Matt Hartley, writing for Internet.com, suggests to the country Let’s Use Stimulus to Boost Open Source in Schools.

His argument, in summary, is that the stimulus funds to be delivered to schools gives those schools the perfect opportunity to address the upfront costs of switching to Linux and an open source software stack. Then, for years and years after, the schools will benefit from the lower cost and longer lifespan of hardware and software running the open source stack.

This stimulus bill may be the only shot of fresh federal funds education is going to get for a very long time. This means whatever approach US education opts for regarding technology, it had better be something that can be sustained when the stimulus funds run out. This is where I see open source software and Linux stepping up to the challenge in a way that’s not practical for Windows.

Hartley also points out that at least two states have already made significant investments in open source, paving the way for others to follow: Indiana and Ohio.

Indiana installed 22,000 computers with Linux and open source in 2006 in a program to cut costs per machine so it can work toward a one-to-one student to computer ratio. In 2007, an Ohio school district began migrating all of its computer systems to Linux and open source as well.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 10:50 am and is filed under GNU/Linux, Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.