Summary: A new snapshot of the battle for the minds and hearts of technical staff in academic institutions

THIS is a subject which affects a lot of people. We explained this before, as recently as just a couple of weeks ago, in relation to the Open University, which is now adopting Free software, for a change. From the news:

The British Open University took upon itself in 2005, together with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the task of bringing online learning into the future. Unusual is that it didn't decide on Moodle for merely financial reasons or that it didn't go for professional support.

Worth mentioning is also the following new article about the role of the British government in Microsoft lock-in (a subject last addressed over the weekend).

Mr Brown Goes Shopping for the Nation's Software

I am sure many of you know that we have signed and resigned an MOU with Microsoft which stands for 'Memorandum of Understanding'. Many will also know that UK plc is Microsoft's biggest European customer.

So, given the above, how many of you know what we spend on MS software?

I'll tell you. Only the folk who sign the cheques know and they are not telling.

When HM Gov had a FOI (Freedom of Information) request lodged last year asking (not unreasonably) how much we as a nation helped swell the software giant's coffers, they were told to 'go away'. When it was followed up, the Courts upheld Microsoft's 'protection of commercial confidentiality' claim.

In other words 'really go away you nosy, plebian taxpayer'.

But anyway, today's latest problem is caused by lazy IT staff that are passing (externalising) the costs down to students, who will be coerced and used by Microsoft in due time.

Flinders University gives open source the boot

[...]

The Adelaide-based university signed the deal [with Microsoft] after a 12-month trial of the internally developed open source platform, Google and other hosted email systems.

Did they receive Microsoft's Live@edu bribes in order to do this? ⬆