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You can stop trying to imply that this is some sort of sabotage by Microsoft, considering they'd be sabotaging themselves in the process. No different to your dumb claim that they "sabotaged" ACPI.

It's nice of you to concede the destructive effects of this kind of competition. I would never argue that it's anything but self defeating for M$ but that does not keep them from doing it again and again.

A company that's been convicted of anti-competitive practices in several lawsuits has earned reasonable suspicion when things break. It was Bill Gate's dumb idea to sabotage ACPI, and that came out in the Iowa Consumer Case. The DRDOS case, (also see p36 here), is a good early example of the overall behavior. They sabotaged a competitor then filled BBSs with astroturf that blamed the victim. Just for you, dedazo, I've made a nice list of more recent sabotages here. The victims include iPod, Firefox, Google Desktop and anti-virus makers and the FUD hate machine is cranked up to full blast in all of those cases.

The big suck of software sabotage is that it always degrades the user experience. The obvious result is that the user loses their choice of software and is forced to use something second rate. Less obvious results are performance hits in what's left. Sabotage demands extra branching and checks that take time and introduce errors of their own. The legacy of this kind of "competition" is complex file formats, insane APIs, and a system that's feature poor, expensive, unreliable and lacks real choices. Even when M$ wins this game without shooting themselves in the foot, they lose.

You mean just like the JAVA virtual machine, the one MS hacked Windows to make not work.

"it becomes clear to me that the Java OS will try to conquer the embedded marketplace from palm pilots over game machines to low-end terminals, while infesting all other computing"

"Instead of beating our heads against the wall trying to produce a portable executable + run-time library solution to compete head-on with Java, we decided to do the following: .. Hard-code support for these features into Win3.1 and Mac versions of IE, including VB script"

You mean just like the JAVA virtual machine, the one MS hacked Windows to make not work.

"it becomes clear to me that the Java OS will try to conquer the embedded marketplace from palm pilots over game machines to low-end terminals, while infesting all other computing"

"Instead of beating our heads against the wall trying to produce a portable executable + run-time library solution to compete head-on with Java, we decided to do the following: .. Hard-code support for these features into Win3.1 and Mac versions of IE, including VB script"

Real energy savings come from the free software Slashdot uses and advocates every day. Real energy waste comes from using software that's intentionally wasteful from a company that hasmade power management difficult for everyone.

"open source ODF format as perhaps trying to monopolize the standards process"

translation: An open format that anyone can write to without conceding licensing restrictions to a single commercial company is in actuallity a monopoly.

"Certainly there's a place for ODF in the world, the interoperability team continues, and users are free to make that choice for whatever reasons they'd want to do so"

translation: We want to own the standard.

"We ensure our ability to add value by ensuring that we are masters of the schema"

"Microsoft perceives the standards process as one of four "toolsets" .. to achieve interoperability .. when the standards process fails, he said, the other three "toolsets" could be relied upon as a backup plan"

translation: We'll pretend to support open standards while covertly working to push our own non-standard standard.

'Standards, Robertson told BetaNews, "are a very important tool to use to address interoperability .. cycle of innovation that's more rapid than the cycle of standardization .. and shouldn't you look to some of the other tools that you have available to you, to address interoperability?'

translation: We'll continue to play hunt the piñata with the formats as it's worked very well up to now in maintaining our monopoly on the desktop.

How about publishing an RFC the next time you 'innovate'?

They were only "protecting consumers" so they could have them for themselves. Their goal has always been to be the man in the middle who collects all the fees. The Digital Restrictions in Vista are the end game, their open declaration of anti-competition on "their" platform.

Of course Linux is a target and they have been attacking other operating systems forever. DRDOS, OS/2 and Netscape are prime examples. Free Software has also been a target and the same tactics are used. Their attacks on free software do not end with their loud "get the facts" and othe smear campaigns and SCO attacks. There's also technical sabotage and everything they have a hand in is evil. They set up BIOS non standards like ACPI, to not run with free software. Winmodems are still a significant impediment as a large percentage of the frugal market for GNU/Linux users are also dail up users. M$ has even attacked the ogg vorbis music format by forbidding it's use in the majority of music players. Their interference with email standards should be seen in the same vein. Everything they do is designed to perpetuate their early 90s market position.

Here it is.

