One of the fields where libre software has entered with most impetus in Europe is education. This does not mean that libre software is mainstream in European educational institutions, but that there are several very clear examples that seem to have been successful and that are currently being considered in many other realms. For several reasons—the specific advantages of libre software in the education field, the importance of localization, the lack of suitable tools for many educational tasks, the funding problem so ubiquitous in education, and the readiness of large parts of the educational community to accept and embrace its assumptions and philosophy—this field seems to be especially receptive to libre software.
For illustrating this rich landscape of experiences, we have selected four examples that have come to our attention:
SkoleLinux ( http://skolelinux.org) is a successful case of a grass-roots effort to bring libre software to the education world. It was formed in 2001 as a project for developing software systems for schools in Norway. It was originally aimed at the localization of a GNU/Linux distribution for that country (mainly by translating it into Norwegian written languages), to improve the installation and maintenance so that it would be suitable for the needs of schools (including distributed administration), and to promote the introduction of the product in Norwegian schools. In this respect, it has been successful, being used in many schools in Norway and other countries, with a healthy community of developers and users around it. The project has been funded by a loan from the SLX Debian Lab Foundation, which pays for three employees and has strong relationships with the Debian project.
gnuLinEX ( http://gnulinex.org) is promoted by Junta de Extremadura, the regional government of Extremadura, Spain. It is a part of a larger project (already mentioned in the section about public administrations). gnuLinEX is a Debian-based distribution, completely localized, which is currently deployed in the whole public education system of the region (about 66,000 computers in 2004, mainly in schools) and is now being considered for other kinds of environments. Teaching materials and specific applications for education are also being developed (usually under libre software or libre documentation licenses). A complete strategy encompassing training, support, development, and dissemination within the society of Extremadura is also being put into practice. The project started in 2002 and is evolving into a complete strategy for the promotion of the use of information technologies based on libre software. gnuLinEX was the first of a series of education-oriented libre software distributions that have been deployed in many other Spanish regions.
AbulEdu (groupe Éducation de l'ABUL; http://abuledu.org) is a French project oriented toward the use of libre software in schools. Its best known product is a GNU/Linux distribution, completely in French, developed mainly by volunteers. It includes many educational software products, and is designed to be simple to maintain in the environment usually found in classrooms. It is currently in use in many schools all over France.
SIGOSSEE (Special Interest Group on Open Source Software for Education in Europe; http://ossite.org), co-funded by the European Commission, has been established to investigate, inform, and advise about libre software in education. It is a kind of umbrella project providing a common space for many working groups, organizing many conferences, workshops, and seminars, and acting as a framework for relationships with other projects (such as JOIN, devoted more specifically to libre software learning management systems). This is a good case of a mixture of grass-roots and government-promoted efforts and has been successful in disseminating the advantages of libre software for educational organizations all around Europe.
Another interesting development related to education has been observed over the last two years: the appearance of studies specifically oriented toward explaining the libre software phenomenon, usually from many different angles, including technical, economic, legal, and sociological. We are not referring here to technical courses about software systems which happen to be libre, but to studies about libre software itself, which are usually aimed at developing an understanding of the complex interactions between technology, development processes, business models, licensing schemas, volunteer motivation, etc., which are inherent in libre software. Those would be needed, for example, to drive the libre software strategy of a company. At the time of this writing, we know about some master's-level programs which point in that direction: those delivered by Universidad Oberta de Catalunya[44] (Spain, started in 2003), and Universitá di Bologna[45] (Italy, started in 2004). More programs are due to start in 2005. And an informal group of universities, the MoLOS group (Master on Libre, Open Source Software), is designing a curriculum suitable for being taught as a master's study in the context of the new European Higher Education Space.