Social inclusion with Xubuntu: A tale of free software changing lives

Age : 45 Joined : 08 Mar 2008 Posts : 1850

Community Interest Community in the UK, are part way through a project to equip socially excluded families with computers running Xubuntu. I was recently able to interview Richard Rothwell of M6-IT about this project and its progress.

Hi Richard, thanks for agreeing to speak to us. Can you give us a bit of background on yourself?

I spent 20 years as a teacher of Computing, in various secondary schools around the UK. While at Handsworth Grammar School, I moved the schools to a Free Software solution for the academic IT network, based around the wonderful Linux Terminal Server Project. I’m pleased to say that almost 3 years after leaving Handsworth, it is still running an expanding LTSP network. Our work was positively reviewed by the government agency, BECTA —however, this seems to have had little effect on policy. Large government funded organisations find it really difficult to understand Free Software, and tend to be averse to change, especially if it might mean work for them.

Where appropriate, and it usually is, we recommend a free software solution

Tell us about M6-IT: what it is, where you are based and what you do.

M6-IT was set up by myself and Richard Smedley to promote the use of free software in the voluntary, community and education sectors. We were fortunate to be joined by Matthew Edmondson, who had previously been working for the National Computer Centre.

We work with a number of organisations to help them move towards more sustainable IT solutions. We encourage them to look for a more strategic view, asking the obvious questions, like “what does it need to do”. Where appropriate, and it usually is, we recommend a Free Software solution, and help them move towards it.

We all work from home, so cover an area stretching from Oxford, through the Midlands and up to Manchester. Working from home helps us keep our costs down - and also makes us more flexible and lowers our environmental impact, something which is important to us.

What led to you deciding that M6-IT would be a Community Interest Company?

It has always struck me that the the ethos of Free Software is that you should make money out of what you are doing, not what you’ve done. This fits well with the ethos of the Community Interest Company. With CICs the employees and directors can earn an income, but can’t build up capital in the company. We also have to make an annual report to our stakeholders, which is there to keep us honest.

The other thing about CICs, is that they are a way of allowing risk taking in social enterprises. Many of the other organisations we encounter working in the same sector are grant funded or unwieldy, and just don’t seem to be able react to change.