It's not in the article, or the Wiki, but the Bill Gate's let's break Linux ACPI memo should be. He begrudges the hard work of his competitors and would deny them results by technical and legal abuse. This is why ACPI is the complex, impossible to conform to and "extensible" non standard that it is.

'take the wsj for example. you ship via delivery people, they are your oems. you have dominant share of the daily news market. what if the delivery people could substitute someone's else's front page for your own and further more what if it was not even clear that it wasn't the wsj?'

"I for one do not understand Microsoft's motive in crushing open formats"

"The battle we are fighting is over who controls the next generation applications and system architecture, APIs and services"

'he was selling the product when he said this .. he was actually right in the idea of it'

Illogical non-sequitur. Even though he was wrong he was actually right as he really meant Windows. So assuming in a parallel universe OS/2 is preeminent he is also right there also. Is achieving quantum coherencece across the multiverse also one of billg.s many talents.

He was selling OS/2 when he said that and he was actually wrong in it. MS likewarm support was what actually killed it eventually.

'It just happen to be Windows and not OS/2. Microsoft attacked the general market. IBM only knew about dealing with businesses'

Yet more retrospective revisionism. Why did MS fail to market OS/2 sucessfully since it was after all a joint MS IBM project.

'Once Microsoft moved away from OS/2 and went full bore on Windows, OS/2's days were numbered'

Even before the schism with IBM, MS was busy about FUDing OS/2 in public.

"The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect -- to FUD OS/2 2.0"

'even though OS/2 had a lot of things going for it over Windows'

Onc of those things being isolation between processes while Windows was still at Win3.1. OS/2 (Score:5, MOD up yet even more excuses)

'NT4, win2000, XP, win2003 and vista are descendants of OS/2'

Only in the sence that lower primates are decendent from homo sapiens. At the time even MS recognised that OS/2 was superior. They only abandon it once they realized they couldn't get total control of it. In the imortal words of billg we can't get IBMed on this one.

Re:Regarding OS/2 (Score:2, Insightful)

how stupid is it for the same folks yelling "Microsoft sucks!" on a daily basis, to turn around and ask for access to some of that suckage for themselves?

That would be stupid, which is why few people really do what you say. Some people foolishly believe they can work with M$ and effortlessly exchange data with their users. M$ tells them this is so, and some people still believe it. Their problems are similar to mine, but their surprise is all their own.

I reject M$ outright. I don't want their shit, I want them to leave me alone. But they don't because they want everyone to pay the M$ tax and shove that agenda every way they can. I tell people exactly how M$ screws them and recommend they use free software instead. The tighter they squeeze their honest customers, the more justified I am.

In this case M$ sucks because they do non free software in the most abusive way possible and pretend to be all the good things free software is. This is what they always do to their competitors and anyone who's followed them long enough will recognize the infantile reasoning they push: Our stuff is everything everyone else claims for their stuff and Everyone else has our problems and worse. You might remember these tactics from kindergarden and remember why they don't really work in a company/customer relationship.

Customers don't the expect abuse which inevitably comes from M$. When people use M$, their data is trapped into the one or two hardware platforms M$ "supports" and M$ regularly breaks that data to sell them an "upgrade". This approach would fail if there were any easy alternatives.

To support the upgrade train, M$ purposefully uses their coercive monopoly power to break alternate implementations, from bios to file formats. If that were not enough, they service providers to make life hard too. ISPs block ports and crimp upload speed to make up for M$ shortfalls. They even try to make it hard to work with business and government without their crappy software. No, I don't really need them and I consider gnu/linux use far easier, despite the roadblocks they have put in place. Their booby traps ultimately harm their customers more than anyone else.

I'd love to just sit back and watch M$ fade away, but they won't unless people who know computing reject them tell others about it. They are out to screw all of us, so tell them to go to hell.

'i remember seeing dell machines that offered linux instead of windows in the past.. but the prices were the same or HIGHER for linux!'

That's because the OEMs has to contract to sell a minium number of per system 'licenses' per quarter. If they fail then the short fall goes onto next quarters bill.

