[Linux-aus] New Federal Govt's Education/PC plans

[Marco Ostini]

Hey Phil, et al.

It makes good sense to me that we should immediately lobby the government 
to encourage schools to use FOSS.

In practice however, given that a lot of the people we'll be talking to 
might be somewhat green and strain to be interested, we should.

	1) Give clear, simple, practice examples of what can be provided.
	2) Give a hands on demonstration and explain simply the benefits.
	3) Emphasise that we don't represent a vendor and FOSS works on all
	 mainstream vendors products. Support is available from vendors.
	4) Emphasise that it is a sustainable solution that saves taxpayer 	
	dollars, and make sure that it most certainly is.

This seems an especially good time for us to provide a little enlightenment.

What do other LA people think?

I was also thinking of inviting one of the new cabinet members along to the 
LCA in Melbourne, unless someone has beat me too it...

Cheers,
Marco

Phil Rhoades wrote:
> People,
> 
> Given that the new PM, Kevin Rudd, has indicated that ensuring that
> every senior high school student has a PC is the number one priority for
> the new government - has there been any discussion about how the FOSS
> community is going to respond to this?  It seems we should be working on
> proposals immediately.  My personal view is that the government should
> make an in-principle decision to install a FOSS OS on the PCs and let
> the users (schools) decide if they want to change to a MS OS (at their
> own cost).  I think the PC should be just a wireless client that can be
> easily reset to factory defaults and all the apps and data should be
> handled centrally ala gmail etc.  Of course a FOSS solution like this
> will need a support network, maybe something resembling:
> 
> http://www.healthnetwork.com.au/
> 
> ie
> 
> http://www.schoolnetwork.org.au/
> 
> ?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Phil.
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