[PLUG] Linux, Portland Schools, and Costs

[Eric Harrison]

On 21 Apr 2003, Ed Sawicki wrote:

>On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 14:49, Jon Jacob wrote:
>> Did you call someone in the district?  Who did you call?
>
>I called the main number, got transferred once and
>spoke to someone. I told her that I'd be happy to
>help organize volunteers from the 700+ people in
>Oregon on the mailing lists I help maintain for BizNix
>and PANUG. She sounded delighted and said she would
>pass it on. I never heard back. 

I work closely with PPS. When the big "MS audit" news hit, they
were literally flooded with requests to help.

I don't know what PPS's volumes were, but I know that MESD was
getting hundreds of requests per day at the peak.

Don't take it personally if your request fell through the cracks.
I certainly did not have the time return the thousands of emails
and phone calls I received...

>I assumed that they
>weren't really interested and the stories about how
>PPC was just trying to intimidate Microsoft were
>true.

Bad assumption. PPS has a large number of Linux servers and workstations.


As I've posted in the past, the *best* way to help schools with open
source software is to join a school-oriented project and help with
development and support. Here's a huge list of projects:

http://www.schoolforge.net/members.php


-Eric