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MS Pressuring NW Schools: Pay Up, Or Face Audit
razvedchik writes: "As reported in this article in the Portland, OR newspaper, The Oregonian, Microsoft is pressuring 24 school districts in the northwest to agree to their Microsoft School Agreement licensing scheme or undergo an audit in 60 days. Multnomah ESD, which covers the greater Portland area and has around 25,000 computers, has to either decide to accept the license at about $500,000 or undergo the audit which it does not have time to prepare for. Of significant interest is the fact that a significant majority of these schools are experimenting with using Linux. Multnomah ESD has its own thin-client Linux distro called K12LTSP."
What legal right do they have to inspect the premises? Why do these schoolboards have to submit to these audits. It's not like I have the right to inspect the computers of everyone attached to the network that I run.
This would be a perfect time for some large linux distribution company, or a consulting company to step in and donate time to help them migrate entirely to Linux. It would have to be a disruptive migration because of the audit in 60 days threat but they could do it.
You would think with such a large focus on MS right now they'd not pull this kind of crap especially in a tight economy and a region full of protestors. Should be interesting to see how this develops.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Hey guys, seriously, if the schools want to use Windows, they should pay for it. They pay for books, they pay for pencils, they pay for desks. Granted if Microsoft wanted schools to use Windows, they should give it to the schools for free (which I hear they routinely do).
This is a pretty dumb move imo of course as it will do nothing but drive the schools to look to cheaper (free) OSes, but it's well within Microsoft's right to do dumb things.
Billy wouldn't do that would he? What would his mother think?
s t* antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitrust* antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*
antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitrust*antitru
Get paid to code OSS
I would humbly suggest that readers in that area volunteer to help get books in order for the audit. And or help to switch over systems to Linux away from Microsoft.
Help the schools out with a little bit of your time and expertise.
No!!!
All your computers are belong to us!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Uh, time for someone to undercut the proposed license fees with a counter plan involving a cheaper, more reliable alternative?
No, actually, it isn't.
And you just filled my screen with a bunch of unmarkedup crap.
Think before you barf next time.
This is no way to win over the K-12 education crowd. Apple did it in the 80's by offering quality, easy-to-use computers at discounted prices.
Bullying the local school children mob style probably won't win them the following they were after in the first place. I wonder if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will start to pick on all the Public Libraries they have pushed Windows on.
Tell me this, why should any school/company have to submit to an audit by microsoft in the first place?! Where is the logic in this? If anyone is a good customer microsoft has the right to see if they're "really" a good customer?
What BS.
I hope this pushes those schools to use Linux or some other free OS instead of M$. It would ultimately be the best solotion.
Whatever happened to the concept of 'Innocent until proven guilty'? The district shouldn't be considered guilty simply because they cannot afford to run an internal audit of their own. Innocence should not have to be bought.
as much as i despise M$ and think that people should use linux, the fact is that a majority of companies and people still use windows. By shifting schools to linux you deprive students of a chance to learn the most common os in business which may give them a competitive disadvantage after they graduate when looking for a job. on the other hand, it may cause more businesses to shift to linux if the majority of their employees are more familiar with it. i personally like the latter..but i think the former is the more likely result.
I would have read that if you had learned how to use line breaks.
"Derp de derp."
When you install a (note that, "a") copy of any MS product then you are explicitly giving them the right to audit you.
Best Slashdot Co
Not just schools, it's a form of retaliation against the .gov by microsoft, in response to the recent trials.
.gov M$ you owe us $15million
A friend of mine works for an arm of the VA (Veterans Affairs) According to this friend, the VA is being systematically searched by M$ for license compliance, so far with grim results. Supposidly the VA is about 20million out of compliance with M$ products. It doesn't just stop at M$ stuff though.
While M$ is doing their "sweeps" they will make it their business to report any competitors product being out of license as well. This includes everything from an over the limit shareware version of winzip, to "borrowed" installed copies of quicken, and the like.
It's pretty clear what is going on. The states that have fined M$ are owed money, but all M$ has to do is prove they are out of license compliance.
M$ We pay up when you pay us for our software
It's a pretty smart tactic on M$'s part when you think about it. It's not like M$ hasn't known for years everyone pirates their software to hell. It's just kinda funny how they use it as a trump card to save their ass.
Interesting that this was issued to take effect in 60 days (late June) [now, is this 60 real days or 60 business days?]. If this school district is anything like the school districts I'm familiar with, they would just be gearing down for end of term at around that time.
I sure wouldn't want disruptions then. I wonder why they didn't time it so that the audit had to happen mid-summer or some other non-peak time instead.
I HATE THE USA
...Microsoft hasn't pulled this same stunt on the various state governments that are still pushing the case against them? They might as well, since after the info in this article becomes more widespread I can't imagine how they could look any worse. I have to admit, lamebrain tactics like this probably do more for the Linux community than anything.
Seriously tho, what keeps the school from telling them to bugger off? Could Microsoft get a court order to allow their audit teams to search (especially if the school sent a statement to the effect of "we won't be using your software anymore, so don't bother with the audit")?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
How can millions and millions of companies use such OS (everbody knows windows is not the best OS around)?
:(((
They do this all the time! They let people pirate their software freely them they come with this licensing bullshit. Ok, you have 25k computers around many many schools (lets take as an example this story)... you have two options: 1- use the lame OS, pay the license, and go on... 2- change OS (this may take weeks), pay training for your personal, wait every user to get user with new OS, etc, etc, etc...
Thats how MS achieved monopoly...
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Seems to me like MS is taking it's revenge for the anti-trust suite by trying to audit every government institution. I don't know the details but that's what it looks like to me. But you know what? I don't feel sorry for any of them.
Let's say that MS shows up at my door and says "We want to audit your machines". What would happen if I just slammed the door in their faces? What right do they have to audit anybody?
Note: I'm not talking specifcially about schools, but rather a business that presumably has made no contractual deals with them.
"Derp de derp."
Even if they had used Linux it sounds like they need some education on documenting software loaded on machines.
Schools pay top dollar for books, desks, etc. What right do they have to steal from Microsoft? Microsoft offers their software to schools for literally pennies on the dollar (even cheaper then the prices you see at "student discount" stores). If schools determine that Linux or FreeBSD (or Lindows!) is a better alternative, then they should switch, not steal.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Whatever happened to the concept of 'Innocent until proven guilty'?
It has slowly mutated:
1) Innocent until proven guilty
2) Guilty until proven innocent
3) Guilty, period.
4) Guilty, and suggesting there may be such a thing as "innocence" is a crime too.
5) CBDTPA
I'm sure someone reading this in MW, or a local LUG, has a spare few hours and a hundred dollars or so write a couple of hundred Linux CD-ROMs and post them with a clear and reasonable letter to the govenors of these schools, pointing out the benefits of OSS software.
With a little effort you'll have done a lot of good for the schools of MW and shown Microsoft for the callous bastards that they are.
The article cites 25,000 users and MS is offering the software for $500,000
That is $20 a copy. Deal with it or switch to linux. Yup, those horrible horrible businessmen.
So what the combo of less property tax and more gambling has done is shift the tax burden for schools from business to individuals, and disproportionately to poorer individuals, who tend to gamble more (this is not a value judgement, just a fact).
Also, Portland currently has the highest unemployment in the nation - about 9.5% last I checked. Furthermore, our Superintendent or Schools
I hope that helps put this quote from the article in context: The trouble is, if 60 days isn't enough time to audit 25,000 machines it sure as hell isn't enough time to convert them to Linux. It boggles my mind that Microsoft is going so far out of its way to piss people off. [Insert ob. Princess Cinnamon-Bun quote here]
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I have been trying to reduce cost and inprove user satafaction in the school district for the last 6 years, BUT each time the Hillboro Schoo District pushes me aside. Maybe legal action is needed to improve my children education.
Shaun Savage
The comment in the article about generic software is a clever observation. After all, we have generic drugs, generic foods, off-brand clothing lines. Each of these is most likely a lucrative market for the companies that don't command name brand recognition. A significant portion of the population of the world can't reasonably afford the top o' the line products.
:^)
So it seems that generic software, which does almost everything that name brand software does, should be a natural part of the computing world. Yet, where are those generic word processors and spreadsheets and even operating systems? Why is 95% of the desktop market, including these important applications, controlled by one company with nearly impenetrable barriers to entry?
And does this news article point to an example of that very company moving to stamp out a potential insurgence of that generic software? Would we stand for Del Monte moving to shut off the supply of generic branded vegetables on store shelves, especially when someone pointed out that many families couldn't afford the more expensive brand? Why should we stand for Microsoft bringing in jack-booted thugs against schools that have budget shortages?
Yeah, that's inflammatory language. So what?
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
In my spare time, I do charity work. Much of it is non-technical, but some is the obligatory website and or a bit-o-help when thier office network goes kafloooie.
... which generally fell on deaf ears.
With the recent annoucements of user friendly distributions such as Lycoris and Mandrake (I've yet to give the new Debian a spin), I have been trying to get the office staff of the church I attend to make the switch.
Sure, they won't get ALL the power of MS Word, but then again, THEY DON'T ever really use all that power anyway.
Recently, I had been warning them about MSFT's draconian licensing practices
I'd like, at this time, to thank Microsoft for making my case for me.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Would it have killed you to leave in the line breaks? Next time you do community service, do it right. Mod this punk down.
The audit is designed to prove ownership of the software. In essence, Microsoft is possibly forcing them to prove their own guilt. If you walk out of a store and set off the alarms, you have to show a receipt for your merchandise to prove that you paid for it. It's not up to the store to conduct an inventory analysis and prove there is a sweater missing. It's up to you to prove that you paid for it and own it legit.
sheesh.
1. Get hepatitis A shot
2. Toss someone's salad
(edited for clarity)
Microsoft puts the squeeze on NW schools
04/21/02
Steve Duin
Predatory? Monopolistic? Customer-unfriendly? Microsoft?
