In the past few weeks I have written several articles for this blog deprecating at length the wasteful power consumption of ICT facilities in schools and suggesting alternative strategies to tackle the problem. I do not intend to do go over the ground again because you can only hector folk for so long on one topic. In any case I don't need to, since wonderfully, the Cardinal Wiseman CTC in Birmingham has recently deployed the UK's first zero carbon ICT facility.

The facility went live in January 2008 according to this month's Education Executive ICT supplement. The details of the project reported in the magazine shows how innovation and open source make natural bedfellows. The school, sponsored by North Birmingham City Learning Centre, has combined a novel thin-client installation designed by yours truly here at Sirius with a 6kw Wind Turbine and 1 KW solar panel supplied by SRE technologies.

The fanless thin-clients use an embedded Linux and draw approximately 4 watts when combined with 7” LCD panels and optional laser keyboards. They are grouped in clusters of five inside a central cylinder and cooled by a natural thermal updraft. The 12v power is supplied to all five from a single DC source thus avoiding the huge power losses contingent on individual transformers. A cluster of five computers uses 25 watts of power, not bad when compared to a single standard 400watt desktop PC.

Up to 20 clients are supported by one 400 watt LTSP server clients bringing the deployment to under I kilo watt. Many congratulations to Cardinal Wiseman Technology College for their bold moves into sustainable computing and hopefully other CTCs will be inspired to do the same.

In addition to thin-client computing low powered devices (6W) such as the new generation of sub-notebooks such as Asus's EeePC and Elonex's One are ideal partners for electricity generated by wind turbines and their like. Maybe now that the island of Eigg has its own wind generated electricity they will soon get computers too.

Aaron Seigo joined the KDE project in 2000 and is sponsored by Trolltech. Based in Calgary, Canada Aaron spends his time thinking about KDE project and its client-side software. Here he describes how porting KDE4 to Windows and MacOS will enable Kontact, the Open Source groupware application, to challenge the dominance of Microsoft Outlook in the enterprise.

How long have you been working on KDE how has the project developed in that time?

I started contributing patches during the 2.0 development time frame and slowly became more involved with each release after that.

In that time, the project has grown along three avenues: technology, community and organization.

The code base has grown in complexity as well as capability. Today we have far more applications than we did when I first got involved and they are capable of so much more. While 2.0 was a capable desktop, it was really the promise of it that drew me to it: it was obvious that one day KDE would be a very complete set of products, and we've mostly arrived there by now.

Community-wise, there are not only more people involved but more kinds of involvement. When I first got involved we had relatively few non-coders involved on a regular basis, and if you weren't a coder you were certainly something of a second class citizen. These days not only do non-coders get treated much more equitably, but we have impressive numbers of artists, translators, writers, communicators/marketeers, coordinators, etc. The user community has also grown substantially, to say the least, and has resulted in many thriving user-centric resources on the web such as kde-look.org, kde-apps.org and dot.kde.org . The growth in diversity and numbers in the community has been nothing short of phenominal.

Organizationally, while the KDE project's global foundation, KDE e.V., existed when I got involved with KDE it was much less visible and far less visibly active. There were conferences every year, but they were smaller and certainly not linked together under a single umbrella as Akademy is. Today, we have official non-profit status, relationships with many of the biggest industry movers and shakers (not to mention literally dozens of smaller but highly entrepeneurial enterprises), an annual conference event in Akademy (with a second one about to be added in the Americas!), sponsored developer sprints on a nearly monthly basis, quarterly reports that get published both to membership and the public, etc. We have working groups (our version of "steering committees") for things such as human-computer interaction issues (usaiblity, accessibility, art direction, etc) and communication and marketing.

In a nutshell: KDE has grown up in just about every way imaginable in the years I've had the pleasure and privelege of being a contributor. The successful maturation of the project is certainly one indicator of its success, and the fact that it has done this while the active leadership has gone through a couple of generations shows that this likely to continue on. If anything defines KDE, it is the deep internalization of the values and goals of the group within every corner and sub-project.

How has the release of KDE4 compare to the early days of KDE3?

