Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called for the NSW state government to toe the line on the federal plan to provide computers to all schools nationwide.
Kevin Rudd
(Credit: PM's office)
The state has been in troubled talks with the federal government about the additional installation and support costs associated with the PC funding. The initiative is currently in its second round, but NSW wants an extension of the deadline for applications.
"We intend to get on with the job, and I believe it's very much in the interests of the schools and school kids of New South Wales that the NSW government cooperates with us on this important reform," Rudd told reporters today.
The comments saw Rudd backing a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week in which the politician expressed disappointment at the NSW government's decision to ask principals to hold off on applying for the funding.
"An extension is not appropriate because it would delay funding for computers to all school sectors across the other States and Territories and Independent and Catholic school sectors in New South Wales," said Gillard at the time.
Per my comments at related story - see http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista-shunned-in-business-survey/0,130061733,339292397,00.htm
The question of software and support costs comes down to what OS you run. I think Ubuntu is now far more secure, stable, less-viral, easy-to-use and has far lower total cost of ownership than ANY proprietary OS. Besides, you get full office software, great photo-editing, typesetting, video editing etc software all for free and with auto-updating.
Interestingly, it may take the success of the One-Laptop-Per-Child project in Africa to confirm to OECD-country education departments that Ubuntu is the 'free/open' way to go. Then we'd see an interesting phenomenon where the first-world will learn IT lessons from the third-world.
I'm still laughing from hearing the NSW Education Dept's claim that it can't/won't accept the free computer for each high school student from the Rudd Federal Government on the grounds that the software and support costs will cripple the education budget. Someone should show the minister how a cloned Ubuntu drive can be copied in just minutes (as no separate licensing muck-around per PC) and how a user logged in as 'Guest' can do all manner of browsing but not EVER cause a stuff-up on the system, irrespective of what malware sites are visited.
The biggest costs for any PCs in public or semi-public areas is when people screw-up what was running. The retailers like Harvey Norman have staff running around all day re-establishing the display on all the laptops... after customers fiddle with each keyboard as they pass.
WinXP never asked if you objected to the storage of a executable file in the program area of the system; Vista asks all the time, to the point where people disable the feature; Linux asks only once per 3-10 days when there are real program updates available, but Linux prevents you from by-passing this important security feature.
The Rudd government should not leave such policy up to the states inept administrations. Putting a fullish range of free open-source applications on all such PCs should be done as part of the Commonwealth tender. Then all the schools need do is add a wireless router somewhere within 40m of the PCs and Linux will keep it all updated (or dupe/clobbered from a master copy as deemed appropriate). That way, you don't even need to look at what files students may have left copies of in user-space at the end of each week/term/year. All of this comes about because there is no individual licensing, so there is no hard-to-hack authorisation numbers/files that have to be present and different from their neighbour's etc. The commercial OSs are inherently designed to be messy/difficult/expensive to maintain, because it is that difficulty which prevents software piracy. Shift to a platform where piracy is irrelevant, and presto, support costs diminish by 70% or more.
Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)