Say it ain't, Joe . . . and Steve and John and Scott and the rest of the computer tech supervisors at the 24 largest school districts in Oregon and Washington.
At the busiest time of the year for those districts, Microsoft is demanding that they conduct an internal software audit to "certify licensing compliance." In a March letter, the software giant gave Portland Public Schools 60 days to inventory its 25,000 computers.
"Which," said Scott Robinson, the district's chief technology officer, "is a virtual impossibility."
Microsoft is well within its rights to call for an audit. Everyone says so. Everyone has read the contract. But school officials in both states are calling the audits "untimely," "outrageous" and "typical of Microsoft: not very bright."
Many also consider the audit requirement a strong-arm tactic to push school districts into Microsoft's costly system-wide licensing agreements.
"Given the fact that the letter came from their marketing department, and included a brochure about their school licensing agreement, this didn't seem terribly subtle to any of us," said Steve Carlson, associate superintendent for information and technology for Beaverton schools.
"I have a more simplistic view," said John Rowlands, director of information services for the Seattle School District: "They just want to squeeze every nickel out of us they can."
For sheer irony, it's hard to beat the fact that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pouring millions of dollars into small, high-tech high schools even as Microsoft is looking for loose change at schools such as Jefferson and Marshall.
The school districts are considered guilty of software piracy until they can prove they're in licensing compliance. If the district can't drum up the staff to manage the inventory, Microsoft is willing to show up with its own audit crew, but if a single computer is found with illegal or undocumented software, the district must pay for the audit.
"This doesn't recognize any of the complexities of the educational environment," Robinson said. Many of the 25,000 computers in Portland schools were donated and arrive without pedigree or papers. "We're bubblegum and baling wire in terms of what we're putting on the desktops. For us to try to manage every donated desktop that comes in from a business or an individual is ridiculous."
Ah, but wait. Microsoft has an offer it thinks you can't refuse, if only to avoid the audit: the vaunted Microsoft School Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, a school or district simply counts its computers and pays Microsoft somewhere in the neighborhood of $42 per machine for one systemwide annual license.
As Rowlands noted, IBM rolled out this idea years ago. Schools liked it because they could add hundreds of computers over the course of the school year and not pay for the additional software licenses until the next computer count.
But Microsoft has put a new spin on the agreement, requiring an "institution-wide commitment." That means the district must include in its count not only the PCs, but all the iMacs and Power Macs that might conceivably use Windows software.
What would it cost Portland Public Schools, which is already facing a $36 million shortfall, to sign that Microsoft School Agreement?
"A rough number? $500,000," Robinson said, "which translates, roughly, into 10 teaching positions."
No one at Microsoft -- and I dialed three different offices -- returned phone calls Friday to explain why the "random" audits targeted the nine largest school districts in Oregon and the 15 largest in Washington. Nor was anyone available to explain why Microsoft failed to notify the two groups chartered to represent the schools in licensing negotiations, the Oregon Educational Technology Consortium and the Washington School Information Processing Cooperative.
"Everyone has a bad taste about the way this came down," Carlson said. "The audit is heavy handed; its non-participatory. Either they're starting out with the assumption that we're all crooks or they feel they can bludgeon school districts into their marketing agreement. It's clear they're not spending much time talking to the schools they're purporting to be supportive of."
Thus, it's not surprising that several schools are asking, along with Robinson in Portland, "whether we want to continue with the Microsoft platform."
One of the options is Linux, open-source software schools can run on their desktops free of charge and without a license. Linux is particularly useful on donated computers that aren't worth the $100 Microsoft charges for a software license.
Paul Nelson, a teacher at Riverdale, and Eric Harrison with Multnomah ESD have developed a thin-client software called K12LTSP that runs Linux. In the last nine months, they've distributed the software to 5,000 schools.
"Schools and government agencies that are paying for Microsoft Office are wasting money," Nelson said. "They should be using free software. A lot of this stuff has become generic. It doesn't take a fancy program to make something bold."
R. Thor Prichard, the executive director at the Oregon Educational Technology Consortium, observed, "Microsoft has made it known they're concerned about Linux invading their territory. They're doing a lot of strategy building about eliminating Linux as a threat. Some of the districts they targeted are some of the districts doing initiatives in Linux."
Subtle? Artful? Benevolent? Microsoft? That'll be the day.
Reach Steve Duin at 503-221-8597, Steveduin@aol.com or 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland OR 97201.
The best way to help out in Portland is the following links:
K12LTSP Project with some associated links and contact information.
Portland LUG, who have been talking about this on their listserv.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
I think you forgot "Bend over and enjoy the ride".
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Read your EULA. It will SPECIFICALLY state that M$ has the right to inspect/audit you at any time.
So, if Microsoft can prove that you EVER bought ANY Microsoft software, they can enter your premises and audit you.
Now, if you've NEVER bought anything legally from them, that's a different story... interesting...
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
i say oregon should go cold turkey (that is, leave the turkey in the cold) and snuggle up to the warmth of free software and its very congruent goals (education!). otherwise, you Are what you Eat.
(personal plug: i am available for modest consulting fees (like 2mo rent + food) should any Organization want help on this kind of exorcism.)
thi
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
I'm not dead yet!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
M$ is doing a cash grab having missed their revenue targets recently. M$ knows that nobody has their ducks in a row when it comes to licences and all this amounts to is a version of the "protection racket." (i.e. Pay us some amount of money to protect yourselves from us)
/.'ers should help them out by putting a distro together with X and Wine and StarOffice to replace all of the M$ softeare they have.
Maybe
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I wonder whether Microsoft includes the cost of software audits when calculating TCO...
2. Most Schools purchase their MS software through Volume License agreements which have a clause stating that periodic audits are a term of the agreement.
3. The Oregonian article stated that if schools choose to have MS conduct the audit, they need to pay MS's costs if just one computer is found out of compliance. I believe the actual clause states that they need to be more than 5% out of copliance district wide.
Having stated this, I am an employee at one of these districts and the amount of work is staggering. I thought I was going to be the only Anti-MS zealot to see what a heavy handed tactic this is, so I am pleasantly surprised that many others see it and feel the same way.
FYI...I have posted Anonymously since my e-mail makes it easy to see who I am and which district I work for, and many here don't feel that getting rid of MS software is a good idea.
Keep passing the opem windows...
Did anyone else notice this? On my SuSE 7.3 with Mozilla 0.9.9, viewing this page (be that online or offline after wget'ing the page) crashed Mozilla! It's not the ads code, I just cut it out and re-opened the disk file, Mozilla still crashed. It's the first time I have this kind of problems with Mozilla, and I'm not amused for it to happen on *slashdot*.
This comment brought to you by konqueror.
It is sad to read about the world's wealthiest couple treating our children so shabbily. All Microsoft had to do is to provide a "token" which could be attached to each PC hard drive to demonstrate ownership. My recommendation to the school district is "convert to Linux". With very few exceptions any application that a school district needs can be run under Linux. On the last day of school all possibly unlicensed PC's should be wiped and converted to Linux over the summer. That could also be done today. I burned all my licenses when I converted to 100% Linux. Never felt better.
> At the busiest time of the year for those
> districts, Microsoft is demanding that they
> conduct an internal software audit to "certify
> licensing compliance." In a March letter, the
> software giant gave Portland Public Schools
> 60 days to inventory its 25,000 computers.
To me, this sounds like Microsoft is threatening to have its goons "audit" the school at a time when the school probably can't afford the staff to do the audit.
> Ah, but wait. Microsoft has an offer it thinks
> you can't refuse, if only to avoid the audit: the
> vaunted Microsoft School Agreement. Under
> the terms of this agreement, a school or
> district simply counts its computers and
> pays Microsoft somewhere in the
> neighborhood of $42 per machine for one
> systemwide annual license.
If the school can't afford the audit, they can pay Microsoft a yearly tribute to not audit them, but they lose access to the software once they stop paying. And they have to pay for even non-Microsoft computers, like iMacs.
> The school districts are considered guilty of
> software piracy until they can prove they're in
> licensing compliance. If the district can't
> drum up the staff to manage the inventory,
> Microsoft is willing to show up with its own
> audit crew, but if a single computer is found
> with illegal or undocumented software, the
> district must pay for the audit.
I wouldn't be surprised if once they get schools into this subscription idea, eventually the annual tribute for Microsoft software for Apple computers will be higher than that of Windows-based computers.
Man, someone should stop them before they become a monopoly!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is only valid for official cases, i.e. a criminal proceeding. This is at least how roman law operates. I'm not so sure about american law, but I'm guessing that Microsoft have included this statute in the EULA as for the audit. However, if they want to claim the money, and the school disagrees, this goes to civil proceedings....
Do they have to get some sort of subpoena? before a judge? if so, how is it they seem to be able to get subpoenas easier than the fbi to bust into an arabs house?
Liberty.
I believe the majority of people got sucked into Linux because they didn't know about FreeBSD. Someone tell these schools about FreeBSD before they go down the wrong path using an OS which reinvents what's already been BSD for years.
In the school districts I'm familiar with (and they are no where near a statistical sampling), those who switched to Linux either loved Linux, or where of the opinion, "Well, there are some problems with Linux (mostly read: we need to get used to a slightly different way), but it is still better than Microsoft."
And while there are plenty of good things about Microsoft software, given the current climate of security concerns and lack of funding in education, most school ITs are more than willing to give Linux a serious evaluation. It seems to me these strongarm tactics will only bring school management in line with this view.
I'm curious as to when Microsoft strong-arming reaches critical mass, and "Well, Microsoft, you want us to play by stupid rules or you'll take your ball home? Okay, we've got a new ball!" becomes the standard reaction.
...stealing from a criminal preditory monopoly isn't right! Criminals have rights too.....
I want to be alone with the sandwich
"Lemme make you a deal you can't refuse... Pay up, or our auditor Guido here'll... hafta 'talk with you' out back..."
Now 500K in comparison would mean .00125% of his net worth. To put this in more human terms, that's what 62.5 cents is to $50,000.