KDE4 compares much more readily to the early days of KDE2 rather than KDE3. KDE 3.0 was a very evolutionary release over KDE2 with a few interesting and useful new library features, but it was hardly a massive reworking of things. KDE 2.0, on the other hand, was a couple of years in the making just as 4.0 was, it was certainly not what we would consider "complete" by today's standards though it was usable and it brought a huge number of exciting new framework level advances.

KDE2 was a bit of a rocky time for the project due to the long release cycle and the expectations-to-realities relationship. But it was that 2.0 release that directly led to the much vaunted 3.5 series several years later and not only won award after award but won the hearts and minds of the Free software community.

In that sense, KDE4 is starting out very similarly: an amazing amount of new technology, huge promise, a terrific start to things ... but it's a foundation to build on with much building left to be done just like 2.0 was.

Unlike 2.0, there are far more applications and far more features already in place. In that way it's like 3.0, for its scope and breadth.

It's unlike any release we've done before, though, as we are supporting Windows and MacOS as target platforms now and our community has grown hugely since then. The expectations are higher than ever and the appetite in our user community for experimentation and ambitious efforts is quite a bit lower. Doing such a huge reworking of the frameworks and applications in such a tricky environment is not easy, and it's a situation that simply didn't exist in KDE 2.0 or 3.0 times.

So while we've "been there, done that" in some ways, there's also a lot of new challenges: and new challenges bring opportunity as well as keep things interesting.

Many people think Microsoft hasn't been able to communicate the advantages of Windows Vista to effectively to XP users. Given how good KDE3.5 is, have you managed to avoid this trap with KDE4?

I think we did a much better job than Microsoft did with Vista and people are very aware of the promise of our "pillars of KDE4" such as Phonon, Solid, Decibel, etc. as well as the exciting applications like Marble, Amarok, Plasma, etc.

However, to be honest, I think we could have done even better on this point. There was room for improvement when it came to communicating with words that were broadly understandable what the 4.0 release was and the path leading up to it. Sometimes when what you are doing is not what the audience expects, you end up with a fundamental communications barrier. There are was to address that, and in the flurry of activity and hurry of things we dropped the ball at times there.

Since then we've done a much better job of setting and defining expectations and the quality (let alone amount) of communication around the benefits of KDE4 has improved considerably.

There is a lot of interest and desire for KDE4, with Linux distributions racing to integrate it with their offerings and people not in our traditional audience such as Mac and Windows users or hardware integrators really paying attention to us. That is a good measure of our ongoing success in this area.

What are the five most important technical advancements with KDE4 and how do they benefit end users?

Which five are the most important depends on who you are. So instead of trying to define the five that are "most important" I'll take the liberty of enumerating five that I think will have great impact in diverse ways.

Obviously, there's the addition of more platforms and in particular Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. This not only broadens our potential user base but more importantly it increases the attractiveness of the KDE framework stack to third party developers and lets us start to compete in a meaningful way in terms of data standards.

We are going to see some very interesting developments happening when Kontact is available on all platforms. For instance, finally there will be a groupware solution that looks and behaves exactly the same on all platforms (a support win) that lets you choose your groupware server (a server side win). Kontact represents the client side of the first realistically competitive threat to the Exchange-plus-Outlook hegemony. And that's just one application.

We've also done a tremendous amount of work on making it possible for "mere mortal" developers to build sophisticated and complete applications. Phonon brings multimedia to the Free/Open Source Software appilcation world in a way that is actually approachable for the average developer, for instance. KDE4 provides similarly ground breaking frameworks in terms of platform independance and ease of use for hardware awareness (Solid), threading (Threadweaver and QtConcurrent), messaging (Decibel), spellchecking (Sonnet) and more.

We've also laid the groundwork for important "enterprise" functionality through work such as pluggable configuration backends, allowing us to start to deliver things such as directory based configuration management and definition. While not overly exciting for the average end user, this is big news for those managing large deployments, which is an audience that continues to grow: it's no longer unusual (though still exciting) to hear of five figure seat deployments of KDE anymore.

