User

To help you get started, check out this list: The Complete Guide to Open Source and Free Software.

Post from: New Linux User