Off with their mother fucking heads, I say.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
After all, what better things could a school district spend $500,000 dollars on than identical copies of software licenses? Teachers salaries? Teaching materials? Lab equipment? Naw, it'd all just go to waste, but those microsoft licenses will last a lifetime.... right?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
"Due to unforseen 'computers in education' expenses, we have to cancel the field trip to the amuzement park control room and the Box Factory this year..." Actually that IS quite educational - not only do they take several years experience with Msft products with them into the workplace, but also experience with what happens when your business doesn't track licenses properly. Just another line item in the TCO.
Well, they took the free crack, now they are addicted and have to pay the only local dope dealer..
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I just emailed the author of the article and I'm going to try to get in touch with the heads of the information department at the districts in Portland and Beaverton. I'm willing to donate my time and expertise to help them migrate systems where possible.
If anyone else in the Portland metro area is interested, send email to linux-school[at]zerog.net
It would be great to be able to line up a team of people to do migrations / training / auditing. I think there are few reasons why the district couldn't switch a majority of their machines over, leaving only the Windows machines that they absolutely require.
If nothing else, you have the opportunity to possibly reduce your tax burden, both as a resident, and as a deduction for your time.
Why does M$ get the right to set an arbitrary timeframe, and what keeps the schools from hiring some, shall we say, wildly inaccurate (and cheap!) auditing firm to audit their machines?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Same with me. I'm using Mozilla RC1 on Win2K so it seems to be more widespread than I was first thinking. Weird.
M$ We pay up when you pay us for our software
Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
M$ We pay up when you pay us for our software
Although, technically it's
This will hardly "save their ass"
HAHAHAHA, thats funny.
Just go to your local school district, and say "Hi, would you like me to install linux on all your computers, for free?"
They will not want you to. Almost every compsci teacher in a highschool is either
a. convinced there is nothing but microsoft
b. anything but microsoft/apple is illegal
c. Linux is evil
d. Linux is hard
Trust me, I've tried. I brought up linux with the computer teacher at my school, and he said "is that that OS those freakin long haired geeks out in Colorado came up with?!"
I finally did get a full lab setup this year, cause I'm now the tech dude, but no one wants to use it. I made it extremly simple, huge netscape icon, and all they use it for is web surfing. From what I hear it is that the teachers are just to unfamiliar with it.
And don't even think about trying to reteach a teacher. Everyone I've ever tried to teach something to just stares blankly at me like "I didn't become a teacher to learn more shit, go the fuck away!" and either they ignore you, they forget, and the rare few that likes it do come along, but its rare.
Wouldn't it be neat to have this as a challenge to install Linux?
Likely the school board probably already has the $500K earmarked to come from somewhere. The education of kids is too important, that's why the convicted monopolist is pulling the shenanigans.
So instead of having bake sales, why not get the communities together to do installfests? If they can get the computers changed over in 60 days, then the schools get to keep the money, albeit in a different PTA account.
Perhaps a template can be designed at Sourceforge that allows for a mass CVS action of doing the installs (keeping track of the installs and the problem computers and etc).
Nor do I. They had, and still have a chance to utterly disband MS. Lets hope this knocks some sense into them.
for a single line break, and
for a new paragraph. Slashdot will ignore line breaks in your comments if you don't use these.
It's reminiscent of the bind MS's big corporate customers are finding themselves in with the new Enterprise Agreements and their requirements for current software.
Microsoft may not be the last organization on earth to which I wish to give a blank check, but they're close enough.
I didn't know I could travel back in time! It sure feels like 1984....
What's the problem here? If a school district owes Microsoft money, then they owe them money. If they don't, then they have nothing to worry about. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see this as a story. Struggling for your daily "M$ IS EVIL" quota, perhaps?
First, these guys are not with it if they do not have a pretty good idea of what software is installed already. In the current enviroment, you better have some kind of combination of process and technology that allows you to at least know, if not also control the software installed on the network.
This stuff can happen to any company at any time. If Microsoft asked my company for a license audit we could turn the results over immeditely, because we constantly track software licenses owned, used, and installed. This was not easy or cheap, but you have to do it.
Second, I think we can all see that the key to the educational software license is that the schools pay a fixed fee per computer, regardless of whether the computer uses Windows or not. Sound famaliar?
This is going to be a total rant, but here goes.
This time they have gone too far. I live here in Oregon and have three kids in public schools. I work for a state agency which, like many other state agencies in Oregon is undergoing significant budget cuts.
Portland is a bit of a drive for me, but I am seriously thinking about taking some time off and volunteering to go up there and help them audit machines, wipe hard drives, and install Linux clients or whatever they need. In fact, anyone else who wants to do the same could join me in emailing them here or maybe the help desk here.
Put your money/time where your mouth is.
Bottom line... One reason why so many people are willing to put up with MS products working so poorly is that very few people actually pay for them directly. Instead, the corporations/schools/hardware-makers buy MS product, and people just install it. If MS starts getting serious about license audits, people are going to start to realize that they are paying $500 each for MS Office, and $100+ for Windows XP. This can only encourage competition.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
25,000 computers? How many children capable of typing format C: does that make? MS is just expediting the Linux in schools revolution.
Something on this page is crashing Mozilla 0.9.9 every single time the page is viewed.
Konqueror has no problem with it. So far.
Great thought and I know of one such school that can use help. In Winter Haven, Florida a school is being built - all by volunteers. It is a 30,000 sq. ft. facility that has been under construction for three years. They hope to have it open for school in Fall '02.
Here is where we (you?) can help. They have cat5 pulled throughout the building, but none of it is punched down or connected to anything because they have no equipment yet. They need PC's, servers, punchdown racks, switches, and people to donate their time if they happen to be in the central Florida area.
If you have stuff or time to donate, please call Jim Durham at 863-299-1189 - he is the one leading the project.
And thanks.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
My last employer put together a contract for a charter school a few years back for 25 workstations and a server (win95 / winnt), 4 printers and cd-server that never worked (but got hacked a few times). Total bid was about $80K ($55K for machines, $3K for our services and the rest for licensing). I remember thinking what a shame that so much was tied up in licensing (25 workstation licenses; plus Office; plus the 50-user NT license.)
If the licensing had been a little more reasonable, the school would have been able to afford more of our services and we probably would have been able to make their network more useful as a result. I ended up spending a couple hundred hours of my own over a couple years to help nurse things along, but I recall thinking that if the school licensing had been given to the school, they could have gotten a lot more value out of it. Also, since most of the 300, or so students were entering the business world in a few years, having them trained in M$ tools would have been great for the software vendor.
It's too bad M$ doesn't take a different approach to licensing for schools. It would be a great tax write-off and would further proliferation of M$-based skillsets to further promote their software in businesses, where these youths would eventually wind up. Not to mention a much better PR message than this article sends. I hope people consider things like this when the Bill and Melissa Gates foundation offers token contributions for their pet projects. A little perspective....
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
I heard he was using a european type of masterbastion toy, but forgot the voltage...he kind was find with a beer bottle in one hand and a silly ass grin
Looks like both the government and the private sector are in a horse race to see who can destroy individual liberty faster.
Maybe they are in such financial hardships because of stuff like this:
Quote:
What would it cost Portland Public Schools, which is already facing a $36 million shortfall, to sign that Microsoft School Agreement?
"A rough number? $500,000," Robinson said, "which translates, roughly, into 10 teaching positions."
The way I do math:
25,000 computers times ~$42 apiece equals just over a Million $
If this guy under-budgets everything by half, no wonder they are in the hole so much.
I think there was a misprint - it's Microsoft Licensing Scam, not Microsoft Licensing Scheme.
And, as someone active in Seattle's PTSA who knows a lot of the School Board, I think I'd characterize this as a Linux Adoption Scheme, because if you push too hard, we'll just jump ship.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Do you really have to nitpick? Does it make you feel smart to nitpick? Why is it every time someone makes a good informative comment some ass has to come along and bitch about the spelling, or the wording. My whole comment was good, to the point, informative and ontopic. You need to get a life my friend.
Browsing at +4 or +5 on Mozilla, this page does not crash. Must be something in a comment at +3 screwing Mozilla up, although nothing looks blatantly obvious.
eggs in one basket. This is why the government has traditionally tried to keep from using 1 specific company for all of their materials in one area. Imagine if the problem were made even worse and M$ decided to use thier market dominance to enforce a political policy. We would then no longer have a government being run by our elected officials, but a government being controlled by one company (in this case M$).
To make a much simpler comparison, imagine that the military purchased all of their bullets from a company somewhere in the middle-east...
Now some would say that our government is already controlled by the corporations, but I refuse to belive that.
Example, Best Buy in particular is guilty of this, especially around X-Mas. The theft detection thing constantly goes off. In most cases the people who set it off stand around and wait for an employee to waive them through, sometimes after checking their reciept sometimes not. I personally refuse to stop and have my bag searched because some acne scarred teenager was too busy daydreaming to properly clear my dvd's.
Around here, CompUsa takes this to an extreme, every person walking out of the store has his/her bag checked against the reciept. This really irritates me, because it's inconvenient and at that point the money has changed hands, that product is mine. I don't feel I need to be subjected to their draconian anti-theft measures. And I'm not sure that there's a thing they can do about it if I refuse. Other than ban me from the store.
The question of shoplifters isn't exactly black and white, in MD at least, you cannot be convicted of shoplifting while still inside the store (though this may have changed slightly), so you can put something up your shirt, but until you walk out of the store it's not stealing. Once you are out of the store, however, it is. But a clerk in a store has no legal right to do anything to you once you're off the stores premises. Other than to follow you, they cannot attempt to restrain you in any way, even if you were actually stealing.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
If this isn't blackmail and anti-competitive, I don't know what is.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a criminal concept that applies only in the context of the criminal justice system. I don't believe any law enforcement agency has accused the schools of anything so this standard isn't relevant.
