Oldham, England Brings Open Source To Schools

by Sam Dean - Sep. 16, 2008Comments (6)

It's good to see news about continuing adoption of open source software in schools around the world. I've written before about how doable it would be for many American schools to reduce costs, increase efficiency and arm kids with Linux notebooks through open source adoption. I've also concluded that excessive love of the Mac and the improbability of the arrival of paperless processes will keep many schools from taking the FOSS leap. However, schools in Oldham, England--a metropolitan borough of Manchester--are leaping.

Not only are Oldham schools adopting open source software to deliver Internet-based services but Oldham Council appears to have done its homework. The Linux-based lash-up they've chosen uses open source Squid cache and web proxy software along with MySQL and WebSense filtering and security software. MySQL was reportedly chosen because "it's free and simple to use."

Why is it that Europe is so far ahead of America in this kind of thinking? In this post, I  looked into another effort from England analyzing how schools could use open source to go paperless, and arm kids with Linux notebooks. In a subsequent post, I cited another post providing an interesting analysis of some specific software tools that could help schools go open source.

I drew a pointed rebuttal from a reader in that last post. An IT administrator for public schools wrote this: "Until open source can displace one of our two existing platforms (Mac or PC), adding a third platform will require a third administrator, at a likely cost of $65-75K/year (salary & benefits). It's hard to argue the cost savings when you have to add headcount."

It is a good point that support and administration resources are often weaknesses for open source software solutions, but I'm a firm believer that with the dire funding issues that many school districts face, creative solutions for saving money through open source adoption are doable. For example, let's take $75,000 a year as what it would cost for a school district to hire an IT person skilled in open source.

How could the district make up that cost? I think it could be done easily. The software licensing costs and the hardware costs for the proprietary platforms that schools favor are money pits. Slash those, hire a skilled administrator who can handle all open source implementations for all schools in a district, and the district ends up with money to spare.

I'm not saying I think this will happen on a widespread basis. I'm just saying it's doable and worth discussion.


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6 Comments
 

Adding a third platform would require a third admin? What kind of ninny admins are running our schools? I work daily with 3 platforms (Windows, Linux, and Netware) at my job, and occasionally have to tinker with something more exotic. And yes, this is a guvermint job I do. This is what's holding us back; folks who go out and get their MCSE and decide they're "Microsoft guys" and expect to spend the next 30 years rebooting windows boxes and learning nothing new. I wish I could just be a "Linux guy" only, but the job requires Windows and Netware, so I learn it.

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This is what I keep saying too!

I work as IT tech at one of the largest schools in Oldham but we're all Windows here still. Office is very firmly entrenched and the admin staff are currently tied to a number of obscure proprietary windows programs for things like door systems. Saying that most machines do have OOo installed now as an alternative to Ofice and I also installed FF, GIMP, Inkscape and 7zip on all ours schools computers.

However, the tide has certainly turned with Vista and we can't continue patching up creaky old XP forever. I see Linux migration as inevitable unless MS seriously surprise us all with a good, open source XP successor (yeah right ;) what with all the major hardware vendors supporting Linux now.

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We to use opensource heavily in our grammar school (kent). A combination of opensource software on linux clients and a linux server backbone. The *third* administrator does not exist here, as the network manager is able to use windows, linux and mac so no problem in headcount exists. I think our real *third* administrator is the free one from the students themselves, many ICT sixth formers at our school go on to code more software for the school and some help out in the technician labs. Although England may be ahead in leaps and pounds apparently in Open-source, i think it still lacks where it counts. Our district is in wave 5 of BSF which will outsource all our ICT to a managed solution (mainly all Microsoft funded) even if your 'ahead of the crowd' so to speak, every school in the district gets converted to the bidder no matter what, winner takes all. In the end money wins over idealism it seems.

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Hi


Thanks for the useful information


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I work as web master in NY. Mostly we use Windows platform for our all developments and to be honestly we never fee that we would be Linux Guy. Recently Microsoft introduced new Windows 7 beta which holds many new features including networking and security etc. There are lot of opportunities to upgrade with Windows as well with Linux.

"To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it"


It's true that Linux has made great strides in becoming a standard part of the computing landscape, but it has made far more inroads into the Unix space than into the Windows desktop space. Despite that, there's simply no doubt that the desktop—and Microsoft—are the current target of many open source software projects. These projects are conceived, executed, and extended to compete with Microsoft's desktop applications.


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Linux is surely rocking as all major hardware vendors are prefering it and they will keep doing unless Microsoft comes to open source field. I love using linux!


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