Yes, I thought that the word 'waste' was inappropriate as well. Microsoft systems will work fine, but, in the UK at least, we pay an annual license fee for using their software. The details are (notoriously) unclear but educational licensing is significantly cheaper than business/enterprise costs.
At the client end, my students are already using a variety of devices of their own with non-Microsoft interfaces. I have no doubt of their ability to cope with client PCs that had (say) Gnome Shell or Unity running on them, certainly no issues with XFCE4 or one of the Gnome 3 'remixed' interfaces. We already use RDP to access more exotic software such as Adobe/Autocad &c. The musicians and media people have their Macs for Logic and Final Cut.
As always it comes down to the business systems, and daring to be the first institution to change. If Greece is still at the stage of putting building-wide wifi into their schools, well, it strikes me that there is an opportunity to try a different approach possibly with lower total cost.
If there are two equivalent systems, where one costs and the other is gratis then yes, money spent on the former is waste. In this case though they aren't even equivalent ;)
Duncan, suggesting that it's that simple is extremely naive. OSS has costs too. I have no doubt that OSS would be cheaper, but it would be nice to see real world cost comparisons, and not the usual zealotry from the GPL lot.
Both solutions will obviously have implementation and maintenance costs. Given that a free solution exists, however, anything spent over and above those costs - e.g. on licensing - is wasted.
Please re-read my comment. I acknowledge that both solutions have implementation and maintenance costs - which include the cost of re-training.
Anything over and above that _is_ waste.
(FWIW, I dislike the term 'training'. Someone else said this first, but I agree: training is what you do to dogs, education is what you provide people.)
They will need to hire (or continue to hire) local specialists to install and maintain the software though. I would not be surprised if the wage cost is higher than the cost of the software.
But those money remain in the country and make its economy feel better. Increase consumer spendings and yada yada.
Money that you ship off (even after tax) make it worse.
If the commercial software needs as much specialists to support, what's the point anyway? The whole idea of commercial software is outsourcing work instead of doing everything in-house.
Well, it depends on the software. If we're talking about Windows and Office, they're very high quality, standard pieces of software that are an excellent choice for the educational market. As well as having a larger number of people already experienced in using them, both as users and specialists.
For example, it's worth paying for Windows Server just for how much easier it is to run large deployments of PCs and users from it using Active Directory, group policies and suchlike. Rather than hacking something up in Linux or whatever.
Your argument assumes that the commercial and open-source offerings are equal in quality and features, when in fact the major commercial software is far superior.
My argument isn't an abstract commercial vs open-source one: it all hinges on the quality of the software: if Microsoft suddenly open-sourced their entire operating system and productivity suites, they would still be the top choice in my book.
At the client end, my students are already using a variety of devices of their own with non-Microsoft interfaces. I have no doubt of their ability to cope with client PCs that had (say) Gnome Shell or Unity running on them, certainly no issues with XFCE4 or one of the Gnome 3 'remixed' interfaces. We already use RDP to access more exotic software such as Adobe/Autocad &c. The musicians and media people have their Macs for Logic and Final Cut.
As always it comes down to the business systems, and daring to be the first institution to change. If Greece is still at the stage of putting building-wide wifi into their schools, well, it strikes me that there is an opportunity to try a different approach possibly with lower total cost.