In the desktop workspace itself, KDE4 pushes all edges of the envelope. From the new window management features of KDE4's window manager that simply blow past what is available on any other production system, including MacOS, to the fresh approach to how the desktop spaces and panels are managed KDE users will find whole new ways of interacting with their devices opening up to them. Easily sharable widgets, groupable into easily switchable activity sets and more humane access to windows and search as an integral part of things (the "Run Command" dialog has been transformed into a search portal!) will have impacts that we have only begun to understand and experience.

Finally, the applications themselves are breaking down barriers. That's really the whole point of this entire excerise, after all: to make killer applications that people end up relying on for work, communication and fun.

So we see things like the Marble desktop globe helping to Free up mapping, Amarok2 extending its support for ever more online (and DRM-free!) music stores, improved usability and utility in our image viewers, file managers and other utilities, more and better amusements, etc.

Where do you see the opportunities for KDE4 in the enterprise market space?

KDE is first and foremost a Free(dom) Software project, and this has huge implications for enterprise customers. It continues to amaze me that even now large companies, educational institutions and government agencies tie themselves into a single vendor strategy, something that can only be characterized as "brittle". Whether you look at the information security aspects, contract negotiation leverage, lifetime realities, long-term business goal appropriateness (impacted by things such as the vendor changing their business goals in a way that are innapropriate to yours) ... single vendor situations are just bad business. Virtually no other industry that business relies on so fundamentally has such a pervasive occurance of single vendor lock-in relationships.

So all other things being equal, the enterprise market should really be looking very seriously at adopting software such as KDE4 purely from a business strategy point of view.

Fortunately for us, all things aren't equal. With native support for Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and MacOS, KDE4 offers something very, very few other software vendors do: a single user interface that can be supported across all platforms. Since most enterprises have a heterogenous information landscape, often rather closely reflecting broader market trends, this can very easily translate into a huge win for the support teams. It also means that those looking to add, for instance, Linux base systems to the mix can do so with greater ease by adopting KDE4 applications across the enterprise.

From a management point of view, I expect to see directory integration to appear that exceeds what was in KDE3 rather quickly. The move to technologies such as PolicyKit and PackageKit are also afoot which improve management. This has been an area KDE has always done well with it's Kiosk framework for user and group configuration management and lock down, so these improvements will only strengthen that trend.

KDE is now the first free desktop whose apps compile on every major platform.

Not only is it the first Free Software desktop, it's one of the few desktop application sets that do that anywhere. Very, very few applications anywhere with a user interface work out of the box on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and Solaris. The reason for this is only partly technical: while one needs to design for portability in mind from the start, even if your application is portable adding more platforms can be extremely costly in terms of support and marketing.

With the Open Source model, however, instead of a top-down approach where all costs filter upwards, costs filter outwards. So we have a Windows team that is made up in large part by new participants: opening up a Windows port actually increased our resources rather than taxing them further, even before we had a single released product. This has also increased the opportunities around KDE, which is being met with interest from entrepeneurial companies.

This may seem like a paradoxical situation from a business perspective, but once one realizes that a distributed, participant based model thrives on cost since that implies opportunity it becomes apparent that there are great economic efficiencies to be tapped by extending the KDE landscape.

Can you tell us more about the strategy for encouraging Windows and Mac users to use KDE instead of their default desktops?

First off, Windows and Mac users do not need to leave their default desktops. They can use KDE4 applications alongside other Windows and Mac applications and continue working as they always have. So a Mac user may decide to use Okular, the KDE4 document viewer, because it supports so many formats, is light on resources and leaves the "DRM question" up to the end user; meanwhile they can continue to use the Mac OS X finder and other applications.

Our first foot in the door, so to speak, is filling the niches, some of which are actually very large, that are under-serviced by current applications available on those platforms. This may be because the initial cost or total cost of ownership may be too high for competing proprietary or even open source options, or it may be because the KDE4 application is simply much better at what it does.

While these applications work just great on Windows and Mac OS with their default desktops, it's also true that they work even better in a full KDE environment: they will tend to start faster, user fewer resources and have greater interoperability with the workspace shell.

