I have been thinking for a while about how to get more exposure for Free and Open Source Software. I work in a school district which, like most, is owned by Microsoft. I have tried for several years to get more FOSS on the desktops and I have had only minimal success. Firefox is now installed on most if not all machines, and we have Audacity, GIMP and even Blender on some machines.

My school uses a SIS program called Infinite Campus. The SIS (Student Information System) is the backbone for any school. If you use, are employed by, and/or have high regards for the Infinite Campus company, I strongly advise that you not to read this post, as it may smash your high-held opinions about this fraud into little tiny shards.

Schools in America are held hostage by Microsoft and are being choked one school at a time. We have allowed Microsoft and our State and Federal governments to force us into financing cycles that schools cannot afford.

I've got a pet peeve. I love reading "Why GNU/Linux should be used in schools" articles. My pet peeve is the fact that the main focus of most of these articles is cost. The way it is portrayed by the media turns it into a cheap “alternative” that you use if you can't afford Windows or hate Microsoft.

As schools analyze alternatives to hefty licensing fees, LUGs and Linux-in-education organizations are pointing out that Open Source solutions are better suited to the educational environment, and are only a fraction of the cost.

Edubuntu is a customized version of Ubuntu aimed at children in educational environments. According to the distributions homepage, Edubuntu is "Linux for Young Human Beings." That works out well for me, since I have three of those in my house. I homeschool my children and use Edubuntu on a couple of our computers.

When 3Ghz dual core computers running 2GB of RAM weren't being used for many heavily CPU-intensive applications in a Victorian secondary school library, the school's IT department initially joked about replacing them with older and previously abandoned hardware. Then it saw the serious side.

Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the government’s Office of Fair Trading then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007.