Representatives of Catalonia's project to increase the use of open source in schools are surprised by the agreement between Microsoft and the government of the Spanish autonomous region. "We are not aware of any changes in IT policy regarding the use of GNU/Linux in schools."
Catalonia's president José Montilla and Microsoft chairman Steve Ballmer agreed this Tuesday in Barcelona that the company will provide schools with PCs and touch screens and will create educational projects. At first, one secondary school in the city of Lerida will be given a computer classroom by the software company.
According to a press statement by Microsoft, the hardware can be used with any operating system already available at the school. "The educational community can have personalised email accounts free of charge", announced the company in a statement. The company will also instruct teachers how to use the computers and software, "focusing on the changes these tools will have on the their role in education."
The announcement came as a complete surprise to the open source developers involved in Catalonia's school project. Francesc Busquets, open source software developer at the government of Catalonia: "We have not been consulted on this and we are not involved in the agreement. As far as we know, there are no changes in policies regarding the deployment of GNU/Linux in Catalan schools."
The government in April last year started a project to install GNU/Linux in its schools. The project is meant to prevent the use of use of unlicensed proprietary software. The Education department at that time said it would assist any school or education institute that wants to implement GNU/Linux.
The government is also sponsoring the development of the Catalan GNU/Linux distribution Linkat, which is used for the school project. About a hundred schools in the region now use the open source desktop system.
More information:
3cat news item (in Catalan)
Microsoft press release (in Spanish)