OStatic

Maybe it's personal bias, but a few of us here at OStatic have wondered why using open source software isn't a foregone conclusion in education.

The BBC has posted an insightful piece on open source software in schools that not only touches on the strengths of the software, but also the complexities of deploying it in these environments.

On Tuesday Microsoft released over 14,000 pages of documentation concerning Sharepoint Server 2007, Exchange 2007, and MS Outlook 2007 as well as the communications protocols used these products. The documentation was released on the companyﾒs MSDN site as part of the openness pledge it made following the recent EU court judgment against the company.

The good news is that open source developers can use the published protocol information to develop clients that interact with Microsoft servers using the same feature sets available to Microsoft software clients. We may finally see open source email and calendaring applications that can natively integrate with corporate MS Exchange servers. Outlookﾒs stranglehold on the enterprise IT email client market may soon come to an end.