The aim of this paper is to contribute to the shared understandings we have about the respective ICT costs that jurisdictions and schools invest in order to provide students, teachers and school communities with access to the necessary ICT infrastructure to support learning and to enable ‘connectivity’ between people and computers. Identifying costs will enable more informed discussion about what place open source software may have in schools’ and school jurisdictions’ ICT portfolios. This paper was prepared as a result of research undertaken by the Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS) in South Australia as one of a series of papers. Other titles produced through this research include: Review of the technical documentation accompanying open source software; and Report of a trial of open source software conducted at Grant High School, South Australia.