StateOfUSK12OpenSource

//This starts off on a subjective and not actually documented note. ymmv, consider it brainstorming, feel free to comment, edit, disagree, etc...//

Good
Open source software moves inexorably forward by its own intertia. On aggregate, the software gets better every year, deployments grow and spread through word of mouth and web.

Open content and related initiatives steadily spread awareness of the relevance and importance of "openness."

Several initiatives by state and large districts apparently chugging along, although little concrete, ongoing news comes out about them.

OLPC has created a vision for completely re-making educational computing and has not yet collapsed.

Linux shipping on netbooks is taken for granted.

National Center for Learning Sciences and Technology -- $50 million a year for open source ed tech?

FreeReading.net certified for use in Florida schools.

One word: Moodle.

Kids dig Linux. Our efforts in schools are helping to break down the attitudinal barriers.

More and more commercial titles are being built for Linux. I am particularly excited to hear about Linux drivers being built for peripherals like SmartBoard and Mimio.

Bad
Open source software funding of and adoption by US K-12 education lags behind virtually every conceivable peer:
 * US schools lag behind other countries.
 * Large open source vendors do not target K-12 education.
 * Is it fair to say adoption lags behind universities, business and other government entities? Hard to say. Probably mixed.
 * Educational vendors lag behind industry trends in implementing open source strategies, particularly for infrastructure.
 * Philanthropic funding for K-12 open source lags behind funding for open source in post-secondary education.
 * Academic research in US K-12 ed-tech lags behind other types of academic research in use of open source licensing.
 * Philanthropic funding of open source software in the US lags behind philanthropic funding of other types of "open" projects.

Selling service of open source to schools seems to be a difficult business model to pull off for small vendors who've tried.

When there are open source aspects of philanthropic and government-funded projects for K-12, they have been indifferently executed.

Open content advocacy and the like tends to jump quickly from "not just open source software" to "not open source software."

Almost all established educational technology advocates have chosen to not actively advocate for open source software.

Despite their advantages, Linux thin clients will probably never be more than a niche player.

Linux remains the last platform for software development among commercial software vendors.

Districts can't spend their Microsoft Penalty money on FOSS software

Challenges
Developing and promoting a low-cost desktop paradigm that works well with ubiquitous Flash and multimedia (which strain thin clients).

Too many "Open Resource" repositories?