2 Sore Feet, 200+ CDs, 400+ Teachers: BETT 2009
After having a bit of lay-in this morning (but not as long as I’d hoped for), I thought I should mention what we got up to at BETT last week.
Along with our friends at the OpenForum Europe and helpers from a few other Free Software or Open Source related organisations, we exhibited much of what it is best about FOSS to the international education community.
We had a couple of shiny new Samsung 2343BW widescreen monitors showing off Edubuntu/Ubuntu to full effect. There were a variety of sub-notebook class devices demonstrating various Free OSs and just what £99 can get you if you care to look.
We discussed – sometimes at great length – philosophical, financial, technical, security and educational benefits that can be had from using FOSS solutions in an education context. (Why would anyone in their right mind use proprietary software if they had a choice or a clean sheet to start from?)
We promoted and extolled the virtues of many individual FOSS projects including, Moodle, Elgg, Mahara, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, and countless others.
We met up with colleagues old and new from various places such as: Elonex, Sirius and Alpha Plus. We found some new and interesting products. For me the most exciting was seeing first cross-platform interactive whiteboard solution being demonstrated on Windows, Mac OSX and Ubuntu live by Mimio.
As a comparison to last year, we made contact with nearly 200% more individuals, and gave away around 200 more Ubuntu Desktop CDs (and quite a few Server CDs too).
My personal take on this year’s BETT was pretty encouraging.
- I had many fewer conversations this year that started with me having to explain what FOSS is. And many schools and education authorities are familiar with and already using FOSS successfully.
- There was considerable interest in finding out more and in looking for ways to introduce FOSS into what is a very closed-shop (MS) environment currently.
- There was a really good throughput all week of teachers, ICT staff and Heads/Governors who expressed a passion for FOSS and its use in their schools and colleges.
- There was a great deal of criticism for the lack of leadership from Government regarding FOSS and the way in which the education sector is very largely tied to MS, especially with the SIMS product from Capita. This was a very frequent discussion; how to integrate non-Microsoft products such as OpenOffice.org with the almost ubiquitous Schools MIS platform.
- A healthy dose of scepticism from other visitors made us the educator for a while and hopefully we helped to open some eyes to the possibilities that FOSS can deliver.
- And I met a FAN! After looking at my business card and seeing our logo, the visitor I was talking too grabbed my hand, shook it passionately and declared with some gusto – “You are The Open Sourcerer!”. Fame at last eh. Thanks Phil, it was a pleasure to meet you.
Now the show is over, the stands are torn down, and everyone has left. This is when the real work starts. Following up with all those hundreds of educators who want our help to introduce FOSS into their environment.
My feet are still sore (and this is more than 24hrs after getting home) but it was bloody well worth it. I met some great people and feel as though we have achived a great deal more this year. All being well, next year’s BETT will be even bigger and bolder for us – the planning is already underway.
Vietnam: Will be 100% Open Source
I know this isn’t exactly “new” news, (it’s 2 days old and has appeared on /. I understand) but to me it is really important and should be shouted from the rooftops.
VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communications has issued an instruction on using open source software products at state agencies.
Accordingly, by June 30, 2009, 100% of servers of IT divisions of government agencies must be installed with open source software; 100% of staffs at these IT divisions must be trained in the use of these software products and at least 50% use them proficiently.
Get that! 100% of servers be installed with FOSS (I wonder if they will use Ubuntu?) by the middle of this year.
I mean WOW! Somebody tell Gordon will they?
The article goes on to discuss the desktop, although I guess some of the clarity has been lost in translation but:
Open source software products are OpenOffice, email software for servers of Mozilla ThunderBird, Mozilla FireFox web browser and the Vietnamese typing software Unikey.
The instruction also said that by December 31, 2009, 70% of servers of ministries’ agencies and local state agencies must be installed with the above open source software products and 70% of IT staff trained in using this software; and at least 40% able to use the software in their work.
The above agencies are requested to increase the number of documents and information exchanged among them processed by the above software. By December 31, 2010, all staff at these agencies must be able to use open source software in their jobs.
This is pretty amazing. A sovereign government, mandating the use of FOSS and open standards for document exchange too. And let’s not forget that will bring massive benefits to the Vietnamese citizen. No longer will they have to go and buy, or possibly pirate (see below about cracked software), copies of proprietary software to exchange documents. They can all happily go and use Free Software safe in the knowledge that their government will be able to accept their documents.
I’d like to see what happens if you sent Gordon a letter in ODF?
There is a final, short sentence to this news item that also made me sit up and take note:
The instruction also requests that computer traders not sell PCs installed with cracked software, but open source ones.
BANG goes the Microsoft TAX in Vietnam.
Congratulations to every one who made this happen – I dread to think how much lobbying must have gone on behind closed doors before they got to this point. Can you imagine how M$ must have reacted???
And please pass this story on. I believe this is an announcement worthy of spreading far and wide.
Here’s the URL in it’s full glory: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/tech/2009/01/822425/.
Migrating from Windows
The last Windows computer in our house is very shortly going to be history 🙂
I have been threatening my wife’s PC for quite some time now, but there has been no real motivation to move until today… Our bank called and told her a credit card has been fraudulently used in the last few days. Fortunately they appear to have correctly and swiftly identified the misuse and are dealing with the problem.
However, this experience has obviously caused my beloved (Helen) to start wondering how her details were captured in the first place. She is pretty scrupulous with the shredder, and this particular card is almost only ever used for on-line transactions; so her PC was a possible, if not likely, route for the thieves. The ClamWin AV scan threw up a few nasty sounding files, including some IE.IFrame trojan thing, although they had all been quarantined already. But the fact that Windows is so vulnerable to attack and subsequent compromise when compared to Linux, this saga has just tipped the scales. We now have a good reason to start the final migration of the Lord household.
