Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Open Source School in print

We've just been featured in an article in the Education Gazette, the most widely read school publication in New Zealand. This is really exciting for us, because from the outset we've wanted to spread the word about how good Open Source software is and what is possible with it. Here's an extract from the article:

"We wanted to offer our students a wide range of powerful tools without being crippled by excessive software licencing costs. To provide the range of software tools we wanted, we would need to pay several thousand dollars per computer, which would be on top of the purchase price of the hardware. We also value openness, transparency, and the learning community, but compelling potential collaborators to purchase software before they could work with us seemed to run contrary to our values. With proprietary software, information is locked up inside a case (or file format). Others must have the right application in order to unlock that file and decipher the information it contains. It's not open, not transparent and not egalitarian. If the information is contained in a Photoshop document, it costs the other person $1200 for the privilege of unlocking that document and to begin collaborating with me."

The full article is available online here.

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