'COMPANY hereby agrees to pay MS for each Period (A) the minimum commitments amounts for the Period as set forth in Exhibit B, and (B) the amount by which cumulative royalties during a Period exceed minimum commitment amounts for that Period'

'(iv) To the extent that cumulative minimum commitment payments during a Period exceed cumulative royalties for such Period, such excess shall be known as "prepaid" royalties" and shall be recoupable against future royalties only during the initial Term of this Agreement and only for the Product(s) licensed herein. Prepaid royalties are not recoupable against payments made to Authorized Replicator.

was Linux needs no Windows Tax (Score:5, Interesting)

What was said:

OLPC hasn't changed the XO's design to support Windows, and has no formal partnership with Microsoft, he says.

What you know: RAM was stepped up from 64MB to 256MB, some kind of Windoze will run on it and real price is almost double the target price.

How much of that price increase is due to the RAM increase is speculation, but some of it is. The price of memory is always falling and we always see more memory in cheaper devices. At the same time Windoze always hogs up some expensive amount of it so it will always be hard to run Windoze on cheap devices. They suck like that and will pay the price sooner or later.

M$ dies when enough people don't need them. They want to have their hooks in the developing world but it's more important for them to make sure that no viable alternative exists in developed markets. They exist by making it hard for people to get away from them not by making their shit easier. They sabotage BIOS, forbid music formats and do everything in their power to make sure nothing but M$ works anywhere. Devices like Palm, Blackberry, smartphones etc, that don't run Windoze give them fits because it shows people they can get along without M$. OLPC is just the first of the free hardware projects, so M$'s strategy can't work forever. Sooner or later good enough devices are going to be cheap enough to not be able to support M$ licensing fees, and that will be the end of them. The "network effect" will be broken and both hardware and software will have to compete on merit rather than "yeah but will it run Word."

• This is the original post, which said "That's great for Windows users, but what about Linux" in a nutshell.
• Then you jumped right in with that inimitable panache of yours, claiming ACPI doesn't work on Linux because of something Bill Gates did, while of course taking the time to use your favorite expletives and super-clever creative spelling.
• As proof that Bill Gates somehow "sabotaged" ACPI on Linux, you linked to this email, which proves absolutely nothing you've claimed so far.

You have an eight-year old email from Bill Gates wondering whether they should try to prevent everyone from leeching their R&D investment on ACPI (no doubt you think developing software is a zero sum game, but it's not. Someone paid for all that groovy software in your Gentoo boxen), and so far you have provided no proof whatsoever that said email actually ended up causing ACPI to be limited or damaged or "sabotaged" in any way shape or form by Microsoft. None whatsoever, period.

To repeat myself, ACPI is an open standard, of which at least one implementation exists for Linux and FreeBSD. So what is this "situation" you are referring to? Aside from your usual "FUD with a link" recipe that tends to fool the Slashdot moderators, how are you rationalizing that Microsoft "screwed" power management on Linux? By releasing ACPI and screwing themselves over as well?

Seriously, your "if you don't see things in the same glorious black and white as me I can't help you" responses are not going to do it. You need to specify what this "situation" with Linux power management is and why Microsoft caused it.

that will now cry that their computer _has_ to be on, 24/7 (because otherwise, they couldnt improve their epenis, er, i mean uptime).

Uptime is something M$ can't deliver, but they have done a nice job of making sure systems with good uptime can't do power management easily. ACPI is sabotaged. I'd love to be able to have all my systems hibernate AND be network accessable, but I have not had the time to see that it does or does not work on my system yet.

From what I've heard, M$ has also unable to deliver when it come to applications data and power savings. Programs like Word used to barf and corrupt your open files on resume. I suppose that's what happens when you make spend your time making things complicated to harm the competition instead of making thins simple so your own stuff works.

Oh, yeah about uptime. I booted my laptop at 90 days because I wanted a new kernel. Other than that, all my work was always where I left, neatly spread out across virtual desktops, it whenever I lifted the lid. That's 90 days without a loss of placekeeping or the pain of booting.

Windows XP will often times not give s3 suspend as an option even when turned on in BIOS. But with Microsofts dumppo.exe utility you can

How typical, a DOS only power tool to manipulate your hardware and everyone else is out of luck. Yeah, that stinks. Thanks, Bill.

Anyone who has not Bill Gate's memo about this should. Anything M$ touches is shit: winmodems, wifi, ACPI, APM and the list goes on and on. They can't make their own stuff work, so they have to break everyone else's.

