There is as far as I can tell no FAQ on the site. Why do we need one? There are still a lot of basic misconceptions such as:
- Open Source is a product competing with commercial software
- Open Source communities are formal organised entities like LAs, Quangos and Schools
- Open Source is some niche thing that will disappear if the "geeks" don't market it properly
- There are two types of Open Source, commercial Open Source and not for profit Open Source
- Open Source communities have an obligation to ensure schools take up the products to save money
- It's unrealistic to expect anyone except geeks to understand why Open Source is important in society
- Governments can use Open Source products but they have no moral responsibility to support development
- Anyone with an interest and expertise in Open Source is a geek and doesn't understand real people
Just a start, there are probably a lot more but once the misconceptions are identified an FAQ can be put together to address the issues. If there is an FAQ it needs to be a bit more prominent :-)
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We'd be happy to put one up if someone, or a group of people, were interested in creating one.
Some of this is covered in our About OSS section, although not in the form you suggest. A page addressing popular misconceptions might actually be better at doing what you're looking for, perhaps along the lines of the Top 10 Moodle Myths.
There are misconceptions about education too. Most people who went through the education system 10+ years ago really won't understand a lot of the changes, even the impact of the national curriculum will be unknown for those who pre-date it. The issue at hand is lining up the horse of public procurement with the cart of community developed software (swap horse and cart if you like). I am also reminded of that (mythical) tale of the lighthouse and the aircraft carrier http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp
Plus the doctrine that the total cost of ownership of open source is greater. With or without supporting evidence supplied by Microsoft or entities linked to Microsoft.
Someone else always gets there first :-)
Still I think this could be improved to target schools
1. FOSS is inferior in quality
If you look at value for money criteria, FOSS only has to be good enough. The public purse will not allow buying a Rolls Royce when a mini will do. Having said that there are good argument that FOSS applications such as Firefox and Apache are best in their class in any case.
2. Foss is for geeks
There must be a lot of geeks out there, Firefox has about 20% of the browser market, OOo has had over 100 million downloads and Apache is used all over the internet.
3. There is no support for FOSS
Every major IT company including Microsoft has a FOSS strategy and there is support ranging from free help through community participation through small businesses like OSC to multi-nationals like Sun.
4. FOSS is not innovative
Even if that was the case, why does it matter if FOSS provides the tools you need at a low cost? The whole concept of FOSS is innovative if you think about it, it's both counter-intuitive to many people even now and it disrupts established business practice.
5. FOSS is not free
FOSS is free in the sense that it conveys freedom to users that closed source software does not. It certainly has a development cost whether you count that in time or money. However, because code can be re-used freely it is very likely that development costs are reduced. Marketing and advertising costs are also reduced or eliminated by allowing people to copy applications and try them out freely. There is no license cost but other business models can be used to support development so that for most end-users there is no financial cost in terms of buying licenses.
6. The total cost of ownership of FOSS is greater than for corresponding closed source software
This defies common sense. For most commodity software people do not pay for support, they just pay a license and use it. If you remove that license fee how can that make it more expensive? In addition the freedoms associated with FOSS REDUCE some aspects of administration, no need for license audits. no need for license keys. A further consequence is that software and upgrades can be provided conveniently for the user in secure repositories and directly downloaded and installed on their computer at a few mouse clicks. Why would making it necessary to put your credit card details in before downloading reduce your costs? For some applications that do need on-going support, risk is reduced because you are not locked into a single supplier.
7. FOSS is lacking in security
There is no conclusive evidence one way or the other. All I know is that I have had my FOSS based computer permanently connected to the internet with broadband, with no anti-virus and no anti-spyware software and I have never yet had a virus or malware on my system. I doubt that could be said for a proprietary system. (Another argument against those that say the Total Cost of Ownership is higher for FOSS)
8. FOSS developers are just Geeks in their bedrooms
Certainly some projects start like this but some of the largest projects are backed by large multinational corporations and stable foundations.
9. FOSS communities need to.... FOSS communities don't need to do anything. It is rather good for society if they decide to use their time and resources for the collective good. If you are part of the community do something rather than bleat on about what other people should do, if you are outside the community what business is it of yours anyway? Give a brick, get a house. Simple.
10. Schools should use the software children will use when they leave school.
Agreed, let's have a strategy to migrate to fully open systems for all productivity tools. Look at the global trends.
Schools do not know which software learners (as Ofsted will have it) are going to use when they leave school. At best they can take a guess at what it will be like and hope it is better than that to which they have been accustomed. In the past one of the problems was the inferiority and obsolescence of the workplace software when contrasted with that experienced in schools.
Our ideal should still be that schools are for education, so learners should be able to use spreadsheets word-processors etc. because those are the tools we use, but it does not matter if they Microsoft Office, Open Office or Google docs. What they do with the tools is more important than the specific tools they employ or prefer. If subsequently our learners cannot be trained through specific vocational skills programmes to use the particular packages the workplace requires, then that is a failure of the education, the learner, or the skills training and probably a combination of all three.
It is not in the interest of the learners or their potential employers for them to be taught a restricted diet of specific skill defined by proprietary solutions, which may or may not be relevant to future workplace circumstances.
Ok I was using a touch of irony. One thing is for sure, they are using FOSS now without knowing it in a lot of cases and all the analysts are predicting growth. I'd say what matters is getting experience of more than one way of doing things to prepare for change. FOSS allows this because buying several apps that require license fees gets very expensive and Open Systems ar not single restricted apps. Increasingly I document more on web pages and use desktop WPs less and less and often only because I'm forced to use them inappropriately by government officials. I'm using Google's online spreadsheet more and more - it's not Open source but it has some real advantages for collaboration in international projects.
So really I agree, I was just having a bit of fun :-)