Moreover, this will give people who absolutely must hold on to their Mac or Windows systems for some specific tasks the option of replacing the rest of the systems in their offices with full KDE (on Linux, BSD or OpenSolaris) systems without increasing their support costs due to differeng desktop applications or changing their desktop application mix.

Additionally, by offering options on the client that allow you to pick your server side choices with greater lattitude (the Kontact + groupware server of your choice versus Outlook + Exchange example is a great one), this will allow those who previously found the transition to a Free Software operating system too difficult or expensive due to server side considerations to make the decisions on the client side that they would like to.

In the end, though, it will come down to communicating these benefits clearly to the market. Clear, consistent and powerful communication is at the core of our strategy. That means executing a coherent and moving marketing campaign, building up our network of partner companies that sell and support KDE products and making sure that all this resonates strongly with the core values of those who make KDE to begin with.

You may notice that virtually all the benefits of KDE that I've described above relate to the concept of freedom: the freedom to do business how and with whom you'd like, the freedom to do what you want how you want to do it, the freedom to choose your tools rather than be forced into those choices, the freedom to be a part of an exciting community of participants that encompasses users, technologists and business ... in a single phrase, it's all about being free.

And being free is what KDE4 brings to the desktop, the laptop, the media center and the mobile devices of this world.

John Spencer talks to Dr Stephen Lucey, who having joined Becta in 2000 is now their Executive Director (Strategic Technologies). Becta is the Governmental organisation which has oversight of all things ICT in UK schools. Specifically, apart from being a general advocate for ICT in schools, it is charged with providing strategic leadership, technical direction and advice on obtaining best value. Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the OFT then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007. Becta has consistently maintained an interest and a monitoring brief on the progress of Open Source software in education and this interview explores some of their current thinking.

JS: With regard to Becta's recent advice to schools referred to in the introduction, do you think that a respite from the upgrade cycle will cause more schools to consider FOSS as an alternative?

SL: Well the key message in our advice to schools, colleges and other FE providers in relation to Vista and Office 2007, based on extensive research, was that there were no “must have” benefits to compensate for the considerable costs of upgrading. The days of educational institutions just “chasing” the latest release of a product are hopefully, long gone. ICT investments must be based on an assessment of how they will help the institution deliver its educational vision in a cost effective and sustainable way. So I hope our advice will encourage more institutions to think carefully about their ICT spending priorities, and examine the full range of choices that are available to them. Will this help Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)? Debatable - some educational institutions have an attachment to the philosophy underpinning FOSS, and will adopt it for those reasons. However most institutions do not purchase ICT solutions on the basis of a software development methodology, but on the basis of what best meets their needs. So the major opportunity for FOSS will be via solution providers who can integrate them into an offering which is seen as an overall solution.

JS: To what extent do you feel that modern school ICT reflects vendor-driven change rather than a needs-driven agenda?

SL: I think this is less true nowadays than it was in the past. Educational institutions are developing a more critical understanding of their needs. The move to functional specifications as the mechanism for defining requirements either in Becta’s Frameworks or in BSF procurements is really helping this process. This approach requires the institution to think much more carefully about what it is procuring than would have been the case otherwise. Additionally we have established a Consultancy Framework Agreement. Through this educational institutions and Local Authorities can get access to high calibre advice on how best to frame their requirements. This helps ensure that their ICT systems support their educational vision, and are not unduly driven by what the vendor wants to sell. The best vendors in the marketplace really understand that their interests are best served by providing solutions that positively impact on the institution's needs as opposed to those which are just easy to sell.

JS: It would seem self-evident that FOSS should be very beneficial to schools with regard to value for money, and indeed one of your reports a few years ago confirmed this potential. To date however FOSS has made only modest inroads into the education sector. What do you think is the main reason for this?

SL: I have no doubt about the increasing potential of FOSS. However I think one of the critical limiting issues is that we do not have accurate data on the extent of use of FOSS based products and services so we are not really sure of how and where they are being effectively used. If we are to increase competition and choice in the marketplace we need to understand where products and services are being used successfully and where they are not. So for example we need better data that lets us understand the FOSS uptake as the desktop operating system, as desktop applications, on school based servers, in internet and email connectivity etc. For each of those segments we need to know what is being done, what the ICT supply side is considering and what Becta needs to do to help that competitive opportunity develop. We have some interesting ideas here and hope to develop a significant debate with the sector later this year.