This situation, rather, is a matter of contract law. The schools entered into a contract with Microsoft and have now come to regret the terms. The enforcability of that contract is a whole seprate issue that again has nothing to do with criminal law.
My son and daughter go to Washington county schools. My daughters classroom has a dozen or so assorted PC's. Most look like the licensing fee would be more than each computer is worth. And I would bet not one of them could run XP! It took 7 months for the parking lot to be repaved after it was torn up. Her teacher teaches both 4 and 5 graders in a combined class. Her school just does not have the budget to spend on Microsoft. My sons middle school seems to have faired better but by no means is any of the equipment state of the Art. If there is anyone from Washington county schools out there that needs a hand removing Windows from their systems, I'd be glad to help if I knew who to ask!
Another option is to use 'plain text' instead of HTML. Then when you hit enter you get line breaks, similar to notepad. (now you all know why I only copy/paste links instead of using HTML for them :P)
"Derp de derp."
From Dictionary.com
"Extortion \Ex*tor"tion\, n. [F. extorsion.] 1. The act of extorting; the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge.
2. (Law) The offense committed by an officer who corruptly claims and takes, as his fee, money, or other thing of value, that is not due, or more than is due, or before it is due. --Abbott.
3. That which is extorted or exacted by force. "
Laptop Reviews
Alternatively, you could tell them to call the cops, stand there until they arrive, and make your case to the officer (or if he also disagrees, to a judge, in which case you would have the right to an attorney and so forth). Chances are this is too much of a pain in the ass for both parties so you voluntarily forfeit some rights to get on with your life.
The burden of proof is always on the accuser.
You missed one:
2.5) Guilty even if proven innocent.
(AHRA - you must pay money to the RIAA for blank audio CD's - you can prove that the CD wasn't used for piracy, but you still have to pay)
Of significant interest is the fact that a significant majority of these schools are experimenting with using Linux.
That piece of information is significant, and it has significantly demonstrated that Linux has make significant inroads into the significant K12 markets.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
The Microsoft School Agreement seems like a clear antitrust violation. It seems like charging a school for each computer is similar to the way they used to charge OEM's based on the number of computers sold, regardless of the OS installed on it. It the same old trick of trying to illegally shut out the competition, only now it's cutting into teachers salaries and programs for kids. Thanks M$, what a wonderful company you are!
Terminal servers are aimed at the same market, so naturally the marketroids have stolen the "thin client" jargon. But it's a totally different technology. Whoever invented the LTSP acronym knew this -- let's all emulate him or her.
And if you actually read the page you pointed to, you discover its not a distro either. Which is actually a good thing, since you can combine it with a distro to run it on a variety of platforms. Hmm, should work with my 386, 486, and Sparcstation doorstops. I should maybe configure it, then donate the result to some public library where they have long lines of people waiting to use the Web machines.
It's been noted in the past that Microsoft and other big companies (Auto-Cad) often just randomly send out audit notices in hopes of scareing you into a confession (either going out and buying licenses [hence making you guilty] or else calling them).
I thought CBDTPA was "Bend over and enjoy the ride."
Seems to be this comment. Check out the funky slashdot link.
It might not crash right away, but will if you hit reload.
damn
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
>Whatever happened to the concept of 'Innocent until proven guilty'?
It never applied to civil matters.
"Preponderance of Evidence" is the doctrine at
work in a civil case.
All you have to do to win a civil case is to persuade
a judge and/or jury that the facts are more probably
one way than the other.
Burden of proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, and
"presumption of Innocence" only apply to criminal
cases.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"I wonder if someone could challenge this 'right to audit' in court. A comment in the earlier story on the GPL [slashdot.org] mentioned possible contract problems with license terms that you cannot read until you open or install the software.
sadly, that's the rough equivalent of pissing up a rope
the "Contracting Entity", in this case the School District is responsible for being aware (and proactively enforcing) of ALL requirements of a contractual agreement, in this case the EULA....
Worse yet, unlike an individual user, they are considered to be in complete "control" of the software at ALL times...
so, if you or i as end-users leave a copy of a S/W product out at home and the baby sitter dupes it, it would be nearly impossible for a s/w mfgr to get legal sanctions against us...(though they COULD revoke our license and take the s/w away)
not so a multi-user licensed corporate environment...
if Jane Blow HATES Office 2009 and brings in her own copy of Office 97 into work and installs it, and it gets copied to a few other machines...GUESS WHAT
...the emmployer will have to pay (fines + license) for ALL the copies of Jane's s/w as well...
"Especially troubling is that MS seems to picking on organizations without much money to defend themselvs in court..."
Careful now, even smaller municipal entites like a School District have LOTS of legal services available to them.....EVEN IF they'd rather spend it elsewhere
I'm more fascinated that Ballmer, who is one very smart cookie, would allow a "bad press" item like this to go forward while the Antitrust Trial is still ongoing..."picking on" a school district is a GUARANTEE of bad vibes, and you would think MS would be trying to lower the volume on the "Borg" stories...
and most especially, with Bill on the Witness Stand, this type of thing will NOT endear them to the Courts when all their competitors are claiming what hardballers they are....
It shows that they are clearly "forces" at work in MS that are NOT completely in touch with what's happening in the "Real World"
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
I was a student sysadmin/techie for four years at Franklin High Schoolin Portland, OR, along with a few other students and one hired admin. I also was involved in a student union, and we knew about the funding problems: $20 million in the hole in this budget, if I remember correctly. Another $500,000 will mean even fewer teachers, when we have been losing teachers already.
/now/!" or little help messages from teachers like "the box is missing, come fix it [ed. note: that's the computer!]"). Making our computers use Linux would have been with quite a bit of dissatisfaction on the part of the teachers. Existing operating systems needed to be reinstalled about once a year depending on their use, but other than that didn't require much adminning or much knowledge on the part of the users. We few Linux/BSD users didn't have time to teach about CAB to kill frozen X or training people to log out or train other techies to handle linux troubles (we had about 8 mac/windows techies at FHS, with maybe two really proficient in linux/bsd). It really requires a full-time sysadmin, at least for every couple of schools. This does not exist. We used to be special at Franklin because we had a part-time admin. We don't have a dedicated admin at Franklin any more. We were already just scraping by on Mac/Windows maintenance, and I think a Linux or BSD network would be impossible now.
However, to those of you saying "Just use Linux," I tried. You know what, administering classroom Linux systems is hard. I was working on a X terminal Linux (then FreeBSD) network at Da Vinci middle school for over a year. It had to be X terminals because the little machines couldn't handle it. The staple computer at FHS is the P166 with 16MB RAM from CTL ("Crap Technology for Losers," as it was called), the middle school had some machines even worse. These machines can handle Office or IE on win95. They couldn't handle X with Netscape/Mozilla or StarOffice. With a server running the programs it was almost usable. However, we didn't have automounted floppy drives working, sometimes samba was flakey, sometimes people would have troubles opening netscape (it was _slow_) or something else happened. The teacher I was working with was really interested and excited, but didn't have the proficiency to be a sysadmin. I didn't have the time to be it, after spending my days at Franklin.
A number of teachers at a school can do basic Windows repair, but paid admins rarely stay at a school for more than a couple of years. The warm fuzzies of working for the public schools did not make up for the lack of pay or the crap they had to put up with ("I need you
Fry's tries to do the same thing here in Sacramento. I permit them put the check mark on the receipt (even though I do not have to), but I refuse to let them look in the bags. I did not waive my rights to protection from unreasonable searches when I entered that store. If they don't like that, they can ask me to leave. But they will not search me.
Cut the power to all those schools the day Microsoft wants to do an audit. It will be summer anyway, no kids will be there. I'd love to see how Microsoft would deal with that.
Under the new Sun liscensing all schools get Star Office for free- so I am very sure that Sun would be more than happy to give you several CD's with their best copy of SOffice 6 on it :-)
Derek
I think these schools systems should call the bluff. Let Microsoft conduct the audit with the machines in situ. Make sure the kids are using the machines when the MS goons come calling and kick them off. Force them to unplug and haul off any offending computers in front of all of the kids and make absolutely sure they know who's doing it.
I can't think of a better learning experience for the students.
Only this story, but every single time... even if I save it to disk and then open it.
I was forced to use Konqueror (the textarea-fscking little turd it is... how hard is it to put a scrollbar on the bottom if the text is wider than the box!)
Did my apt-get upgrade this morning and now my random crashes have been replaced with consistant ones... is this an improvement?
i feel better now. feel free to mod this into a blackhole...
These audits are often not used as a means to specifically punish but to lock markets. The idea is very simple, by offering a forced choice between either an audit timeframe that is unreasonable and likely to prove expensive, or by forcing the entity being audited the "choice" of a multi-year contract that will essentially prevent the institution from ever changing products anytime soon no matter how great their desire might be to do so.
This is not very different from our local thugs who occassionally stop by and say "it would be a shame if something terrible happened to your store. Perhaps we can provide you with insurance..."
I believe that can only be a manouver from an inexperience fellow at Microsoft who is following general guidelines. Those guideliness surely say to fight Linux but should say anything about bad pub. Everyone knows that beat in a lesser org is the worst pub you can have.
Sure, schools have to pay for their resources but they also are the best place for MS to educate and train future paying costumers and potential big corporate users. So I don't think the guy who tried to force the school district had good counsel.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
I know that many of us have access to those little license certificates that microsoft bundles with their software. Maybe we could gather up enough of them to pass audits. We could rent out the entire collection of licenses to whoever is getting audited at the time for a fraction of the cost of actual licenses..
this sig is deprecated
The problem for switching over to Linux is
that schools have a ton of educational software
written for windows.
This page is crashing Mozilla RC1 for me in Windows, but none of the other /. pages are. Is this an error in /. or someone's post?
The author pictured in the title story looks a lot like Mike Holgram. Who just so happens to coach the Seattle Seahawks.. Coincedence? I don't think so. Looks like MS marketing screwed up with a 6th day violation.. ;)
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Then the RIAA uses the money to fund copy protecting CDs...