This evening, I have installed Thunderbird on Helen’s Windows PC and imported everything from her Outlook email client. The import was basically flawless and after changing a few settings she’s now up and running with TB. (Interestingly, her first few comments were very positive: “This looks nice”, “It’s much faster”, “I like the address book layout” and so forth.) I added Lightning and connected her up to our caldav Calendar Server (Cosmo) which is an added bonus for Helen. We all use this for work, family and personal scheduling and Helen had been limited to using web access (simply because Outlook doesn’t support the Caldav standard) which is not the optimum interface to this calendar.
Helen was already using Firefox most of the time but now I’ve asked her to stop using IE altogether.
Helen also has OpenOfice.org (OOo) installed already but has not been using it much as the Windows defaults are [were] set for MSO 2003. This will probably be the area where there will be some new learning as she stops using MSO and starts using OOo but it isn’t that painful to be frank.
I think within a month, I will install Ubuntu 8.10 as a dual boot for a short period just in case she finds there are things that don’t work and then we’ll turn off the malware-that-pretends-to-be-an-OS Windows within a few weeks from then.
She does use iTunes for her work and pleasure so I am thinking we’ll need to have a VM (VirtualBox) running her copy of XP to support that, unless someone would like to offer advice on alternatives. She runs music therapy classes and her material is ripped onto her iPod using Apple’s lossless codec IIRC that iTunes seems to default to. Never having used it myself, nor do I own an iPod I am not the best source of advice on this one so if anyone can help here I’d be grateful.
I can’t think there is much else that will bite us though; she doesn’t have any other proprietary apps I can see that are going to prove troublesome to replace.
One thing that is really important in this story is this ability to run the main applications: Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org, on both Windows and Linux platforms. It will make the transition, for a non-technical user, much less painful than having to switch wholesale over to new apps and a new OS all at the same time. Thanks Mozilla and OOo.
As we go through this migration I’ll write a little more (I might even ask Helen to document her experiences and thoughts). Hopefully it will help others doing, or wanting to do, the same thing.
Microsoft Holes Exploited Again
As if the last security hole in Internet Explorer was not enough, here’s yet another reason to drop Microsoft Software. This time it’s their cash-cow, Office:
Attackers are exploiting the just-patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) by hiding malicious ActiveX controls in Microsoft Word documents, according to security researchers.
“Inside the document is an ActiveX control, and in that control is a line that makes it call out to the site that’s hosting the malware,” said David Marcus, the director of security research and communications for McAfee’s Avert Labs. “This is a pretty insidious way to attack people, because it’s invisible to the eye, the communication with the site.”
This all reminds me of a sieve – full of holes.
If I was a small business using Microsoft application software today, I would be dropping it faster than a red-hot rock. If I was a CTO I would be planning now how to migrate away.
OpenOffice.org will protect you from malicious ActiveX in documents, Firefox for web browsing and Thunderbird for email will do the same whilst allowing you to continue to use the Windows OS as you plan the final step to freedom. Ubuntu will complete the process.
If you need help, there are companies out there who can provide support and technical assistance. 😉
BBC: Internet Explorer Security Alert
Users of the world’s most common web browser have been advised to switch to another browser until a serious security flaw has been fixed.
The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.
So, apart from being a crap browser at actually rendering web pages according to the standards, it also opens up your computer to a “serious security flaw” (as if we didn’t know that already).
Here’s my recommendation for curing this ailment. Permanently:
- Get Firefox for your Windows computer right now!
- Get Thunderbird for your Windows computer today and get away from Outlook/Outlook Express.
- Get OpenOffice.org for your Windows computer and marvel at the free office application suite and ponder why you have been paying so much for M$’s bloatware in the past.
- Then, once happy with the above, Get Ubuntu (which has all of these wonderful applications and much more)and then get rid of that malware masquerading as an operating system called Windows.
- Enjoy trouble-free Free computing for evermore.
Simple.
Thanks to oly on the #ubuntu-uk irc channel for pointing this story out.
OpenOffice.org saves you £30Million/day…
… by my reckoning at least.
Take a look at this chart (click for a bigger image):
That looks to be a rough average of about 300,000 downloads of the free and open source OpenOffice.org application suite every day for the last 28 days, which means about 8.5Million downloads this month. So to me, that works out something like this:
If MS Office is worth about £100 (I guess that’s a reasonable average price) then that’s about £30Million pounds worth of software being downloaded for free every day.
In the last 28 days, that works out at about £840Million, or in US Dollars about $1.25Billion at the current exchange rate.
Now according to the OpenOffice.org’s bouncer today (02/12/2008), there have been a bit less than 18Million1 downloads so far since the release of OOo 3.0 on the 13th October. Or, to put it another way:
worth of software since launch.
How much does our government spend on MSO licenses each year? Think they should stop wasting their money? Fortunately, if it carries on like this, they will probably have to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 😉
[1] Please see the Bouncer FAQ for more details on what is recorded, but be aware that this number is probably very low in actuality:
Does the Bouncer provide the full story?
No! – it only records downloads started a single point, the OpenOffice.org download page. It omits:
- downloads which people make directly from mirrors
- downloads via other mechanisms, such as peer-to-peer networks
- downloads from other third-party repositories – including GNU/Linux distributions (see next question)
Note also that the Bouncer logs when it successfully redirects someone to a download site – if the user chooses not to download, or cancels the download, then the Bouncer will not be aware.
