If you are interested in planning a school's technical future for the next few years, or just choosing a new tool to add to your existing mix, then there are a number of things you are probably considering. Their sheer number can be confusing and they can often have conflicting aspects.

Weed out those that are least important or helpful. Then, as you consider them, you might begin to realize that some of them are related and can, therefore, be grouped.

But what should you call these groups? They usually come down to categories similar to budget, security, values and people.

Experience says that in the short-term interested world we live in, budget and security take precedence over values and people. A call might be made, however, for a "long-term" solution which takes into account the higher as well as the more basic needs. This might be called a more wholistic approach.

Fulfilling these higher needs is difficult indeed in today's world. Software rarely fulfills any of the "Values" or "People" needs, let alone all of them. This where, perhaps surprizingly to some, Free/Open Source Software (a.k.a. FLOSS) comes in.

Our experience is that FLOSS is not only more likely to fulfill these needs "out-of-the-box," but because it is adaptable, it can be made to fit them more easily than can proprietary software.

Let's take each of the main four groups of needs we've identified and see how FLOSS can satisfy them.

Open Source p.2 ==>