The Government of Cyprus / Ministry of Education has recently decided to fund high school students to buy a laptop. The funding will be about 400 EUR for each student. The website and more information about this is unfortunately posted in Greek:
http://www.moec.gov.cy/ekpaideutiki_metarrythmisi/index.html
The problem is that they have set a strict requirement, that laptops would come pre-installed with Windows Vista operating system.
A local newspaper has reacted to this (in Greek):
http://www.politis-news.com/cgibin/hweb?-A=840834&-V=archive&-w=VISTA@&-P
Members of our local community have strictly opposed to the fact that the laptops would come with Windows Vista (in Greek):
http://ghadjikyriacou.blogspot.com/2008/12/vista.html
http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post_13.html
http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/laptop.html
Theodotos Andreou of the Ubuntu-cy local community has recently sent a letter (by mail and electronic mail) to the Ministry of Education requesting a specific reason to the question "Why Vista?".
Furthermore, he requested to leave the choice for the students to decide whether they would want a Macintosh, Windows or GNU/Linux installed.
He also included numerous reasons about a more convenient choice of a Linux-based operating system, including freedom, speed, stability and price, which make a Linux operating system a much better solution for educational purposes.
The email has been posted in our mailing list (in Greek):
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cy/2008-December/000154.html
http://n2.nabble.com/%CE%93%CE%B9%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AF-Vista--td1672094.html
The same letter has been forwarded to major media stations in Cyprus and has been posted today (Sunday, January 11th 2009):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10061438/123165639623481-wwwpolitisnewscom
http://pdf.politis-news.com/pdf/pdf?-A=132214&-V=pdfedition
The Ministry has not replied to the letter, neither acknowledging nor
acquiring more information about it.
Source:
loco-contacts mailing list
loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/
A Reply from User Jam Husar:
Hello,
I can try to force them to answer via the pernament representation in Brussels,
I do that next week, please forward me the names who are responsible for
that decision, e.g. directors, attachees,
deal here is following,
what money is going to be spend on this "funding",
for sure it's tax payers money, but is it CY? EU?
this we need to find out, and we need to push the problem
that they are preferably selecting a vendor and thus
the competition rules should apply here...
In such cases you can even go to court with your government, over
not following public procurement rules and competition rules by favoring
one vendor
--
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| Jan Husar
|
| doing what matters