Actually, in Maryland you can be convicted of shoplifting, but they have to have pretty good evidence. (i.e., you stuffed a canned ham down your pants. More than likely, you weren't planning to pay for it) And, also, they can take action against you as long as you are on store property, including the parking lot. I have a good friend who works as security for a store in the mall, and the entire mall is considered that store's property, so he's allowed to tear off after people and chase them through the mall if necessary.
You want to know what the problem w/ this is? No matter what you try to do to help some schools, they're so wrapped up their politics they won't allow you to help them.
I offered to help my old high school out on running their servers etc, but they said no. Why? Because of stupid politics.
I defy anyone with even a passing familiarity with Windows to not figure out this desktop in a heartbeat. It's so much like XP it's scary. Basically what Lycoris Linux does is use their own theme and turn KDE into a very convincing clone of XP. If they added Open Office 6 to the picture it would be even more like XP+Office.
/ (support site)
A power user might not like how one's favorite little Linux app might be missing, but Lycoris is based on Caldera and Caldera RPMs should be fine.
Get a disk set and spread it around...
http://www.lycoris.com/
http://www.lycoris.org
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Its poor management, or total knowledge and internal admittence that they have such a large monopoly over most markets that they can carry out bully tactics like this.
However, keep this up and it won't be Linux/Mac that causes Microsoft's downfall, it will be themselves for being so *evil*. Its bad policy to piss so many clientale off.
StarTux
"What's good for Microsoft is good for America!"(tm)
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
For Apple to step in and offer a deal on $500k worth of new Macs.
I don't think linux is even close to being a viable option for a school desktop...
Sure, the smarter kids could pick it up pretty quickly, but teachers would be screwed
as soon as X (inevitably) crashed and dumped them back to a shell prompt, or worse a blank screen.
Then, when they reboot (coming from a Win9x environment, this is the natural thing to do)
they risk corrupting their filesystem, because, AFAIK, no distro has a journaling FS by default.
Not to mention the fun that would ensue when some clueball "linux expert" connects a labful of
default-installed RedHat 6.2 boxes directly to the internet. (Yes, this still happens. Sad, isn't it?)
Linux as a kernel is great, it's the poor desktop software and the
even poorer distros that make the OS non-viable on the desktop.
It's my impression that the often friendly, affable-if-nerdy face of Mr. Gates does hide a darker side, one which has more disdain for the little guy than the PR suggests, i.e. "we're providing what the customer wants, why is that so wrong?" I think we see where it actually ends up.
As far as switching from Microsoft to something, I expect Apple would be easier than Linux, for two reasons.
1. Not all school computer use is classroom, administration relies heavily on wordprocessors, spreadsheets, and various canned software packages, which Linux has a start on, but not as well as Apple.
2. Educational programs are plentiful between Mac and PC, not so plentiful for Linux. It should be motivation for those who are OpenSource/GPL enthusiasts or evangelists to actually create, but it's easier to be an armchair quarterback.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd just like to say that I will not send my children to a school that doesn't run, or teach them how to use, MS products.
I know, MS is bad etc etc, but the fact is this; MS will continue to dominate the OS market for quite some time, decades.
I dont want my children to belong to a subset of the tech culture, even if it is 'nobler'.
I want them to learn MS in school, and Linux etc when they have finished farming....
The BSA and Microsoft.
...
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The tactics used by Microsoft and the Business Software Association (BSA) in the name of the fight against software piracy directly hurt the consumer, Microsoft's competitors and even society in general.
Microsoft has been found guilty of abusing its dominant position in the marketplace to the detriment of its competitors and the consumer.
The Business Software Assocation (BSA), quoting from its webpage, was formed to act
http://www.bsa.org/intnatl/about.phtml
+ As the "voice" of the software industry, we help governments and
+consumers understand how software strengthens the economy, worker
+productivity and global development; and how its further expansion
+hinges on the successful fight against software piracy and
+Internet theft.
The BSA includes a few large software and computer companies in its offical memberships.
http://www.bsa.org/intnatl/memberco
+ BSA worldwide members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Bentley
+Systems, Borland, CNC Software/Mastercam, Macromedia, Microsoft,
+Symantec, and Unigraphic Solutions. Additional members of BSA's
+Policy Council include Compaq, Dell, Entrust, IBM, Intel, Intuit,
+Network Associates, Novell, and Sybase.
Both the BSA and Microsoft are also actively running a worldwide campaign to fight software piracy. It is some of the tactics used in this campaign and the relationship between Microsoft and the BSA management which is being used by Microsoft to reinforce its monopoly. This is hurting the rest of the computer industry including some of the same companies in the BSA membership.
Other tactics, including the targeting ex-employees for informants and the offering of bounties to informants is directly harmful to the employer-employee relationship and society in general.
You or your employer may have received an email or letter from Microsoft or the BSA, or outside of NZ you may have heard the BSA's radio adverts. It's also likely that either of the above may have raised a little concern, even from the most lawful of people. The BSA can even get a court order, sometimes based on the accusation of an individual and with the help of federal marshals enter your home or place of work to gather evidence. The BSA can collects fees of up to $150,000US for every unregistered software program installed on an organizations computers. What if some unlicensed software is installed on the owners computer without their knowledge?
It is not that Microsoft or any other company should not have the right to protect its copyrighted products from "piracy". However the tactics used must also not be abused by Microsoft or the BSA to the detriment of the consumer or society.
There will be those arguing in the BSA's and Microsoft's favor who will try to paint this solely as a pure black and white issue - guilty or not guilty of software piracy and theft. BUT, by the same reasoning Microsoft's own executives should also face imprisonment for breaching the Sherman Antitrust Act.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/foia/divisionmanual/ch
+SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT, 15 U.S.C. 1-7
+
+ 1 Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1
+
+Trusts, etc., in restraint of trade illegal; penalty
+
+Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or
+conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several
+States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every
+person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or
+conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of
+a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine
+not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other
+person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or
+by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
The "discretion of the court" would take into consideration the issue of intent on the part of Microsoft's management. In the same way should the BSA, Microsoft and the courts take the issue of intent into consideration when dealing with some particular cases of software "piracy".
Tracking licenses is difficult and even if it does its best, any organization cannot be guaranteed to be 100% correct all the time. Computers are moved, repaired, upgraded, replaced and even cannibalized into other computers. It is not made any easier with one of the requirements of the BSA audits being that, along with valid licenses, you mustpresent purchase documentation to prove ownership. Presenting enough valid licenses to cover all of the copies installed on the computers in the organization used should be sufficient. Although maintaining purchase documentation is necessary for tax purposes, matching documentation to each computer is difficult and time consuming. Should the BSA have the same powers as the IRS?
The larger and more diverse the organization, the more difficult, time consuming and expensive it can be to perform a full audit of the software running on all computers. So when presented with the options of
a) Undergoing an audit from the BSA, which might turn up anything
installed without the managements knowledge; OR
b) Signing up to the purchase of all new versions of software
and a special license.
The latter option is often the only choice, even when the new license, software and required computer hardware upgrades is far more expensive than the existing setup.
Many organization have already received emails and letters from Microsoft offering the exact same choice. The problem for Microsoft's customers and competitors is that the contracts often either replaces competing software vendors products or locks in the customer to Microsoft's software preventing competition.
This Mojo article shows an example of replacement of Novell's servers, a company who is also a member BSA. The article also explains why many software vendors and customers remain silent on the issue.
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/J
This Linuxworld article explains how the new contracts can lockout other vendors. "Why Austin TX is considering a Microsoft enterprise license"
http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2001/082
+There is an insidious aspect to a citywide, multi-year plan. It
+locks users into Microsoft products only. While the Enterprise
+Agreement doesn't specifically prohibit the use of other products,
+effectively it does. It's logical to assume that if you're paying
+for MS Exchange for three years why allow a department to consider
+an alternative. (Microsoft makes hay of this point in a
+Word-formatted white paper extolling the Enterprise Agreement.)
What Microsoft or the BSA is doing would not necessarily be illegal if Microsoft was not a monopoly, but as the Antitrust division of the US Department Of Justice (DOJ) informs us...
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/guidelines/ipgu
+As in other antitrust contexts, however, market power could be
+illegally acquired or maintained, or, even if lawfully acquired
+and maintained, would be relevant to the ability of an
+intellectual property owner to harm competition through
+unreasonable conduct in connection with such property.
Microsoft have been found in breach of the Sherman act for using similar pressure on OEMs ( Original Equipment Manufactures ), including Compaq and Dell, to select Microsoft's products over competitors.
From the U.S. Court of Appeals opinion issued June 28
( You can grab a copy of the PDF file from
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/themi
)
Page 28
+In evaluating the restrictions in Microsofts agreements
+licensing Windows to OEMs,we first consider whether plaintiffs
+have made out a prima facie case by demonstrating that the
+restrictions have an anticompetitive effect.In the next
+subsection,we conclude that plaintiffs have met this burden as to
+all the restrictions.We then consider Microsofts proffered
+justifications for the restrictions and,for the most part,hold
+those justifications insufficient.
Just as Microsoft was "levering" OEMs to stop installing competing vendors products, Microsoft is using the threat of a BSA audit to "lever" end customers into choosing Microsoft's products overcompeting vendors. Why should the end customers be subjected to the same tactics?
Worldwide, many of the governmental federal, state and local organizations that your tax dollars pay for have already been "levered" into new long term enterprise license schemes.
Any organization that have already felt pressured to sign up to the new license agreements because of such threats should be given the option at anytime during the contract period, for all or individual groups of computers, to either
a) Continue the contract until it's competition; OR
b) Terminating the contract and renegotiate with Microsoft for
a new contract without threat of an audit from the BSA; OR
c) Terminate the contract, removing all the software from the
computer and receive a refund from Microsoft in direct
proportion to the time remaining on the contract; OR
d) Unbundle and remove selected packages from the computer
and receive a refund from Microsoft in direct proportion
to both the time remaining on the contract AND the retail
cost of the individual package.
