FUSS (Free Upgrade for a digitally Sustainable School – https://fuss.bz.it) has a dual nature: it is a digital sustainability project for schools and at the same time a Free Software product (Debian-GNU/Linux-based operating system and applications) for servers and PCs. It was founded in 2005 and represents a unique experience in Europe for its organization and structure. The project has led to the migration to Free Software of computer tools used in the teaching activities of all schools in Italian language of South Tyrol: to date 1,900 teachers and 17,000 students use it; it is installed on 4,500 PCs and 65 servers in about 80 schools in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano). FUSS is coordinated and financed by the Italian Education and Training Department of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. Member of the national initiative Repubblica Digitale, FUSS has made teaching and learning digitally sustainable thanks to four fundamental objectives: the use of Free Software, the use of open formats, the creation of free content, thus laying the foundations for the fourth objective whose achievement should be guaranteed in each school by definition: free access to knowledge.

1. FUSS – 16 years of Digital Sustainability at school and still counting
Paolo Dongilli
FUSS Project
Nov. 13th 2021

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About me
School Technical Inspector, FUSS Project Coordinator
Intendenza scolastica italiana
Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano
Member of The Free Software Foundation, The Document
Foundation, LibreItalia, Linux User Group Bozen-Bolzano-Bulsan
Paolo Dongilli

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FUSS
Free
Upgrade for a digitally
Sustainable
School

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FUSS 10

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FUSS 10
IT lab – Middle school “Ada Negri”, Bolzano

6. FUSS - Sostenibilità digitale nella scuola
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Free-Software-friendly equipment

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Typical School Network Topology

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FUSS Team
●
FUSS Lab: @Italian School Department; governance, distribution release, tests,
software selection.
4 persons – Paolo Dongilli, Andrea Bonani, Claudio Cavalli with the
cooperation of Mauro Valer as school inspector.
●
FUSS Technicians: @IT Department; server, PC and network maintenance:
8 technicians (5,5 FTE)
●
FUSS Technical Contact Person (Teacher): @school: 1st
level support
74 teachers for 74 school buildings.

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A Digital Sustainability Project
Knowledge Sharing
Open
Teaching
Materials
Open
Standards
Free
Open
Source
Software
Open
Access

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… a recognized public value
South-Tyrolean Network for
Sustainability

11. FUSS - Sostenibilità digitale nella scuola
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(Free) Software as Immaterial Good
Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit,
dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur,
quomodo habenda est.
(For if a thing is not diminished by being shared
with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only
owned and not shared.)
Aurelius Augustinus (354-430)

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Which technologies do we want in our schools?
0. USE
1. STUDY
2. MODIFY
3. SHARE

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Which technologies are not welcome?
0. BUY
1. USE
2. THROW AWAY

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Canned food ...

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… or ingredients and recipe?

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Technologies we want at school

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Why using free technologies?
“We want our kids to be
innovators and inventors,
not technology tourists”
– Charlie Reisinger,
IT director, Penn Manor School District,
Lancaster, PA

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I want to look under the hood!

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Why should we use free technologies?
Do you control the program?
… or the program controls you?
Free software, free society: Richard Stallman at TEDxGeneva 2014

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Free Software Advantages
Fonte: https://fsfe.org/

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Some numbers from the schools in Italian language in South Tyrol
17.000 students
1.900 teachers
74 schools
4.500 PCs and notebooks
64 servers
3.000 packages installed on every PC
200 educational software packages

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FUSS at the Music School “Vivaldi” - Bolzano
https://fuss.bz.it/post/2021-03-0
1_scuola-di-musica-vivaldi/

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FUSS at the Institute “E. Cornaro” - Jesolo
https://fuss.bz.it/post/2020-09
-20_istituto-cornaro-jesolo/

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Who else uses Free Software in Italy?
https://wiild.crowdmap.com
Reference map of schools and teachers
in Italy using Free Software at school.

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So.Di.Linux - Software Libero per la Didattica
https://sodilinux.itd.cnr.it/

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DebianEdu - Skolelinux
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/

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Puavo
https://puavo.org/

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Teach and Innovate with Free Software

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Teach and Innovate with Free Software
Raspberry Pi 3 Arduino Uno SMD R3

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Teach and Innovate with Free Software
Arduino Uno SMD R3
MakeBlock mBot

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Students’ stages and contributions
●
Marco Marinello
●
Davide Nobile
●
Hamza Jamil
●
Samuele Da Col
●
Manuel Chiocchetti
●
debugging & code enhancement
●
new software
●
documentation
●
FUSS for armv7 architecture
●
digital signage
●
hardware reuse & circular economy

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Students’ stages and contributions towards a circular economy
Catalin Bottazzi
Davide Trevisan
tutored by Fabio Ferraris

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Almost 200 software packages in FUSS

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Free Software for special needs

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Free Software for special needs
gSpeech
View Your Mind

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Some ask why we are not using Microsoft Office in schools.
“For transparency and security reasons” is the answer!
Vulnerabilities
September 21
2021
LibreOffice Microsoft Office
Last 3 months 0 14
Last 3 years 21 160
Source: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/searchhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/search

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FUSS Project supports the “Public Money – Public Code” initiative
https://publiccode.eu/

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Public Money – Public Code “ratified” by Italian National Law
National law:
CAD – Codice dell’Amministrazione Digitale
(Decreto Legislativo 7 marzo 2005, n. 82)
Artt. 68 e 69
+
Guidelines for the acquisition and reuse of software in the PA
https://www.agid.gov.it/it/design-servizi/riuso-open-source/
linee-guida-acquisizione-riuso-software-pa

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Art. 68 CAD
Comparative analysis of sw solutions

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Art. 68 CAD
●
Obligation to choose free open source software, or reuse existing software
●
except in cases where this is impossible;
●
evaluation of impossibility must be made according to the criteria and methods
established by the Digital Italy Agency

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Art. 69 of the CAD
Reuse of solutions and open standards

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Art. 69 CAD (condivisione e riuso)
●
Public administrations that own IT solutions and programs developed on specific
indications of the public purchaser, have the obligation to make available the relative
source code, complete with documentation and released in public repositories
under an open source license, for free use by other public administrations or legal
entities that intend to adapt them to their own needs, except for justified reasons of
public order and security, national defense and electoral consultations.

