http://www.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/ Education and Technology by Steve Dembo Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:24:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 http://www.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/#comment-344 Teach42 » Blog Archive » Podcast: Free and Open Source Software redux Fri, 18 Mar 2005 02:07:54 +0000 http://www.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/#comment-344 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is definitely a hot topic in education. I’ve written about it before and podcasted about it as well. When I went to the ICE [...] Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is definitely a hot topic in education. I’ve written about it before and podcasted about it as well. When I went to the ICE […]

]]> http://www.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/#comment-9 wheat Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/#comment-9 Amen. Wherever I work, I always try to turn my employers onto the beauty of open source. And, in education, I can't understand why there exists such a slavish devotion to expensive proprietary software. It has its place, of course, and there are solutions for those who need to run a few closed-soruce apps. But why, for example, would you pay money to run IIS when Apache is free and better? For that matter, I'm eager to see some public schools shift to OpenOffice or finally make the jump to Linux on the desktop. We have a chance to help them understand the benefits. You can start simply: by running some OpenSource apps on Windows, for instance. Maybe Novel's investment in Linux will help, since many public schools already have a relationship with that company. If budgests are tightening, that souldn't just affect employee pay and benefits. It should drive change in other areas as well. Amen. Wherever I work, I always try to turn my employers onto the beauty of open source. And, in education, I can’t understand why there exists such a slavish devotion to expensive proprietary software. It has its place, of course, and there are solutions for those who need to run a few closed-soruce apps. But why, for example, would you pay money to run IIS when Apache is free and better? For that matter, I’m eager to see some public schools shift to OpenOffice or finally make the jump to Linux on the desktop. We have a chance to help them understand the benefits. You can start simply: by running some OpenSource apps on Windows, for instance. Maybe Novel’s investment in Linux will help, since many public schools already have a relationship with that company. If budgests are tightening, that souldn’t just affect employee pay and benefits. It should drive change in other areas as well.

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