The UK government’s education technolgoy agency has snubbed Ubuntu and a host of top notch open source companies and awarded a contract to promote open source in schools to a company that boasts its ability to develop vocational qualifications. Looks like the Microsoft tax lives on…

I\'ve written a number of times about BECTA, charting its constant flip-flops on open source in schools – sometimes damning it, sometimes driving it. Like me, you\'ve probably been increasingly confused about BECTA\'s…

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Instead of open source = cheaper and more open, it should be: Yes you will save money, yes you won’t be locked in, but here’s how involvement with an open community is profitable as well.
Interesting post from Alex Fletcher, an open source analyst

In fact, I take Monica Kumar's word when she says “We haven't seen our customers asking for open source databases…Not many customers are interested in looking into the code and mucking around with it, and making changes to it.”…

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The government wants 4% annual growth in spending on services financed from 2% budget growth. This miracle is not going to be easy and will not happen at all unless Whitehall ends its chronic failure to use market power to deliver sustainable savings in the massive bill the public sector pays for software. That means going open source.

And the supplier lock-in does more than keep costs high, it stifles innovation. Ten years ago the “browser wars” were big news in IT – with two proprietary solutions – Netscape Navigator and Internet…

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