Open Source Options

I was invited to give a guest lecture for Nick Reynolds "ICT & 21st Century Learning Communities" unit at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

He gave me a pretty open brief on what to cover - so I started with the presentation I prepared for this year's CEGSA conference. 20 Open Source apps your school could use. You can see the list and grab the slides from http://cc.com.au/oso

But the slides were really just background to a more relaxed Q&A on open source software in general, hearing examples from those in the room on whether or not they'd already encountered that particular application, some of the barriers to adopting Free Software, busting misconceptions and wondering why more people aren't just using it already.


The one thing I wanted to impress upon the group is that Free and Open Source Software is not cheap software. It's not about price, it's about freedom. I hope they got that as I explained the four freedoms to use, study, change and share software is what it's really about. It's not about scrimping on your IT budget.