For organizations facing threats of audit, now or in the future, a way must be provided to ensure that they can come into compliance without being forced into new license agreements.
Even when being audited by the IRS, you are given an opportunity to pay for a shortfall, plus sometimes a percentage penalty. In the same way, if facing a license audit, an alternative arrangement for some cases of "piracy" might be more equitable to both consumer and vendor.
Where the problem is an excess of installations, any organization or individual should have the option to purchase extra licenses, at the same price at which they purchased the original software, WITHOUT having to be forced into renegotiating the arrangement with the software vendor.
Where the problem is software installed and is in active use, that the organization or individual has never purchased any licenses for, then the vendor should expect to be paid the current market price per each unit installed. PLUS if knowledge and intent by the individuals or management can be proved then by all means a reasonable penalty should be charged.
In both above cases the vendor should also be expected to be reimbursed for the use of that software over the time it was installed, but only in close proportion to the average return on investment ( Inflation + 3% )
Per package = Original_Price
+ ( Original_Price * Average_Return_on_Investment
/ 12 * Months_installed )
The certainty of the above scheme would greatly improve the public relations between the customers, BSA and software vendors. Organizations and individuals would also be far less reticent over voluntarily going back to the software vendors and purchase extra licenses, to avoid penalties, without the hassle of negotiation or fear of being targeted for future BSA audits.
Those arguing in the BSA's and Microsoft's favor who try to paint this solely as a pure black and white issue, guilty or not guilty of software piracy and theft, should remember Microsoft's own executives facing imprisonment for breaching the Sherman Antitrust Act.
This is not an excuse for "wholesale" software piracy. Any organization or individual who is knowingly distributing illegal copies of proprietary software to individuals or organizations to be installed outside the original organization, without the vendors consent, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
There is another particular tactic used by the BSA which is directly harmful to the employer-employee relationship and society in general -- the targeting ex-employees for informants and the offering of bounties to informants.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,54324
+The group is promoting the program in radio advertisements. In
+them, Bob Kruger, the group's vice president of enforcement, says
+the BSA is looking for disgruntled employees to identify possible
+infringements and turn in their employers.
+
+"Most of the calls come from current or former employees," he says
+in the radio ad, which is airing in each respective city. It can
+also be heard on the BSA's Web site.
http://www.bsa.org/uk/press/newsreleases/2001-0
+BSA strongly advises company directors to take the time to set up
+and implement a software policy - especially bearing in mind the
+ 10,000 reward their employees could receive from the BSA for
+information leading to a successful settlement."
This is just too open to abuse by disgruntled employees, disgruntled ex-employees and even the disgruntled competition. It is just too easy for an employees or anyone to walk in and install unlicensed software on a few computers and call in an accusation to the BSA. The whole thing creates a climate of fear and is a throwback to the worst excesses of the old soviet regimes.
One simliar scheme,...
http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010425.html
... in which Microsoft offered prizes to the employees of OEMs that notified it when corporate customers ordered PCs without its Windows operating systems, was quickly discontinued Microsoft.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busines
+But Microsoft spokesman Matt Pilla said the program was "a
+super-brief pilot program that was admittedly stupid but
+absolutely didn't share information" with law enforcers.
If it was "stupid" to offer just prizes, how much more stupid is it to offer thousands in reward.
Additional news articles and editorials on the BSA.
"Risky Business
Tangling with the Business Software Alliance can mean big problems"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.
"BSA's and Microsoft's scare tactics target small fish in big-city
ponds"
http://www.infoworld.com/articl
"Microsoft to schools: Give us your lunch money!"
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0
"BSA's truce campaigns"
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/
Good coverage of the Antitrust case against Microsoft
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/
[ I would like to thank "Erik Funkenbusch" for his invaluable
assistance in hardening the argument in the above article ]
Except now anti-lottery people are painted as anti-education since the budget now totally depends on the lottery. And the rest of the lottery proceeds? Well, they went into this giant slush fund...
Okay, at the risk of sounding pedantic, go back and read the article.
Microsoft has essentially said, "J'accuse. You have unlicensed software. Either audit all your 25,000 PCs in the next sixty days (by the way, that's about 17 computers an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 60 days), or have us do it. If we do it, and find one - count 'em, one - computer out of compliance, you pay for the software you owe, plus the cost of the audit."
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that they're fully in compliance with the licenses, with the exception of one PC some shmuck donated to them last week. Doing the audit is an impossibility for them. If Microsoft does it and finds the one PC, they pay (through the nose) for the audit.
Plus, it's not like Microsoft had specific reason to believe that these guys were out of compliance: the "random" audit, according to the article, targets "the nine largest school districts in Oregon and the 15 largest in Washington."
If a cop busts down your neighbor's door, you don't say "serves him right for stealing people's stuff," until they demonstrate that, you know, the neighbor actually stole something. Don't do it here.
Installation is not the important bit here. You also have to help them _maintain_ their installation. Installing Linux on machines does more harm than good if:
1. The teachers don't know how to use it, and no one shows them, so the students don't use it either.
2. It goes out of date and gets cracked (or is just, well, out of date...)
Setting up a group of students to take care of this sort of thing is problematic, because students generally tend to graduate (and leave). You have to make certain that there's something in place to maintain what you install so that it's actually useful.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Why is 60 days not enough time to prepare for this audit? If there are 24 schools and 25000 computers, then that makes about 1042 computers at each school, now if there is just one person at each school, then if he can get to just 18 computers each day (ok, so they might have to work on the weekend, but oh well) and make sure they are in compliance, then they can prepare and have two days left to sit around. And you know there is more than one person at those schools that is capable of checking the computers. So what's the problem?
Computers that are badly out of compliance, can be just fdisked or formatted. And those with a couple of programs that are not compliant, well that is easily remedied.
The real crux of this issue is license compliance. I am no fan of the tactics Microsoft uses to strong arm people to their will, but if you are going to use their software you have to play by their rules. It should be someone's responsibility in the IT staff to ensure that all of the computers in the system are compliant with the licenses. If somebody installs software, they better damn well have the license for it and hand it over to the person designated license keeper.
If they want to use MS software, they should follow MS rules. If they don't like the EULA, they should go with some alternative. But being out of compliance and crying when you get audited is like looting the jewelry store and crying when the cop knocks on your door.
Is this Microsoft's first step into opening a line of private schools?
That's a scary thought: Microsoft manages to set the public school system back eighty years, then offers the middle and upper-middle classes an educational alternative that promotes the Microsoft Way...
Boy, I'm glad I'm not paranoid because that would be a very scary future.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
slashdot.org& lt;/A> [slashdot.org]
You Broke My Browser! :)
I also experienced mozilla hanging on this page, but the problem seems to have gone away now.
Okay there are two problems I see. ONE per the law MS has the right to seek compensation for people using their product. While people might not agree with that law it's still the law (change it if you want). TWO because the schools in question didn't keep track of their paperwork on these machines licensing they are crying foul saying somehow that it's MS's fault and that they don't have the time/resources to track everything down or do the research to avoid an audit. How many times did I hear "no excuses" from my teachers when I misplaced my paperwork for an assignment or didn't get into the class I wanted because my paperwork wasn't "filled out properly". Now the roll is reversed.
Personally I think that schools are miserably mismanaged. Quite a few of the people managing the school systems are teachers with no real experience in management or business. A teacher becomes a good teacher and therefore the next step must be Principal and after principal it must be Superindendant, despite the fact that the teacher might not have any management or supervisory skills whatsoever. I see the same thing in most businesses, they take the best customer service rep and make him/her the supervisor or manager even though that person doesn't know anything about management or how to properly train and motivate their staff.
Start hiring managers and supervisors, stop wasting money on people who don't do the job the right way or get them training to do it right. Do we need to outsource the management of schools to the private sector. Start state programs for the purchase of software and hardware and let the state pool resources to help administer and maintain the systems and keep track of the paperwork. In the end it would probably reduce costs IF DONE PROPERLY.
I live in a state with sales tax, personal property taxes, real estate tax, gambling, income tax and still for some reason my son has to get involved in 3 or 4 fundraisers a year in first grade. Why? I think someone needs to go down the big list of priorities and start rechecking things.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
The parent has a funny link , this is what's crashing mozilla.
They should be able to show microsoft the licenses for the machines they have and everyone will be happy. If they have a significant amount of unlicenced software on their machines then of course they should be audited. I don't understand how they can say that 60 days isn't enough to prepare. Presumably they *know* what's on their machines already? If not what kind of incompetent management do they have?
Sig is taking a break!
Let's see now----I get chased thru the mall and publicly treated like a thief because I did not stay to have my receipt looked at, or the alarm went off because the checkout person forgot to deactivate the goods I bought. Looks like a good lawsuit potential against that store......especially if I keep walking and the security guard comes in contact with my person
will they have to write "I will have a license for every Windows installation" one hundred times?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
If I made $1000/week I wouldn't stop at $10.
...and your sig sucks too.
Microsoft's School Agreement 3.0 (Word doc of course)
iteresting bit is that you must pay for all eligible machines, if they run microsoft software or not:
"School Agreement requires an institution-wide commitment. To that end, you must include all of the eligible PCs in the participating school(s) or district. Eligible PCs include all of the Pentium machines, Power Macs, iMacs or better. You must also include any number of 486 machines or below and any Apple, UNIX, or Windows Terminals on which any of the software will be run."
So if you sign up, then move to something else, you still gotta pay.
Not sure if you pay per package installed (i.e. do you pay for Windows OS on iMac's?)
I just upgraded to Mozilla 1.0-RC1 this morning, and I am having no trouble with this page (or any others I have visited today for that matter).
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
My great hope is that this will go to court, maybe all the way to the Supremes. I'd love to have them examine the legality of EULAs.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
It's too bad the school system can't file for Chapter (11?) bankruptcy, to clear themselves of all that debt, and just 'restructure'.
