Re: [LUG] Re: What is/was your work desktop? was Re: [LUG} SIMS

[Tom Brough <tombrough@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 12:24, Tony Sumner wrote:
> The policy at
> Plymouth is appalling.

I agree, beyond being unconstitutional and a direct violation of the
Declaration of Human rights (freedom of expression), its just not
cricket. 

However I suspect its more to do with Management being scared of FAST,
as they would probably be liable if joe student installed some hooky
software. Since all distributions may potentially contain non-free (as
in freedom) elements this could equally apply to GNU/Linux. Debian does
make it clear which bits are free and which are not, but it doesn't stop
anyone from installing 3rd party non-free software to my knowledge. Of
course with LTSP whereby you are in control of the central server, this
issue is easier to handle.

As I understand it from someone in the know, for FAST accreditation you
have to be able to justify (i.e produce a licence for) the software on a
hard disk sitting on a shelf unattached to any particular machine. This
of course is a little bit impossible to do without installing said drive
in a machine to find out what is installed on it.... Oops it was a blank
disk after all ;-)

When you work for an entity that is going through this (FAST
accreditation )  process you sometimes wonder how anyone working for it
could justify putting up the argument that TCO for Windows is lower than
GNU/Linux/FLOSS, but they do .... frequently ..... I suppose that FAST
would argue that we still need to go to the accreditation procedure even
if we where 100% GNU/Linux/FLOSS.

Tom.


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