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On Monday 07 May 2007 15:18, Kevin Lucas wrote: > Worth a look ! if just to see the "Advantages on Case Study 1 " Ring > true for me > > > http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=25908 > -- > Kevin Lucas <kevin.lucas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Minions Shop Cornwall's Top Shop Initial look at the first case study (which, size wise is identical to the school I am involved with) shows a couple of inaccuracies - Firstly, Irfanview isn't an OSS project as far as I am aware, nor does it run natively under Linux. Likewise, MS Office - which is mentioned as being run, despite the school server and computers being listed as 100% OSS - is not open source nor does it run natively under Linux. Star Office is mentioned in the initial information, so I shall ignore that not being OSS. There seems to be some confusion at Becta as to what actually open source software actually means. Irfanview, which, as I mentioned, runs under the Windows OS and not in Linux natively, is not OSS. It is freeware - which is not the same. Looking at the programs being run, it would appear that some form of "emulator" (e.g wine) is used to execute the Windows programs mentioned. I imagine this is due to the requirements of the curriculum - more detail would be useful from Bectra on this. Here in Cornwall, the whole education ICT system (as well as the administration side of things) runs on Microsoft software. I have attempted to discuss this with the County Council on a few occasions, as well as with the various schools I have contact with, but to no avail. The use of proprietary software causes some issues - I was approached by a parent whose child attends a secondary school in the area. They were expected to finish their work at home - no problem with that, the school allows pupils to log into the school servers and download their work to finish it at home. The problem was that the work was done in Powerpoint format. As I explained to the school, Powerpoint is a highly proprietary format - even the often bundled with new PCs MS Works does not read/write Powerpoint files. The only way to work on them is to buy Microsoft Office. The actual work had no need to be in a powerpoint format - it would have been perfectly fine in html or even a word processor format from memory. The school and I had an exchange of emails where they agreed it was worth reconsidering the methods used - however, as far as I am aware, the use of powerpoint is still a common thing. In many discussions with ICT staff from County Hall regarding Open Source, I have always found the staff to be fairly positive on the idea. The problem - as they, and I, see it - lies with the RM tie in. Mark -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html