Bye, bye proprietary software!

A week ago, the British were becoming aware of the enormous sums spent for the administering and maintaining of the computer systems fitted with proprietary software; the �Open Source Software in Schools" study confirms their initial appraisals and proposes OSS (Open Source Software) alternatives to replace proprietary solutions.

BECTA, British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, compared the introduction of information and communication technology in 48 schools and compared costs and efficiency. The study consisted of 33 educational institutions that offered their students proprietary software solutions and 15 institutions that offered open source solutions.

The conclusions of the survey carried out by BECTA points out that using Open Source solutions, one can build an adequate technical infrastructure and a set of fundamental applications which can be used in the educational process. This study also pointed out an unexpected aspect: open-source software is perceived as being easier to use than their licensed counterparts. The members of the surveyed personnel said they prefer the security and stability level of the open source software to the one of the non-open source solutions.

The result everyone was expecting has been confirmed by the presentation of the financial situation of the schools that used open source solutions, where the TCO (total cost of ownership) value for a three year period was 20 to 50% smaller than the one for the schools that use proprietary software.

Of course, the most disadvantaged company is Microsoft which cannot afford to lose the enormous sums invested in the educational systems, and this situation occurring in Great Britain could repeat itself in other countries.