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Can Linux Beat Microsoft in Education?
Booker asks: "Microsoft has been the driving force behind the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), a system by which education-related applications can communicate with each other via XML messages. Although Microsoft is the coordinator, the spec seems extremely open, and something that Linux applications could easily work with. Many vendors have signed on to the SIF, and it looks like it will become a standard, at least in North America. What do you think? Could Linux stake a claim as a server for this new standard? What would it take to port this code?" This would be cool. Anyone interested in tackling this one?
"One of the things Microsoft has done to support this standard is to release a Zone Integration Server which manages the queuing and authentication between the various client applications attached to it. The interesting thing, though, is that the source code is available, and the license is quite liberal - liberal enough, I think, that a Linux port would be possible.
Q.Is the specification based on Microsoft technologies?
A.No. The SIF specification is based on the W3C endorsed standard Extensible Markup Language (XML). It defines common data formats and high-level rules of interaction and architecture, and <i>is not linked to a particular operating system or platform</i>. [emphasis their's]
Interesting. If only one good thing has come out of the anti-trust trial, it is that distrust in Microsoft has now reached the point where they are actually saying, in so many words, "we're not locking you into this" whenever they endorse a new spec or technology.
ZIS EULA
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MICROSOFT LICENSE AGREEMENT
FOR ZONE INTEGRATION SERVER
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I must say I agree. While M$ is doing it's best to beat others, I think we should try to be better. Offer a hand instead of spitting on them. If we could offer nice interoperability between Windows and UNIX machines, it wouldn't perhaps be as big a step to go from Win32 to UNIX...
Just this kind of misuse linux (or whatever UNIX. I'm not going to repeat this again, so s/linux/whatever UNIX/) would stand up to. Have every user an account of their own (or instead, one for every teacher and kids'd share one read-only account). And a nice, pre-configured configs should any of the teachers mess their GUI up.
How well do X terminals stand just cutting the power?
You stole my line...
As government institutions, they follow a number of arcane rules on procurement. So an Open Source alternative will have an uphill fight to gain acceptance. Some thoughts:
Most government agencies work off of bids for products. This usually doesn't match the business model of the OS corps, so it makes us look worse on paper. Also, the government is notoriously inept at signing seemingly good contracts with vendors of proprietary equipment. Of course, when the vendor's equipment saddles them with a transition cost of going to a competitor or Opens Source alternative, they again look at the options and decide that it is most cost effective to pay more for the proprietary product. This is akin to 'no money down', huge monthly payments.
Another problem is the idea of working with a traditional vendor vs. newer better ones. Government procurement 'experts' are not typically very up on modern technology, and typically have arcane rules designed around reality circa five-10 years ago. Mention a modern business model and they look at you like you just landed from mars.
Procurement, even at the local level, is usually a bureaucratic and time-consuming process. In the past, the reward was a huge captive market. But the economics of software makes not worth it except for large companies with large legal departments (like MS).
Finally, especially in school systems, it is nearly impossible for a company to deal with someone who has authority. Most times, the multiple steps in the process mean that you have to deal with conflicting agendas and have a product that is all things to all people.
Not to throw a wet blanket like this, but take a deep breath and ask around before trying to be a government contractor. Unless you are very lucky and clever, you'll get annihilated by it.
First Post!
The goal shouldn't be to "beat Microsoft" in this market. I do service work for a few schools and the teachers are probably the worst of all users whom I've encountered.
Just yesterday, the school I was at had a stack of service request forms and nearly half of them were because one idiot teacher saw that some kids had deleted an alias from the desktop and thought that the computers were broken.
These people aren't going to embrace linux. They've struggled long and hard to be able to turn on and turn off Windows and MacOS machines. Most of them don't have the desire or the ability to learn to use linux.
It's already known that linux can compete with M$ in the server arena. We won't be able to, nor should we want to bankrupt M$. The goal is to have as many choices as possible. MacOS, Linux, *BSD, Windows (whatever), BeOS, and straight old fashioned *NIX are all acceptable OSes for a given task.
M$ will be around in some form or another for the forseeable future, because so many business and governments have invested their futures in it's products. What we need as an atmosphere of healthy and honest competition.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Nathan Whitehead
Also, it seems to share a number of RMS's requirements, such as the patent issue. From MS's license:
This is quite interesting. I suspect this license would fall under the open source guidelines, and quite possibly qualify as Free Software as well.
Is this a first from Microsoft? Does this mark a quiet change in strategy, or are they just making sure that they can avoid any legal issues? I suspect government contracts might have provisions against the use of proprietary stuff. Or they should, not that that's stopped the people in my school district... They seem to enjoy locking students into only using Word or some such.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.