[plug] New Zealand Open Source Society's activities

[Richard Henry]

Very interesting.  I've always thought that the most realistic way to bring
schools over from the dark side would be a slow weaning process.  Put
OpenOffice/Mozilla (1.0!, woot, just installed it ;) on the existing Windows
platform, word processing/presentation and browsing being the two main
functions a school computer would be used for.  Then try and promote their
use as much as possible (accent on staff).  You'd probably want to keep them
as far away from an Exchange server as possible too.

Then the next time the school has to re-sign it's licensing with M$, point
out how relatively transparent (and incredibly cheaper) it would be to go
open source and linux, and maintain OO/Mozilla as your primary work tools.
Once you've taken away most of the fear of the unknown, people are much more
open to new ideas.

Of course, the biggest hurdle is, and always will be I think, staff.  Most
staff members don't care whether their workplace saves $$ by going open
source.  They just don't want unnecessary complications in their day to day
work.  They want to use an interface they are used to, one they use at home,
with applications that they know.  As such, they will resist change for the
most part.  Aye, there's the rub.

Rich.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jacqueline McNally 
> [mailto:jacqueline at decisions-and-designs.com.au] 
> Sent: Thursday, 6 June 2002 7:20 AM
> To: plug at plug.linux.org.au
> Subject: [plug] New Zealand Open Source Society's activities
> 
> 
> Open Source wants StarOffice for schools
> 04.06.2002
> By RICHARD WOOD
> 
> The newly formed New Zealand Open Source Society is pitching 
> to get Sun 
> Microsystems' StarOffice and its open source equivalent 
> OpenOffice into 
> schools.
> 
> The society believes StarOffice would be a step towards 
> schools using the 
> open source Linux operating system. Open Source software is 
> free to use, 
> modify and distribute.
> 
> See: 
> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=2044699&the
section=technology&thesubsection=general

All the best
Jacqueline McNally
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/users/zenryaku/

Community Contact, Australia/New Zealand
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
(www.openoffice.org)

Are you a computer angel? (www.ca.asn.au)