Government sticks to proprietary line: leaves Linux in the dust (Technology & Business) [LWN.net]

Technology & Business takes a look at the Australian government's decision to use proprietary solutions in schools. "When the NSW Department of Education and Training put out a tender for its $150 million 'netbooks for schools' contract, the opportunity for Linux to be used in the State's education system was looking quite possible. The tender specified that all proposed devices must be able to run either Windows or Linux and many of the vendors submitting proposals had been using Linux to some extent. The final decision to use Lenovo Laptops powered by Microsoft's operating system and running proprietary software was a blow to the open source community, and also a blow, say some people to education." (Thanks to Dahna McConnach)

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Government sticks to proprietary line: leaves Linux in the dust (Technology & Business)

Posted Apr 14, 2009 1:27 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

BTW, this is not Australian government - it is the government of one of the states in Australia: New South Wales.

This decision brings no surprises at all. It is also not very important, IMHO. The important bit is that very few kids will be encouraged to understand computing on a level beyond word processing and similar. In other words: there is no depth.

PS. The current NSW government is in a lot of trouble already for not delivering services to its citizens. Spending money on useless MS Office licences isn't going to change that much either way.

Government sticks to proprietary line: leaves Linux in the dust (Technology & Business)

Posted Apr 18, 2009 23:20 UTC (Sat) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

On a related note, at my son's NSW state primary school, the Mac OS computers are mothballed into cupboards because support for Microsoft products is more readily available to the school. The school must keep the unused computers, and hand them over on an exchange basis to obtain new Windows machines. This seems to me a wasteful practice, as I can imagine that the only "use" these fine machines are put to is some destructive recycling. Schools here have little choice but to go with Microsoft if they need external support.