Despite his efforts, power management can be made to work. It's not easy and you can't expect the latest and greatest to work. The closer a company's working relationship to M$ is, the harder it will be to make things work. For example, Dell is more difficult and Thinkpad is easier. As with most free software, if it's going to work the live distros will auto configure it and it will work almost out of the box.

I still use APM for the most part and have ignored conveniences like WoL.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/
I also have one but I am not about to publish it for a slashdotting.

This strategy is clearly outlined in the Halloween Documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents) Docs 1 and 2 in pdf available at http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/0 11607/6000/PX06501.pdf Well worth the read.

I mean, I've had this 20 meg MFD drive for like 15 years now, why can't modern computers keep up with something so simple!?

The last time I tried that, the 2.2 kernel saw and used the drive. I'm glad it did, because that made the final backup a single 20 mb file instead of a bunch of floppies.

I don't mind hardware makers abandoning hardware, so long as they are not secretive about the new hardware. Unfortunately, SATA makers have been not shared and there are many problems with SATA for GNU/Linux. This secrecy is a M$ move to make free software that much more difficult, just like winmodems, wifi cards and ACPI, the next BIOS and many other barriers to your software freedom.

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific

It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the results is that Linux works great without having to do the work

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/0 11607/3000/PX03020.pdf

'we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards'

'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control of the class libraries and runtime'

'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal the Java language'

'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work .. We have been unsuccessful at getting the additional information to add support for Outlook in our MAPI service providers'

'If the application is written in Java, the Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java will be the default VM'

'we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards'

'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control of the class libraries and runtime'

'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal the Java language'

'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work .. We have been unsuccessful at getting the additional information to add support for Outlook in our MAPI service providers'

'If the application is written in Java, the Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java will be the default VM'

'we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards'

'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control of the class libraries and runtime'

'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal the Java language'

'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work .. We have been unsuccessful at getting the additional information to add support for Outlook in our MAPI service providers'

'If the application is written in Java, the Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java will be the default VM'

'we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards'

'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control of the class libraries and runtime'

'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal the Java language'

'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work .. We have been unsuccessful at getting the additional information to add support for Outlook in our MAPI service providers'

'If the application is written in Java, the Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java will be the default VM'

'what exactly was Billy boy so good at'

Innovating Windows by analysing the Mac system ..

'we should be analysing the Mac system as it evolves and improves and innovating what makes sense'

Innovating the NetPC, by copying it ..

was Re:Programming whiz? 'We go nuclear and release our own WBT spec, press release with our own OEMs, and directly counter the Intel spec'

Innovating Iexplorer by cloning Netscape ..

I think we should have to do even more cloning (esp. LiveScript) of Netscape

Innovating msOffice by stealing features from ClarisWorks ..

Our biggest competitor. We should remove all reasons anybody might have for sticking with this product rather than upgrade to Office. What features do we need to steal?

'what exactly was Billy boy so good at'

Innovating Windows by analysing the Mac system ..

'we should be analysing the Mac system as it evolves and improves and innovating what makes sense'

Innovating the NetPC, by copying it ..

was Re:Programming whiz? 'We go nuclear and release our own WBT spec, press release with our own OEMs, and directly counter the Intel spec'

Innovating Iexplorer by cloning Netscape ..

I think we should have to do even more cloning (esp. LiveScript) of Netscape

Innovating msOffice by stealing features from ClarisWorks ..

Our biggest competitor. We should remove all reasons anybody might have for sticking with this product rather than upgrade to Office. What features do we need to steal?

'what exactly was Billy boy so good at'

Innovating Windows by analysing the Mac system ..

'we should be analysing the Mac system as it evolves and improves and innovating what makes sense'

Innovating the NetPC, by copying it ..

was Re:Programming whiz? 'We go nuclear and release our own WBT spec, press release with our own OEMs, and directly counter the Intel spec'

Innovating Iexplorer by cloning Netscape ..

I think we should have to do even more cloning (esp. LiveScript) of Netscape

Innovating msOffice by stealing features from ClarisWorks ..

Our biggest competitor. We should remove all reasons anybody might have for sticking with this product rather than upgrade to Office. What features do we need to steal?

'what exactly was Billy boy so good at'

Innovating Windows by analysing the Mac system ..

