I do try really hard not to get "religious" about Free Software. Afterall, everybody has their own motivations and requirements with computing, and I'd no more insist you use a particular set of software than I would tell you what clothes to wear. However, where computer software is used in education, I am more concerned.

From my viewpoint, proprietory software tends to limit choice: there are strong commercial incentives for proprietory software vendors to "lock their customers in" to only using their software. Microsoft are perhaps the most obvious example of this. But "lock-in" gets ugly when it happens in an educational setting. If schools feel they have few or no software choices, how can they provide an open-minded education in information technology to our children? Small wonder that software vendors always slash their prices for educational establishments. These discounts unmask the growing tendancy for IT and digital arts education to unwittingly become government-subsidised marketing initiatives for proprietory software.