September 2003 — Features
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Making the Switch to Open Source Software
During the 2001-2002 school year I was struck with the reality that our computer lab would not meet the demands of our school for another year. The secondhand computers that were donated to us over the years had served us well, but they were beginning to fail regularly. Perhaps of greater concern was the inability of our computer lab to run modern software. Needless to say, it was time for a change.
Greater Houlton Christian Academy (www.ghca.com) is a private school in Maine, and thus d'es not have access to state or federal funding. This meant that financing a new computer lab would be an incredible challenge. As the system administrator, I not only had to consider the cost of upgrading our hardware, but the cost of upgrading our software as well. It soon became obvious that the price of new software was just as much as, if not more than, hardware products.
It was also during this time that I became aware of the software audits costing schools in Oregon many thousands of dollars for violations of their software licenses with Microsoft. This prompted me to research the details of the End-User License Agreement (EULA) that stipulates how proprietary software like Microsoft Windows can be used. I was amazed at the inflexibility of the typical EULA that accompanies today's software and frightened at the stiff penalties for even the simplest violations of these obscure licenses.
Realizing that we would not be able to afford upgrading our lab using traditional software offered by big vendors, I looked to open source, or "free" software, as an alternative. With open source, I could save our school thousands of dollars by purchasing bare-bones computer kits, then installing a free operating system and supporting applications on each computer myself. Open source software would allow me to build our computer lab for a fraction of what schools in our area typically pay. It would also give me the ability to upgrade our software in the future for free, ensuring that we would have the latest in software technology for years to come.
Of equal interest to me was the General Public License (GPL) used to license most open source software. I found it much more flexible and reasonable than the EULAs of proprietary counterparts, which gave me more freedom as the system administrator to customize our computer lab. With the GPL, I would never need to worry about software audits, surprise visits from the Business Software Alliance or unreasonable fines for misplacing my certificate of authenticity.
After much research and testing, our school committed to upgrading the computer lab using state-of-the-art computers running the open source Linux operating system and supporting applications. I will admit that it has taken me some time to personally make the switch from a Windows environment to the UNIX-like environment of Linux.
The 2002-2003 school year was the great test for our new computer lab running open source software - with our students being the ultimate testers. While I expected positive results, I was not prepared for the overwhelmingly promising feedback that I have received from our students, parents and the community. This has definitely been our most successful year for integrating technology in the classroom and teaching the necessary computer fundamental skills needed to succeed in the 21st century.
