OpenOffice.org and Open Source Usage Increasing

A short story in ComputerWorldUK discusses the increased usage of the Open Source office suite OpenOffice.org, including a report that 25% of the entire office suite market in Brazil is filled by OpenOffice.org, or 12 million users (in Portuguese at http://abretesw.blogspot.com/2008/10/openofficeorg-tem-25-de-quota-de.html).  That's not as big a surprise as it might sound, since Brazil is very Open-Source oriented.  But in my work with CoSN.org I'm frequently speaking to chief technology officers in K-12 schools and districts, and I'm hearing more and more about large-scale transitions to OpenOffice.org that are saving tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees. 

It's important to remember that a free (as in cost) license doesn't mean that implementation and support are free, but when an Open Source program is good enough to replace a program with a hefty licensing fee, I can see more and more education institutions making the change.  And when you look at an example like the State of Parana, Brazil, where they have 12 people running 44,000 school computers (over 2,000 schools) because of Linux and Open Source Software, the possibilities for more ubiquitous computing become pretty darn compelling.

Just as interesting to me is the Open-Source-AS-education angle, as opposed to the Open-Source-IN-education examples.  Teaching technical computer classes with Open Source software has a strong pedagogical basis, but even more than that, would have significant practical benefits to students--and yet, we rarely--if ever--do it.  Somewhere in the range of 70% of the world's webservers run on the Open Source program Apache, and yet it's just not taught anywhere.  Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Python/Pearl are serious business tools that can be obtained for free, have open code (great for learning), and will run on old computers.  So why is it that we aren't teaching them to students who could actually use those skills to get a job out of high school?  Maybe it has something to do with the lack of advertising dollars being spent to promote them to educators... :)

I Want a Netbook. Badly.

The use of Linux on many of the new, smaller "netbook" computers is providing a pretty unique opportunity for expanding interest in Linux, especially in education.  I have to admit the fast boot times of the machines I played with (EEEPC and 2GoPC) at the K12 Open Minds Conference were impressive.  But it's the combination of fast boot time and Linux reliability with a larger keyboard and the 6-cell battery (8+ hours) that really has me chomping at the bit. 

After really diving into Amazon.com and drilling down on the specs and the reviews, the Acer Inspire One looks like the real deal.  $399 with Windows XP, which probably means $349 or so with Linux.  Amazing. Unfortunately it's not currently in stock, although others are selling the XP version so that means it should be at Amazon pretty soon (and I'm very loyal to Amazon because of the great service I get with them and the free 2-day shipping for being an Amazon Prime member).