'we should be analysing the Mac system as it evolves and improves and innovating what makes sense'

Innovating the NetPC, by copying it ..

was Re:Programming whiz? 'We go nuclear and release our own WBT spec, press release with our own OEMs, and directly counter the Intel spec'

Innovating Iexplorer by cloning Netscape ..

I think we should have to do even more cloning (esp. LiveScript) of Netscape

Innovating msOffice by stealing features from ClarisWorks ..

Our biggest competitor. We should remove all reasons anybody might have for sticking with this product rather than upgrade to Office. What features do we need to steal?

I'd really like to ask him what he is doing about Microsoft's efforts to poison Java.

I have been doing some peripheral help with a Java converter that converts from GML to Java, and it doesn't seem very cross-platform to me, even though it has no dependencies. The converter gives odd errors on different platforms - even on different XP machines! And the pure Java code it outputs doesn't run on Macs.

IMHO, using platform-specific dependencies (like DLL's) should be the only possible way to make Java that isn't cross-platform.

This guy's post is not flamebait. He's describing how MS operates and has operated for many years.

Their attempts at crushing competition through evil means is fact, not opinion. They abuse their monopoly every chance they get.

If anyone is bothering to follow the Iowa case against MS, they'd start to see how MS operates.

Here, it's really interesting reading.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/

You seem to be stuck in the 'default trust' mindset. That will hurt you.

You need to start thinking with a 'default distrust' attitude. You'll be safer, and you might actually start to understand why MS would lie.

Here's some good reading to start with. All of it from MS's own mouth. Admitting that they do try to use their control of Windows to keep competitors from being able to offer complete solutions to just about anything.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/

'OOo won't replace MSOffice quite yet. Which incidentally is why I think MS is pulling the plug on the Mac Office suite'

'The threat to Cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately'

was: Re:That's why kids... (Score:5, Insightful)

Microsoft are not dropping Mac support for office - this report is from 1997, and if you actually read the email, you will find that its actually talking about improving support for the mac and justifying supporting the mac and apple despite the 1997 drop in sales.

The macworld.co.uk website has twisted this around for _entertainment_ purposes, probably with the assumption that people would not actually read the email

The email: http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/1 22106/PLEX0_6060.pdf

If you read the actual email here (instead of the artice about it), it's a plea to ship Mac Office set against existing discussions of dropping the product because it isn't doing well enough in the market. Microsoft was in ongoing negotiations with Apple and Apple apparently asked them for a guaranty that they would continue shipping Office. Making such a declaration early would have been stupid.

http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/695

Exactly like what is done to RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft, just boycott them and don't use their products. That's the worst punishment for them. Don't fall in love with a game like that.

0.99.something, probably. 1.0 was released in March of 1994.

http://edge-op.org/files/kernel-timeline

(It seems I haven't posted to Slashdot in so long my login won't work.)


>I can see plenty of problems with implementing Linux in schools, especially
>when I think about how it would go in my local district.


I can see plenty of problems with allowing schools to continue to be
entrapped by MS, and not just the continued waste of my tax dollars.


>1. All the teachers know Windows. My bet is that even many of the
>computer teachers do not know Linux well enough to run it in their labs.
>They can't teach it if they don't know it and teacher training could be
>expensive and take a lot of what's probably considered unnecessary time.


1. I don't know about your local district, but around here, teachers are
people. They are capable of learning. At one time, all teachers knew were
slate tablets.


>2. They would have a lot harder teaching a completely new OS AND classes on
>how to use the programs than to just teach the programs. You'd probably have
>to have a intro to Linux class before you could ever teach whichever
>programs you choose to use - and that's another issue in itself.


2. What's the difference between teaching how to click an Open Office icon,
for example, and 'Start->Programs->MyPOS->MyOfficeDocs'?


>3. Students probably have Windows at home. Would they have problems with
>converting documents between systems? Say you create your report in Word at
>home, could your bring it school and use it there?


3. Surely the students can learn how to click 'Save as...' and select a
format not so frequently made incompatible as that .doc thing.


>4. The local tech support and computer stores would not be able to help them
>if something went wrong. 99% of the techs around here don't know anything
>about anything other than Windows. Who would know enough about Linux to help
>them??