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South Tyrol’s Deliberation Nr. 1432 - 19.12.2017
Measures to reduce public expenses during the years 2017 and 2018
[…] queste misure mirano innanzitutto a limitare ulteriormente le spese correnti o
quantomeno a non aumentarle. [...]

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FUSS
Since its inception in 2005, FUSS has been following these regulations to the letter
(since before they were enacted).
Code and documentation can be found here:
https://fuss.bz.it
https://iso.fuss.bz.it
https://gitlab.fuss.bz.it/fuss

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Financial aspects
In 16 years (2005-
2022) we invested
€ 715.328.
During the past 10
years (2012-2021),
thank to Free
Software, expenses
were lower than one
year of Microsoft
licenses.
€ 190.125 vs € 200.000
Year Description Cost
2005 initial migration + development € 316.815,00
2006 migration + maintenance € 125.750,00
2007 dev + maintenance € 8.000,00
2008 dev + maintenance € 23.800,00
2009 dev + maintenance € 16.280,00
2010 dev + maintenance € 15.600,00
2011 dev + maintenance € 11.699,40
2012 dev + maintenance € 15.846,89
2013 dev + maintenance € 5.368,33
2014 dev + maintenance € 15.168,24
2015 dev + maintenance € 17.100,41
2016 dev + maintenance € 0,00
2017 dev + maintenance € 35.136,00
2018 dev + maintenance € 18.060,00
2019 dev + maintenance € 42.667,00
2020 dev + maintenance € 14.640,00
2021 dev + maintenance € 26.137,77
2022 dev + maintenance € 7.258,51
TOTALE € 715.327,55

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Open standards
●
Are the pillars of cooperation in the modern society
●
Allow people to share all kinds of data freely
●
Avoid lock in and other artificial barriers against interoperability
●
Promote vendor’s change and renewal of technological solutions

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Open standards
An example:
●
ODF – Open Document Format used by LibreOffice and many other products
(standard ISO/IEC 26300:2006)
●
Documento di testo: .odt
●
Foglio di calcolo: .ods
●
Presentazione: .odp
●
Grafica: .odg
Allowed file formats by the Province of Bozen-Bolzano:
https://tinyurl.com/formati-pab

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Digital Sustainability: Open standards

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Digital Sustainability: Freely available educational resources
Fonte: www.matematicadolce.it

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Freely available educational resources
https://www.wikibooks.org/

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Freely available educational resources
https://www.wikiversity.org/

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Dear Teacher, with WikiBooks we write our books!
Wikibooks in the classrooms allows to create open educational resources in a
cooperative way:
https://www.wikimedia.it/professore-wikibooks-libro-lo-scriviamo/

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Sharing Educational Resources
FUSS offers some useful services to allow sharing and publication of educational
resources
●
e-Learning Platforms (Chamilo, Moodle)
●
File hosting service, calendar, contacts, ... (nextCloud) + LibreOffice Online

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Open & Linux Desk for citizens
In Bolzano once a week
on Mondays from 17:00 to 19:00
@ Spazio 77, via Dalmazia 77

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(In)operating System Campaign
On September 11, 2014, after a long legal battle supported by the Association for the
Rights of Users and Consumers (ADUC), the Supreme Court has sanctioned the right
to obtain a refund of the Windows license pre-installed on newly purchased
computers if it is not accepted by the customer.
https://www.sistemainoperativo.it/

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LinuxSì Campaign
https://www.linuxsi.com/

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Trasparent Hardware Campaign
https://www.lugbz.org/thw

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Hardware reuse is sustainability.
Planned obsolescence and use & throw-away culture aren’t.
Reuse of complete PCs
provided by companies and
public administrations thank to
GNU/Linux and Free Software.
The European Parliament
also calls for measures
against planned product
obsolescence.

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Circular Economy
https://www.europarl.europa.eu

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The SchoolSwap Initiative
https://schoolswap.bz.it/
A sustainable PC to study and work.

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Life is not always easy for Free Software projects though ...
●
Some people say “Free Software projects are not expensive
enough” (!)
●
Some other say it would be better if schools depend on Big
Tech Companies (!!)
●
Some other claim that public schools are not required to
comply with Articles 68 and 69 of the Italian Code for the
Digital Administration (CAD) (!!!)

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In the past 16 years FUSS was able to prove with numbers that
with Free Software
our Public Administration has been generating
PUBLIC VALUE out of PUBLIC MONEY
investing in people rather than proprietary software licenses
and
saving a little money for other important school projects.
16 years ... and still counting

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Thanks to all institutions, associations, companies, citizens
endorsing FUSS!
https://fuss.bz.it/page/profuss/

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Thanks for your attention
Further info:
http://fuss.bz.it
info@fuss.bz.it
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