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On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 00:41 +0000, Tom Brough wrote:
Even so I don't think there is any written rule that says the Schools can't operate FLOSSIE in parallel. I mean surely Microsoft wouldn't go that far.... would they ?
Didn't MS at one time require organisations to have licenses for EVERY machine, even those which don't actually run Windows? I'm not up on MS licensing so I don't know if this is still an issue.
There is of course an opportunity for GNU/LUGS to provide support to their local schools (special or otherwise) and promote FLOSSIE. But then I have found to my cost that schools have strange ideas when it comes to someone offering free technical advice. Its that strange law that says "we paid a lot for it so it must be good" vs. "hes offering us free independent advice therefore he can't possibly know anything useful"
I think the bigger issue here is responsibility: "If the guy giving us free support screws up our machines, who do we blame? Hang on, it might be MY fault because I let him do it!!! Can't possibly allow that." There was an interesting talk at ManLUG about issues like this recently and one of the ideas that came up was the idea of having a non-profit FLOSS umbrella organisation in the UK, who could be "the people to blame". Management people love to pass on responsibility to other people, especially external organisations, and do not like the take the chance of any responsibility lying with them. Just my 2p. David. -- David Johnson www.david-web.co.uk www.penguincomputing.co.uk -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html