Also, the regulatory framework needs to be right. At the licensing level, we need to address situations where the marketplace is foreclosed to FOSS, and at the interoperability level we need to make sure that there is a true level playing field. We have been able to address some of these challenges via discussion with the supply side directly, and reach an agreed way forward. In other cases, we have had to call on the competition authorities. So a range of issues to address, but real progress is being made.

JS: Do you think that the differences between FOSS and proprietary software are understood by school buyers, or indeed do you think that this matters in any way at all?

SL: No I do not think such differences are well understood by schools, nor for the most part do I think they need to be. The point at which they do need to be understood is at the point where the school’s statement of requirements is being turned into a technical solution.

For example, when planning new ICT provision, an educational institution might have a requirement that says it wants to assist in reducing the digital divide by being able to legally provide copies of the office productivity software it uses to pupils and parents for no additional cost. When the ICT supply side comes to offer solutions to this requirement it needs to understand that this request is more likely to be met by FOSS software than by a proprietary offering and reflect this in their proposal back to the institution.

JS: Since you joined Becta, its main achievement surely must have been to bring order to the ICT procurement chaos that previously existed in schools. This was achieved in great part by the introduction of the Procurement Frameworks. Would you agree with that statement and do you feel now that there is a danger that domination by a few major suppliers will stifle innovation which invariably comes from smaller companies?

SL: We have made good progress in recent years but we have further to go. Framework agreements underpinned by effective functional and technical standards are a major part of our work. They are also a key tool in helping ensure an effective marketplace that works to the advantage of all educational institutions and ultimately of learners. We review our functional and technical standards annually to ensure they are current and reflect the changes taking place in a fast moving environment and make best use of available open standards. We also need to ensure that our Frameworks identify suppliers who satisfy our defined service standards and are able to provide compliant solutions rather than then just being a list of approved products.

We also review each of our frameworks regularly to ensure that they meet the needs of their users and offer value for money. The UK has one of, if not the most vibrant and dynamic educational ICT marketplaces in the world, so I think that domination by a single supplier or a small group of suppliers is increasingly unlikely.

All our procurements are conducted in strict accordance with EU regulations with all the attendant openness and guarantees of equitable treatment to all bidders. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get accused of being secretive. In fact, we have a website dedicated to explaining how our Frameworks operate and we are more than happy to answer questions put to us.

On the issue of innovation, I do not really think one can automatically argue that innovation “invariably” comes from smaller companies. For example, the Asus PC is an example of an innovative product within education – Asus had a reported turnover in 2007 of $6.9 billion! Now that is not to say we do not value small companies – we do. Latest figures indicate that SMEs form about 99% of UK companies so they are a very important part of the economy and the ICT in education marketplace. This is reflected by the fact that SMEs form a high proportion of the companies on our Frameworks. In some Frameworks this proportion would be as high as 70%, and overall SMEs make up over 60% of the companies on our Frameworks. But Frameworks are not the only mechanism we can use to ensure effective competition and help SMEs operate in the sector. Ensuring effective interoperability is another important tool. So for example when we published our MIS and Value for Money report in 2005 we were clear that improved interoperability arrangements were crucial. We identified SIF, tailored to UK needs as the most likely way forward. Now encouragingly we were able to bring together a community of interest which was wide ranging, involving the dominant supplier, to agree a way forward on SIF that is acceptable. So in that instance we did not need to seek the intervention of the competition regulator.

Unfortunately that was not the case with document interoperability in the office productivity space, where despite considerable efforts, interoperability arrangements remain unacceptable. So in October 2007 when it became clear we were not making progress we moved to refer the issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading as part of a formal complaint. In January 2008 the European Commission launched its own investigation into this issue, covering similar ground, and we have now intervened directly with the Commission to ensure that the interoperability matters we had initially referred to the OFT (including implications for the digital divide and mitigating against effective Home School links), are now addressed by the Commission's new investigation. But intervention via the competition authorities is not our preferred approach. Ideally we want to work in partnership with the industry and we are doing so in a range of ways. We welcome the recent formation of SALTIS (Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools) and look forward to working with them.