Take That Evil Bill! :)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Some of the comments here have suggested helping the schools migrate over to Linux to avoid the audit, but what everybody seems to be forgetting is that right now is final exam time for most schools. This is the busiest time of the year for students, teachers, and adminstrators and I'll bet Microsoft knew this when it gave the audit notice. My suggestion is hire some temps (or kind Slashdot volunteers) to get the school through the audit and then spend the summer switching over to Linux. And make sure the rest of the world knows about MS picking on schools when they're at their most vulnerable.
Help build the first all-Linux school system. Maybe ask Red Hat for some support.
The EULA gives the origin software company the RIGHT to inspect your IT assets for proper licensing. It is state sponsored... I know, having been the lawyer for a major nuclear powerplant that was audited by MS... the IL state police show up with MS staff and a warrant and they get free reign as long as they do not interfer with systems operation that are mission critical.
Now working for a major school district, again... they have the right. Opening the seal on the CD case is tacit approval of the EULA. If you deny you own any software from that vendor when they want to audit, they still have the right to come on site to verify that fact.
My suggestion is get over it. Pay the license. It's the cost of doing business, and each workstation at a major company may cost 3500 with lots of software installed, but over the course of two years it makes the company 25 times that on average. Keep your licenses in order as well, in a secure manner that keeps the original and your one legal copy safe and a key list of license codes tied to install location ready.
Let me point out one more thing... for those of you using GPL stuff... yes, free is nice, but if just one line of code in the source proves to be from a licensed source somewhere else, the penalties will pile up very quickly and very high.
Microsoft once again makes a miscalculation. This has the potential of backfiring big time. When Microsoft starts messing with public schools they're messing with one of the foundations of American culture and more importantly they are messing with our children.
In a civil case people on juries have preconceived ideas about defendants. Right or wrong, people generally place schools in the "good" category. Microsoft will come off looking like a complete ogre.
Many of the computers our poor, under funded schools have come from donated computers. Many of these computers came with no documentation and no original software CDs. By Microsoft's own licensing agreement binds the operating system license to a particular PC. If the person who donated the PC kept the original CDs, the computer still has a license.
These schools need to make this an issue. They need to make sure that it becomes news. Microsoft will be forced to back down or die in the public opinion. After that I would recommend that the schools fdisk every single computer that they own and install Linux.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I doubt that many school systems have the confluence of funding, personnel, and technical know-how needed to migrate their systems to OSS. It is easy to just say "Use Linux", but many don't know where to start. What applications do schools use? I bet it is not just Windows and Office. Are there OSS alternatives or do they need to be developed?
I propose that a school-friendly OSS distribution be created to allow school districts to migrate to Linux. This would include a classroom distribution and a "backoffice" distribution. This is a perfect project to show the socioeconomic and technical argument for OSS. Otherwise, school system are not going to have a choice because Linux is currently not a viable alternative.
MS would do themselves a HUGE favor but just giving their software to schools. When the government wants to talk anti-trust, they could simply play the school card, and show them that well, yes, maybe we played a little rough...but Johnny can run Windows at no charge in the classroom. "Hans, buubie, I'm your white knight"....and the antitrust charges go away. Get a clue Bill, how much money is enough anyway??
I suspect that Portland Schools are screwed. However, all the other school systems in the U.S. have to be taking notice. They will have the time to make appropriate decisions about their machines, hopefully including the installation of Linux and the removal of all MS crap. But it's too bad that Portland has to pay the price for the upcoming revolt against MS.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Mod parent up as what he says is 100%, if you do win update that means "no information is being sent to microsoft." so either they are lying when they say they have your "unique comptuer ID" or they are lying when they say they didn't get any info from win update. Right?
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
I don't know why everyone complains about Microsoft. They're certainly doing their part to promote Linux. I wonder whose product MS's marketing thinks their promoting?
You walking off is like admiting to guilt. No one wants to hassle you , boo hoo, someone wasted 5 seconds of your time.
haha
I think that would be a good news story
1) Isn't this the same Microsoft that charges OEMs a Windows license fee for every processor they sell, regardless of what's pre-installed? That's what made Windows so huge -- the OEM pre-installs. I'm sure the schools bought most of their comps from OEMs, so how can MS charge them again? MS must have some record of which OEMs they charged for what, so if all their computers are Dells or Compaqs or whatnot, they already charged them for a freakin' license! What is this double-jeopardy crap? I thought that only the IRS could do that.
2) I bet MS is doing this to put pressure on the school system to get rid of that Linux distro. In order to preserve the applications barrier to entry, they must ensure that none of tomorrow's developers learn to use Linux. You have to get to 'em early; just ask the tobacco companies.
If the school hasn't done anything wrong, they've got nothing to worry about. Why would any "preparation" for an audit be required unless it is to hide criminal activity? If they have stolen software, then they should at least volunteer to fix the situation. If they can't afford the stolen property, they could offer to pay some smaller penalty while converting away from it. This would put the burden back on Microsoft. Perhaps they could work out a deal where at least Microsoft gets the tax credit for the charitable contribution they have made. There is no RIGHT to software (or computers for that matter).
Does anybody know what would happen if you simply "invited" Microsoft (or any other software supplier, for that matter)to get the hell off your property should they attempt to audit? I mean, what kind of teeth do they have?
So Microsoft warns schools not to accept PCs without proof of Microsoft ownership (yes, I meant to phrase it that way), and forces them to sign ongoing license agreements or face even more expensive and disruptive audits.
Oh, and to make up for some of their anti-competitive acts, they're going to donate PCs with Microsoft software to schools. I wonder if they'll turn around and threaten the "lucky" schools.
Microsoft may convert more schools to free and open source software than RMS, ESR, BP, and LT put together.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
There's enough collective /. experience to whip up the Data and Code to perform the audit (and corrective deletes) for all the proprietary stuff out there. ...?
What say ye, lads / lassies
I hear stories about Fry's something about requiring all sorts of id when using a credit card? If I'm ever near one, I'm going to load up, and try and use a credit card. If they hassle me about it, I'll let them put all of the merchandise back themselves. My school used to constantly hassle people over check cards. I used to argue with them constantly, the whole point of Visa check card commercials was that you WOULDN'T need id.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It's time for T(H)GSB! Get the fark outta here!
Er, excuse me but, at this time, MS is auditing the wrong people. Also, as the instigator of the audit, they have certain obligations to meet.
MS deals mostly with OEMs, as opposed to the end-user. The audit chain needs to be maintained, just as evidenciary chain-of-custody needs to be maintained in a criminal investigation.
The school districts need to provide two things:
A list of machines they have that came with MS software preinstalled, and/or may or may not have included physical copies. The list consists of the machine's serial number, and the manufacturer it was purchased from.
A list of machines that did not come with any pre-loaded MS software, nor any physical copies.
The lists are then handed over to MS, who have the responsibility of contacting the OEMs to find out what was originally included with the purchase price of the machines. That includes knowing what physical copies came with the machines.
MS then has to provide the school districts with a copy of their findings.
How long you think that'll take?
Then the physical audit of the school district can begin.
In the meantime, it is my hope that the school district will have pulled its head of its ass, and gone with a non-MS solution. A BSD or Linux would solve the problem.
MS is interested in fighting piracy? Then why aren't they getting the biggest bang for their legal buck, and taking on Mainland China?
Anonymous Coward? No. Mike Nomad? Yes.
Whee.
Great, are you also going to make yourself available every time some clueless teacher can't figure out how to diagnose his printer problems 6 months down the road?
Installing an OS is one thing...but you can't do that and nothing else and claim you're solving the problem.
Ok,
:)
First there reasoning is they can't audit computers. In this day and age, its almost a requirement to have auditing capabilities in deployed systems. Its nothing new, its nothing special and its a requirement ( in fact we had an insurer require it for a new policy.
Basically anymore you should be able to due and audit within a few days. Heck, we allow our users to audit software for a corporate portal we deployed....that way I don't have to run reports all the time
NW Schools need to get with the program. The problem they are having is they have been violating the licenses for years and didn't want to pay the piper. If you don't pay for it don't use it plain and simple.
The schools basically rely on the teachers to "admin" these windows boxen, so what happens when the teachers no longer have the ability to keep the linux boxen running properly. I would assume it would at least take a little while until they were capable.
lets say that a sufficient amount of teachers needed to do this job, could find the spare time from their teaching to learn it all in 1 year...
how many unix admins would you need for 25,000 boxen, i assume that first year admin bill would be pretty hefty
Burden of proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, and "presumption of Innocence" only apply to criminal cases.
...otherwise correct, however.
[nitpick mode=ON]
Try burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
[nitpick mode=OFF]
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
... proposed to settle a lawsuit by donating for 1.1 billion $$ of their software to schools?
:)
I guess somebody is glad they didn't accept that.
Emergency 60-day conversion to non-Micro$oft products?
Agree to our new license, or we'll send someone around to bust your kneecaps.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
The only problem is :
1) I am living in germany
2) I know a bit on linux but I can't say I am very good.
I would wish to help those school switch , not out of spite to windows, or in Linux support, but for the School support. Education is in my opinion essential.
Mind you, on the same ground i try to help as much as I can my local school too, and not only in time of problem.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
but isn't wiping all the drives and installing Linux called destruction of evidence?
The school district is already using the MS products. They agreed to a contract allowing MS to audit them in exactly the way MS is now doing. By wiping the hard drives they are hiding the fact that they have been using MS software on the machine.
Mandrake does put ext3 in as the _default_ file
system.
IANAL, but, I've heard that people who have copyrights have to defend them if they want to hold onto them. Same thing for trademarks. Or maybe it was just trademarks. Basically, it amounts to the fact that if you do nothing to defend your rights, you don't have those rights.
Microsoft has done nothing meaningful in the past to prevent piracy of their software. They, along with everyone else dropped copy protection on the software. Fine, consumers wanted that. But, on the Macintosh side we see vendors all the time make their software AWARE of other copies of it running on the network. When I install Photoshop TWICE using the SAME registration code, it complains when that second copy is running at the same time. Since my users need to run it simultaneously, I need to purchase a second copy (or disconnect a user from the network...which isn't viable.)
