We find lots of schools opting for services provided by hosting companies that are based on open source. So open source is popular, but why?
If you asked a school if they knew what they were using open source they would glaze over, closed or open source isn’t of concern in a Primary school. The reason for this is that Primary Schools do not have the resources to invest in someone who can manage the code for the open source projects so open source is not a concern of theirs.
Free is good, this is the tipping point. “Owt for Nowt” as its often called in Bradford is supplied in many different ways.
The majority of the schools use an open source fault logging, hardware and software inventory and server monitoring service which is free & open source and available as a hosted service to any UK primary school.
On top of that many Bradford schools wont realize that the management/admin of Primary Email is actually open source and has been since Primary Email was first conceived. This wasn’t working too well in Primary Schools but when Primary Email became School Email and the secondary market showed interest in the source, Primary Email began to nurture a few contributors who now write modules for future releases, improving the service for both Primary and Secondary schools.
Do we expect Primary Schools to begin contributing to open source projects?
Yes, but in a different way. Secondary schools employ people who are technical so we can expect some technical feed back. Primary Schools should try to give as much guidance and leadership feedback to open source projects, leading the project developers so that developers can focus on code with a clear strategy and vision implemented by the school itself.