For at least half a year now I regularly meet en talk to people to see what can be done to solve the current obstacles which prevent adoption of open source software in schools. There was some initiative to get some regional educational organisations together to demand Linux versions of commonly used software from the educational software publishers. Unfortunately it looks like this became a dead-end since a meeting I had last week got cancelled.
Some background
The big problem is of a chicken-egg nature. The educational book publishers make software which support their books with exercises on the computer, etc. You can’t swap this software out because then it doesn’t fit with the books they bought for the children. This software is only available for Windows.
Which in turn makes it impossible or at least masochistic (wine) to run Linux if you want to be able to use the software which comes with the books. Besides this there is also a lot of other educational software for windows only or better said there is almost no real educational software which runs on Linux (except some educational games).
The above has the effect that Linux use is really rare in Dutch schools. Which doesn’t stimulate the sofware publishers to make Linux versions of their software.
Another factor is that schools basicly get Windows for free. A Windows 2003 terminal server costs less then 40 euro’s a year, the CALs are free. Because of this the regular cost savings of running Linux are limited to maintenance.
Whats up next
I would love to hear from people who are working with open source adoption in schools (especially Dutch or a similar situation). Any schools which are interested in Linux and wouldn’t mind to speak up a bit would be great too. Please contact me.
I will follow up later on solutions to the above. 
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