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Actually, I meant 'free' in both senses, but mostly in the sense of 'free of charge'. I hate to be blunt, but I think it's pretty safe to say that Ubuntu, Koha, GIMP, OpenOffice, Joomla and even the option of Linux itself would never exist or have gained traction and a developer base if these products were not freely available. Groovix and Userful are selling proprietary public-use computer management packages at a higher cost than their XP equivalents. If an open source LTSP solution were available under Linux (as in the Edubuntu package for schools) I would be much happier about recommending Linux as a solution for public-use computers in small to medium-sized independent public libraries. Again, I would invite those interested in providing help on this project to look at the feature list of 'Time Limit Manager' from Fortres -- that's what I want in an LTSP package. (As an analogy, remember that Koha was once just an idea floating around in some idealistic New Zealander's head.) http://www.fortresgrand.com/products/tlm/tlm.htm Cheers, -- Darrell Erik Hetzner wrote: > At Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:28:44 -0800, > Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Darrell Eifert wrote: >> >>> There are commercial options from Groovix or Userful, but that pretty >>> much defeats the practical goal of lowering IT costs, or the >>> ideological goal of moving to free and open-source applications. >>> >>> >> I have a hard time considering "free" (as in "not paying for") as >> ideological. If linux is a good desktop, the "freeness" is icing on the >> cake. (And it's only free as in the purchase price; you still pay in >> some way to maintain it.) If you need to purchase apps to make your >> library work as it should, then you should budget for that. I think we >> need to see "free" and "open source" as two different properties that >> MAY intersect but do not necessarily intersect. >> >> kc >> (who prefers linux to windows, and is looking forward to being able to >> purchase my favorite apps for linux as they become available) >> > > I think that Darrell probably meant ‘free’ in the GNU sense: > > <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html> > > best, Erik > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ;; Erik Hetzner, California Digital Library > ;; gnupg key id: 1024D/01DB07E3 > -- ------------------------------------- Darrell Eifert Head of Adult Services Lane Memorial Library, Hampton NH "Beware the man of only one book" Old Latin proverb