4. The local tech support may become as close as the kid who's been craving
a look at the insides of programs, or the one who just can't get enough of
those 'HOWTOs' he/she just discovered. The old local tech support generally
consisted of "reboot, reinstall, wait for the next patch". Teachers already
rely on the class 'geek' for a lot of assistance. With Windows systems,
however, a lot of the troubles come from the childish file and directory
permissions of the system and the ridiculously fragile nature of that
house-of-cards operating system/gui/intertwined functionality.


>5. The students would learn programs and OSes that would different with what
>they would have when they go to college, go to work, etc. Since there are
>very few offices and colleges using entirely Linux, they would be at a
>disadvantage right away.


5. Excuse me? How is knowing more a disadvantage? How is a
mouse-click memorizing consumer at an advantage over someone who is free to
explore as deeply into the internals of the software as he or she chooses?
Probably a lot of students will not be interested in the source. They will,
at worst, learn how to spot that "Help" thing that comes with just about
every high-level program. This is a good thing, since MS chooses to shuffle
things around a lot with every release, and since there is a lot more
software out there than just MS stuff. And why do you stick in that bit
about "very few offices and colleges using entirely Linux"? What's your
point? There are very few offices and colleges using entirely No. 2 pencils.
The people at those offices and colleges probably have little problem
switching from No. 2 pencils to ball-point pens. The lack of total
domination by No. 2 pencils would not likely be a hardship.


>Of course there are a lot of plusses too, but these negatives sprang to mind
>right away. Of course they are all refutable. I think that the schools would
>choose easy and expensive over difficult and cheap any day. If they didn't
>have a choice and were nearly out of money, my guess is they would let the
>computers sit/


How about the schools choose easy and cheap? Would that be acceptable? Maybe
the kindergarten teacher is tired of having to call daily for a
reinstallation because one of the wee ones didn't click things Bill's way.
Maybe this teacher would love to have a machine set up with only Gimp able
to run, to let the little ones play with paint without the cleanup. Perhaps
the elementary lab (yes, many schools still isolate computers in 'labs' as
if they're the electronic equivalents of biological experiments) needs to
have computers that actually work, instead of mysteriously crashing and
keeping the teacher hopping around playing tech support instead of teaching.
Perhaps teachers, staff and school administration would appreciate being
able to click a fetchmail icon and receive email instead of one of the
endless notices of the network being taken offline, disconnected from the
internet, due to the latest virus, Outlook exploit, IIS vulnerability,
Exchange defect, Windows attack, latest rebootathon to apply the patches for
the preceding, or the wait for MS to figure out how the latest patch broke
so many other things.

I'm married to a teacher. These are not hypothetical imaginings; they are
real, ongoing troubles. Teachers now have to spend too much time either
fixing problems they shouldn't have, or letting the computers sit idle while
waiting for some overworked technical support person to catch up on reboots
and patches and upgrades, or wasting their time in seminars learning how to
deal with the illogical, unfriendly requirements of MS crapware.

Wouldn't it be nice if computers in schools were set up according to what
each teacher wanted? With free, open source software, this is usually no
problem at all for most *nix enthusiasts or, if need be, a competent *nix
admin. How easy is it to customize a MS machine and still be able to admin
the network?

http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html

This movement is gaining ground. Here's a ton of sites:

Start with Why Use Open Source Software In Schools to answer your (and your superior's!) questions. Note that Microsoft is trying to keep a stranglehold on this and their salesmen are playing dirty; but we as free software activists have one thing they can not have: integrity. Teach the truth about Open Source, explain that this is the true American way, show how we need to use it in education to teach kids the right way to do things (and to share with neighbors) to make a productive world, and we'll go at it. Academia can't afford to lose itself in proprietary software; as this site explains, with free software we've got a chance for a blossoming in academia.

The K12 Linux in Schools Project

A good example is St. John's School in the UK (attention, USA education boards!)

Open Source and Education tells you how to do it, what you need to know.

Linux in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Minds, Social Justice is an important article in Linux Journal about this.

K12 Linux Terminal Server Project for Schools is just one of the things you can do.

K-12 Linux, another good site about this.

A good technical primer on Linux in Education

If you use free software in schools you will also need free documentation and training materials. Here is a list of the best of it.

(Pls mod this up guys, I'm posting anon...)