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Story: Microsoft rubbishes school open source report

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Laurence Leach>That's what Microsoft would like you to believe, yes. In actual fact, most organisations adopting Linux see the number of support calls reduce massively because it is more secure, more reliable and doesn't get viruses. The reality is that Linux may be slightly more expensive in the very short term because of training costs, although interfaces like KDE and Gnome are so good these days they're pretty intuitive for most users, and costs reduce massively in the long term because of reduced support costs, open standards removing the reliance on a single company (single point of failure), no more forced upgrades, the list goes on. Plus of course you get the (optional) warm feeling of supporting your local community by buying it and the support from a local company, rather than throwing money down a drain in Redmond.

Personally I think putting open source in schools is a wonderful idea, both for the schools today and the kids tomorrow. Let them grow up in a world where people share and are open about things, rather than one where people guard their knowledge jealously and litigate wildly against anyone that tries to take that away.

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