Dear ,

Re: Early Day Motion 179

John Pugh MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons entitled Software in Education, number 179. I am writing to urge you to sign the motion. The text of the motion reads:

That this House congratulates the Open University and other schools, colleges and universities for utilising free and open source software to deliver cost-effective educational benefit not just for their own institutions but also the wider community; and expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market.

The ideological reason for signing this early day motion

Free software is ideal for use in a learning environment, because its philosophy grew from a culture of knowledge sharing. The sharing of knowledge is central to education, and central to free software, so the two are a perfect match. Students using computers running free software are encouraged to learn how the software works. In contrast, those using proprietary software are discouraged from learning how it works.

The practical reason for signing the motion

Money spent by the government on a support contract for a free software product with a UK company stays in the local economy. This is in contrast to money spent on licences for proprietary products, most of which is transferred abroad (the majority to the USA). Government money spent on free software enhances the UK IT industry and not the IT industries of other countries.

About Free Software

Free software is a term for computer software for which the human-readable source code is available to the user of the program. Usually the user only obtains the binary machine-executable code. The source code is the knowledge of how the computer program works. It is essential to have the source code in order to make enhancements to and fix problems with the program.

Free software is generally released under a licence that enshrines a user's right to obtain the source code, whilst ensuring that any improvements made to the program are released back to the community which developed it.

Free software can be installed alongside traditionally developed proprietary software. For example, you could download the OpenOffice productivity suite and use it on a computer which runs the proprietary Microsoft Windows operating system. You could also purchase a proprietary Computer Aided Design program and use it on a computer running the free software Linux operating system.

Much free software is of a very high quality and can offer great functionality to schools and universities at a competetive cost. Although free software is free to download in source code form, many companies, including my own, provide commercial support to users. Purchasing support for free software is the normal means of deploying it within an institution.

About me

Biographical details here

Yours sincerely,