[PLUG] Re: Dhule district adopted OPEN SOURCE

[Nishit Dave]

On 3/8/07, Anand Kulkarni <kulk_anand at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> The computer lab is arranged by ZP Dhule. All
> computers have Windows XP pre-installed on their
> systems. ZP Dhule has purchased thousands of computers
> directly from HCL. And HCL computers come with
> pre-installed windows XP OS. So we are providing them
> training on Windows XP.
>
>
> You may be aware that Maharashtra state government has
> tie up with Microsoft for providing microsoft product
> training to the school teachers. Thus microsoft
> provides free training to the school teachers. Hence,
> School teachers really appreciated
> our work. But one thing that we found was, the
> official training provided to the school teachers is
> on MS-Office and our CD has OpenOffice. So teachers
> naturally compared both the office softwares.
> Presently there is a big issue in Dhule ZP whether to
> choose MS-Office or OpenOffice.
>
>
Thanks for your detailed reply.  It is very interesting.  Yet, I feel that
the Microsoft scourge has set in deep in this state's bones, and is here to
stay.  If only some schools could be convinced to try Linux...

Choosing between MS Office and OpenOffice - isn't money an issue for the
government?  It could be well spent elsewhere.  Even if they could donate
one half of it to the FOSS community, it would be a substantial boost.