It is really heartening to see the announcement from the Overseas Family School that they are adopting Open Office.org as the official office tool for the school to use. This is the type of leadership and forward thinking that we need to see.

I has asked my alma mater if they would be keen to follow this and hopefully they will. But the challenge is that none of the Ministry of Education, Singapore-funded schools know how much they have to pay for their use of the proprietary office suite. That is because of the national license the MOE has bought from Redmond and the monies for that is not reflected at the school’s individual budget. So, what the principal does not see in the school’s budget, he/she does not care. Clever lock-in by Redmond. The right thing to do is to appportion the cost of these to each school and then let the school decide if they want to continue to be stuck with the bill.