Monday, May 09, 2005

Should the taxpayers pay for expensive software?

Some days ago Jostein Gripsrud wrote (in Norwegian) an important article in Dagbladet, arguing against the dependency of a nation like Norway from a monopolistic international sofware corporation. It does not stop there. We should also think about the large sums of dollars payed by public and government offices to a handfull of companies acussed of monopolistic and unfair trade and competition.

In a report appeared in The TES - a British leading education newspaper published by The Times, I learned today that The British Educational Communications and Technology Association (BECTA) is telling primary and secondary schools in the UK to dump Microsoft Operating systems and products in order to save millions.

According to this organization which will publish a report next week:
"Schools which have turned to free software instead of the market leader’s products have saved 24 per cent in tax payers money.

The association analysed costs at 33 schools which use paid-for software, and compared them with 15 which have pioneered the use of free programs, known as open source, and the pared-down hardware to run them.

Average costs, including software, hardware and support costs, were always less per computer in secondaries using open source."



Via Slashdot.com

2 Comments:

Blogger administrador said...

well I´n not agains of free software, but I think before install tha kind of software a study should be done, in order to know how this software will cotribute with the development of th education, and have an idea how much that implementatión will cost.

I mean, the costs of install a free software are nearly zero, but problems starts with the support, because not everyone knows how to work with it, and also mostly of the O.S. aren´t or haven´t a friendly interface, that´s could be the biggest problem with free software.

4:26 AM  
Blogger OjO al Texto said...

I understand your point, Tesne but the idea is to not only to improve technichal knowledge because the friendly interface is happening more and more.

3:56 PM  

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