NZ School Goes Open Source Amid Microsoft Mandate

Dan Jones writes "Kiwis have built an entire school IT system out of open source software, in less than two months, despite a deal between the New Zealand government and Microsoft that effectively mandates the use of Microsoft products in the country's schools. Albany Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Auckland has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. It's using a range of applications like OpenOffice, Moodle for education content, Mahara for student portfolios, and Koha for the library catalogue. Ubuntu Linux is on the desktop and Mandriva provides the server. Interestingly, the school will move into new purpose-built premises this year, which include a dedicated server room design based on standard New Zealand school requirements, including four racks each capable of holding 48 servers for its main systems. The main infrastructure at Albany Senior High only requires four servers, suggesting an almost 50-fold saving on hardware requirements."

Mandelbulb porn sighted!

[symbolset]

IT Administrator who saved millions in licensing fees involved in scandal! Students used open source operating system to compile and publish their own unauthorized applications, which were of course sophomoric in character. Students were permitted to render mathematical constructs wihout let. Mandelbulb porn sighted!

The new administrator has promised to nip this in the bud: "Students will invent things within in the scope of propriety with the help of the new Microsoft systems that limit the scope of their endeavors." Further: "We'll have no more of this open scope nonsense. Our job is to teach them what to think, not to think" he said. "We'll have no more of this exploring the crevices of obscure mathematical constructs. It's obscene."

When asked, Timmy Blake responded "it's just a standard torus warped by budget figures. I didn't mean for it to look like a vagina. This is serious science."

Said IT Director Clemmons, "I didn't think it would be controversial to let the kids learn about the bare truth. My bad."

The tight time frame -- two weeks for evaluation, one week for design and two weeks for implementation -- didn't create too much disruption, Brennan said. "Although everything wasn't as polished as it could have been, when the school opened all of the core functionality was there. And it's been running for a year with no significant intervention. It hasn't really been touched in any fundamental way since then."

Clearly these are minds that have been warped by the freetards to measure things like Return On Investment and Time To Recover Investment in the scope of free software. It's not fair to measure commercial software in that context.

/ Reading the whole article is recommended.

Re:50-fold savings?

[club]

The school only has 230 students. I have a hard time believing they'd need 192 servers whether they used Linux or not.

Here in NZ, we're so technologically advanced that we're skipping laptops and going straight to "one server per child".

Re:Not There Yet

[BiggerIsBetter]

Common things are not made easy and intuitive. I had to type text paths to set up folder shortcuts on the desktops, for example...

Right-click the item/folder of interest, "Make Link", drag new "shortcut" to Desktop, rename as desired.

Hnnngh....

[lewko]

Once Were Warriors.

Now are geeks.

Re:congrats.

[JoshDD]

You mean like the London Stock Exchange?

How does a Kiwi find a sheep in long grass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful.

Re:50-fold savings?

[Arancaytar]

The school only has 230 students. I have a hard time believing they'd need 192 servers

Ah, you've never used NT. :)

Drum roll please...

[__aaclcg7560]

They could run a Beowulf cluster with those extra 44 servers. :P

Re:50-fold savings?

[tsm_sf]

Does anyone on /. Work in networking any more?

The majority of /.ers are now young republicans (sorry, libertarians)in their first year of college, studying debate/rhetoric 101 and javascript. They've also just discovered ayn raynynnd. Still fat and greasy though, so at least we're keeping to some of our roots.

Re:Not There Yet

[mgblst]

Don't worry, your kid has probably figured it all out by now. You can go back to Windows.

here's a solution for everyone

[md65536]

Windows 8 to Feature Fully Virtual Monopoly

"We already have some schools switching to other operating systems. This new version of Windows will allow them to do that while still claiming to be 'Windows only.' "

fully sarcastic blog entry here [blogspot.com].

Re:Huh?

[ztransform]

For as many student that go through the school are students not bred into the Microsoft culture and not dependent on their software to be productive.

Gladiators were taught to fight with heavy wooden swords so that the real sword would be easier to handle.

Surely it is better to give students crippled operating systems such as Vista so that their introduction to real world technology is a pleasant one? Rather than go the other way around?

Re:50-fold savings?

[L4t3r4lu5]

You shouldn't have listened to that Microsoft marketing droid so much. That's not the way Terminal Services works.

By the way, if you're having difficulty traveling between two points due to an obstruction, I might have a construction which will allow you to pass over it unhindered. For a modest price, of course...

Re:Huh?

[raju1kabir]

Gladiators were taught to fight with heavy wooden swords so that the real sword would be easier to handle. Surely it is better to give students crippled operating systems such as Vista so that their introduction to real world technology is a pleasant one? Rather than go the other way around?

Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.

Re:FTA

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't see how "not-necessarily smart decision" == corruption, unless you know something we don't?

The guy is just incompetent, his superior is either also incompetent or corrupt. This goes up all the way until the prime-minister (or President, ultimately). If they are incompetent, too, you have a case of a corrupted election process.

Corrupt don't always mean just stealing, but also diverting a process from its proper goals, like e.g. putting a moron with the brain of a small plant to "control" a powerful nation.

Re:Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the name Moodle. If I knew they were going to name it Moodle, I would have learned to program, pretended to care about open source and joined the Moodle team just to vote against the stupidest name in the world.

Re:Rubbish!

[sensationull]

Ah, yes, and of course the grammer and spelling of my speedy typing invalidated my point completely. Just what I would expect from an Australian.

Re:Rubbish!

[ozmanjusri]

Just what I would expect from an Australian.

A sense of humour?

I thought you Kiwis had those too. I guess you're feeling a bit sheepish about the spelling errors...

Re:Huh?

[troll8901]

Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.

In swordfighting, the parry [google.com.sg] movement means when the enemy is about to stab you, you use your own sword to push his sword away quickly.

With Windows Vista, you get this pop-up in the middle of combat:

"Windows needs your permission to continue
  If you started this action, continue.

  Parry Movement
  Arm Motor Control

  To continue, type an administrator password, and then click OK.

  [Details] [OK] [Cancel]"

Oxymoron?

[drainbramage]

"competent Windows admins".

Re:Rubbish!

[Kryptonut]

Ah yes....the classic kiwi sheep shagger joke. Yes, in NZ we're all given a sheep at the age of 16, we shag it's brains out for the next few years, then they're butchered and the meat is exported to Australia. Just think about that next time the gravy's dribbling down your chin ;)