[keithpeter]

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.

[duncan_bayne]

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 ;)

[sbuk]

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.

[duncan_bayne]

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.

[sbuk]

It's not that black and white. The re-training costs alone could prove to be significantly more than the cost of a license. So no, it's not "wasted".

[duncan_bayne]

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.)

[sbuk]

I dislike the term 'waste' when referring to software licensing over 'free' software. As I said, it's not as simple as you are suggesting. I pointer out training (semantically, it is training), but there are other costs and factors to consider. I'm not suggesting for one minute that OSS is a bad choice, just that it is not necessarily the most cost effective in short to medium term.