JS: Open source companies often complain long and loud about being shut out from the frameworks. Do you think they have some justification or do you feel frustration when you hear this and tend to feel that in fact with regard to trading with schools, Open Source companies can be their own worst enemies?

SL: Well I’m not sure I would go as far as frustration, but it’s obviously a disappointment when any category of potential suppliers feels that they are not able to compete effectively in the marketplace. Becta’s ambition is a vibrant and competitive marketplace that is providing high quality, innovative products and services that all learning providers value, can afford and can depend upon. At every layer of our National Digital Infrastructure (institutional infrastructure and home access, connectivity, data services and learning services) OSS solutions have a role to play and I am keen that they play it. Indeed if the general ICT marketplace is anything to go by it will be an increasing role. So to the extent that Open Source companies want to compete, and Becta wants to promote competition, we have a shared agenda. Now I know you might not think that’s the case judging from some of the (not entirely accurate) blogging out there but I want to get beyond that level of debate. I want an ongoing professional and constructive dialogue with the open source community helping us to understand the issues and where possible put in place appropriate actions. This should help make OSS products and related services a more compelling offering for educational institutions. And that helps competition. I believe that our frameworks do allow such competition, but it’s not really what I think that counts, it’s what suppliers that want to compete think. So we are having a careful look at our arrangements, talking to key users of our Frameworks like BSF. We will also be developing our dialogue with the wider industry and the OSS community about the uptake of OSS, looking to see how we can improve the overall competitive climate.

JS: I know you are keen that more use of technology is made by teachers and students. Do you think that the emergence of the ultra-low cost notebooks such as RM's minibook and the Elonex One will help drive up the use of ICT?

SL: Yes I think that they have certainly a role to play in improving access and addressing digital divide issues. These devices have really captured the interest of the wider consumer market, not just the educational market and I expect to see further innovation in that space sooner rather than later. They bring together an interesting combination of a new form factor - a Linux based operating system, OpenOffice.org as the productivity suite and at an attractive price point. They are therefore likely to ensure more users experience an open source product that just “does what it says on the tin” and from a competition perspective that is good news.

But they also reinforce the importance of the issues we have referred to the competition regulator. This relates to circumstances where schools using Microsoft’s School Agreement licensing model, are required to pay Microsoft licensing fees for computers based on Linux, or using OpenOffice.org. Finding ourselves in a position whereby a school pays (say) £169 for a device only to be faced with for example a £30 per year after year payment to Microsoft, for a system that is not running any of their software would just not be acceptable to Becta. Indeed I don’t think many people would consider that fair.

So whilst a number of suppliers are innovating and bringing new OSS based products to the marketplace, Becta must act decisively to ensure that neither they nor schools are disadvantaged by restrictive licensing agreements imposed by a dominant player.

JS: Looking to the future once again, schools have a target of being carbon neutral by 2016. Given the complexity and power of modern school ICT systems how is Becta helping them to achieve this target?

SL: DCSF has set a target that all new school build should be carbon neutral by 2016, with the added intention that by 2020 all schools will be ‘sustainable schools’. Clearly the greater use of technology and the introduction of longer school days have the potential to raise energy consumption just at the time when we are trying to reduce them. So Becta in conjunction with its partners intends to help in a number of ways.

Firstly by working to increase the extent to which energy compliant products are procured and used by educational institutions. Secondly we will work to ensure that the energy efficient features of existing products are effectively used. We will also help with advice on how to use technology to help educational institutions reduce their environmental impact. Lastly but by no means least we will help institutions ensure that they reduce their use of IT related consumables.

We are becoming more active in this area and have useful guidance for schools online. At BETT this year we had a seminar on ICT and Environmental Sustainability and yes before you ask – it can be downloaded in Open Document Presentation Format.

JS: Thank you very much Steve, I very much appreciate you taking the time to talk so openly. I am sure that there will be much to comment on and very much hope our readers make their contributions to the debate.