Should we use proprietary software in public educational institutions?

[moore.bryan]

as an educator in the states, i can let everyone know in my experiences the public school system is VERY resistant to linux/oss. the most common reason given is lack of knowledge by the tech folk themselves. all of them have the myriad of letter following their names, demonstrating their successful completion of ms-sponsored seminars, but seem unable to figure out linux.
as my own little revolutionary movement, i require my students to use openoffice to submit work, use gaim for out-of-school collaboration, etc. i've distributed several ubuntu copies and many of my students have made the switch; well, at least a half-switch... many are gamers, so they keep windows for some of the time.

[Bagboy23]

The EU blew the TCO arguments out of the window with their recent study. They showed using actual market figures rather than sponsored opinion that OSS is a cheaper solution in terms of TCO in more than 95% of cases.

Of course I don't mind if schools use MSO but they should install an ODF plugin and insist that students store files in ODF.

Can you provide a link to this source?

[G Morgan]

Can you provide a link to this source?

Link to EU study.

Here, it isn't short though. Stretches to 287 pages IIRC.

[argie]

Of course I don't mind if schools use MSO but they should install an ODF plugin and insist that students store files in ODF.

I agree strongly with the open standards argument. A student should have the right to use whatever program on whatever OS he wishes on his own computer to do his work.

Most 'computer science' education is extremely childish nonsense where I live. It's full of 'click the start button' and nonsense like that. The way it is currently taught, most of my classmates think Turbo C++ is the language. I've been asked, "Do you have C++?". At first I tried helping, but now, I just give up and say, "No." because I realised they refuse to work anything but Turbo C++ .