Bid to push FOSS in Australian secondary schools

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 03 July 2008 23:08

Opinion and Analysis

Ms Benjamin said nothing had yet been assembled to present to the government to prove the cost-benefits of using FOSS, but the details were available in a range of reports and publications.

"While some of that material is dated, it is still relevant. If anything, the rise of the netbook, or UMPC (ultramobile PC) highlights the growing cost of software over hardware.  If a school has $1000 to spend per computer, and they spend $300 on Linux based eeePCs... that leaves $700 to go towards infrastructure costs, and associated teacher support such as professional development," she said.

"Of course, schools need to assess this in relation to their ICT strategies, but netbooks or UMPCs are more than adequate for all basic computer tasks."

The provision of PCs to secondary schools was expected to figure at a council of Australian governments meeting yesterday but the only references to schools one finds in the final communique issued after the meeting are to "the educational needs of low socio-economic status school communities and improving the quality of teaching in schools and national reform of the vocational education and training sector.

Prior to the meeting, the Federal Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith was quoted as saying: "Parents and school communities expect the computers to be able to operate and the states, if they're hit with these extra costs, they need to explain who'll be paying them. Our point is it should not be parents or school communities who pay the additional costs."

Whether the FOSS group is able to make headway or not depends on how long it is able to keep pushing its agenda. There are a large number of businesses in the country which are more than capable of supporting the kinds of deployments that schools require. Such businesses will have to make a concerted and united bid to try and capitalise on circumstances which have come their way.

Ms Benjamin said no costings had yet been done to compare how much it cost to deploy a PC with proprietary software, one with a proprietary operating system and open source application software, and one with both an open source operating system and application software.

"To my knowledge detailed work on these kinds of comparisons has not yet been done. It would be an interesting exercise. I shall ask around and see if anyone's interested in taking it on, or funding it," she said.