Microsoft, if they really wanted to prevent piracy, would have done the SAME THING. They would have made their applications network aware and they would have checked to see if a second copy was running somewhere. If they had done this, there would not be piracy in the corporate, government, or academic environments to the extent there is today.
It is hard to keep track of every piece of software that an end-user might sneak into your company. Since Windows 9.x didn't have any security, you couldn't stop users from installing it. Because the applications weren't network aware, you wouldn't know when someone installed duplicate copies...not even when an administrator did it.
Because Microsoft did not take reasonable steps to prevent piracy, I think Microsoft should not have the right to force people to audit and payup. At least, not until such time as Microsoft plugs the holes that make piracy so easy.
According to Toffler, the very invention of schools created a new brand of individual, i.e. the Employee, who is taught to arrive punctually, respond to a supervisor, and fear discipline that amounts to nothing more than a peice of paper in a file, and this new brand of individual gave rise to the Industrial Age. The power of the school environment to create the future is immense.
What then will happen if our schools switch to Linux, and an entire generation of students is exposed to the ideas behind open source? Will it not translate into a large group of adults who are comfortable using Linux and related software? IMHO, by going after schools, Microsoft is cutting off its nose to spite its face. They should be giving their products away to educational institutions and raising another generation of MS-dependents. If the schools do choose to go with Linux, Microsoft may have to fight a battle to retain its market share when those children become consuming adults, who may choose to bring Linux into the workplaces of the future. Much like the seasoned drug dealer, Microsoft should give its product to children for free to create dependance. It's good karma, and good capitalism.
My vote is still that the school systems give Linux an equal chance.
"Give us a half-million or we WILL audit you."
If the IRS said that to an organization, there would be a real stink.
M$ may have legalities on their side, but it sure makes for bad press. Of course they don't appear to give a damn about bad press.
Well, what ever happened to the concept of issuing a search warrant only upon a showing of probable cause>
I agree that Linux isn't ready for everyone's desktop, but for elementary school kids just doing Internet searches and typing reports it should be just fine. The biggest thing that needs improving in Linux now is hardware detection and setup, software installation standards, and a wide range of software for things like video editing to JAVA programming. It would also help if a few of the distributions got together to work towards a common goal. It Red Hat and Mandrake teamed up, it might change some stuff. And if Debian, Slackware, and Suse all worked on one distribution in order to get everything right, it might be my desktop of choice.
The next thing is my opinion that Linux needs to become more like Apple's OS X, just with different user interfaces available. There should be certain Linux Hardware standards and a list of all the hardware that is supported in the distribution. Microsoft has their standards logo that you see on the box, and there are some things that have a Linux compatible logo. But even those are hard to install sometimes, kindof like my winmodem back in the win3.1 days. If the government really wanted to get Microsoft, it wouuld offer tax breaks to the hardware manufacters and software developers who make Linux versions. If I could get Final Cut Pro, Maya 4, Unreal Tourament, and Photoshop to run on a Linux system, I could switch to just one OS.
I've seen a few people suggest that Microsoft has enough money to donate to schools, and even a few more have suggested that such a donation would actually help spread MS software. Keep in mind that this was one of Microsoft original proposals to settle the antitrust case, to donate $500 million worth of software to schools. How that such a settlement has apparently been rejected (and rightly so), MS can go after the schools with the excuse that "we wanted to donate software to the schools, but the government wouldn't let us".
That's great, except no alarm has gone off here. Microsoft doesn't have a theft alarm that puts the burden of proof on the school, unless it's maybe their "hey, here's an even more sneaky way to make money". If MS's records showed that this school has bought only one copy of windows and an MS employee in the area noticed that every computer has Windows on it, then maybe your analogy would hold. As it stands, MS has no reason to doubt their legal ownership of the software, except for the obvious (hey, easy $500K!)
This issue made me so mad I wrote my congressmen about it - all of whom also represent the areas with the Oregon schools.
In the Sunday Oregonian, April 21st, columnist Steve Duin writes about Microsoft's marketing department threatening several Oregon School districts with a software audit unless they adopt a costly Microsoft systemwide licensing plan. Microsoft is giving the schools 60 days to prove up or pay up.
The schools are being asked to prove their innocence of copyright infringement on a Microsoft stipulated timetable to Microsoft stipulated terms. The timetable and terms are not practical. There is nothing to indicate that the employees of our school system have done anything wrong. The only apparent motivation for Microsoft to make this request is to twist the arms of the people who make the decision about adopting the Microsoft School Agreement.
What can be done to combat this corporate blackmail and extortion?
There's more to it than this.
Convert 100% of your machines to Linux. Tell MS to audit all they want... O, wnd btw if you find any liscences tell MS that you do not agree to the terms and want your money back.
Bill was whining again today that the propsed penalties will change how MS does business. Lets hope so.
Were I in the area instead of 1000 miles away I'd gladly volunteer to help install Linux. I wouldn't be willing to do very much with MS software, however. Those licenses are far too scarey.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If this is not proof enough that M$ has too much power and is ready to put up with the gov't itself, I don't know what is...
Careful now, even smaller municipal entites like a School District have LOTS of legal services available to them.....EVEN IF they'd rather spend it elsewhere.
School districts in my region are lacking good textbooks for want of money; I find it hard to believe that they can hire the kind of tenacious lawyers that Microsoft can afford. Hell, they even wore down the DOJ in settlement talks by arguing every single point into the wee hours.
A school district defending against a suit by some local parents I can see, but a company with a big warchest might see an expensive legal battle as insurance for the future; if you legally batter one school district until they cannot afford to do anything but settle, most others will not risk it in the future.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
I wish I had some free time to volunteer! Seriously though, Americans work more hours a week than any other country. And we have to give up more time? I can't wait for retirement!!!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Not in the United States. If that alarm goes off and you already paid, just keep walking. What are you afraid of?
I don't mind showing ID--in fact my cards have my picture on them. The reason that I like the clerks to check is a story involving one of my wife's friends, who is a smallish white girl.
Her wallet was stolen by a largish black man, who proceeded to buy ~$500 of stuff at a drug store. The clerk obviously didn't even look at the name on the card, let alone think about it.
I can flash my driver's license and feel a little more secure that if it gets stolen the theif will be caught.
A thought on how to keep MS at bay while you fix the situation:
.sig...
1. Switch all the PCs off.
2. Invite them in to do the audit.
3. If they ask you if a machine has Windows on, tell them no.
4. If they want to power up the machine, ask them how they intend to power it, as the school board doesn't sell or donate power to third parties.
5. If they want to take the PC away, point out the school policy on theft.
6. If they want to bring in a generator, point out the for safety reasons such equipment can't be used in school buildings.
7. If they want to remove the hard drive, point out the school policy on vandalism.
8. Goto 4.
By the time they've figured out how to see what's on the machine you can have Linux on a sufficient number that licenses will cover the rest!
Still haven't bothered with a
See The BSA & Microsoft Thread
Since Multnomah ESD has its own distribution of Linux, Microsoft's admitted long-term competitor, isn't it highly plausible that Microsoft is targetting Multnomah ESD in order to stop their Linux efforts? IIRC, the way out of Microsoft's threat is to purchase a site license for Microsoft's products, which prohibits the use of competing products, including Multnomah ESD's own distribution of Linux! In my opinion, any such agreement completely stifles competition, and, in this case, it will stifle a very real Linux innovation.
Peter
It is probably too late for the Oregon school district. . .I intend to follow this case, and find out in the end how much $$ they have to fork over to MS; them I'm going to the school districts here in Massachusetts, and ask them, "Can you afford MS software, at any price?" Prudent administrators should dump MS like tea into a harbor.
In the comments, the concept had been raised that most schools also have pirated software installed by the students on their MS-Windows computers. I have known a few individuals who were "proud" of the fact they installed this-or-that pirated software application on a school computer (I didn't merely because I didn't have accessible computers in my K-12 schools).
So, if the schools install Linux, even that level of unknown, unwanted pirated application installations will go down. It isn't as simple a task in Linux to install an application, especially if you are not root and the application -needs- root. In addition, a lot of the software that those kids would install on a MS-Windows machince is not ported to Linux, so they wouldn't be able to install it unless they figured out first how to get the application to run under Linux and without root.
Hmm... this might be beneficial over all.
He told us that he couldn't afford to build his own arena, but he found a way to buy up the land around the arena that we built.
We get a sorry return on that investment in his sports team. Besides this Windows software, he imports to Portland a frequently disgraceful bunch of athletes to amuse himself. His big acquisition this year was a convicted sex offender. They've had about three with notorious drug problems over the past few years, one found in bed with a 14-year old girl, and many reckless driving problems, including one who flips a Mercedes on the freeway at 100+ MPH and another with a 95 MPH ticket. (There is no place near Portland where that's safe.) Well, his company is a convicted anti-trust violator, so what do you expect, good character? Compassionate marketing? When our kids have role models like that, why bother educating them at all?
I bet Steve Jobs has a smile on his face from ear to ear right now. Now, when Apple goes to a school and they say "well, Bob So-and-so from Microsoft offered us the same package for 20% less," they can pull out an article and say, "yes, but when one of your students installs a warez version of Visual Studio on a machine, we won't come in and ram it down your throat and steal your wallet."
I think it's great that the climate of mistrust for Microsoft grows every day. Little by little people are realizing Microsoft is the mafia of the Tech industry. They do their song and dance and you think they'll give you the world. But before you know it you realize they're squeezing the lifeblood out of your enterprise and forcing you to change the way you do business and eventually you've got a bullet in your back.
It doesn't matter if you hear it out loud, people are getting the message.
-Erik
I am waiting for M$ to pull this on my government agency. We have pretty good accounting and while there are probably some lost certificates of authenticity, there are vast records of all the payments to M$.
I'd ignore their demand, ignore their auditors, and let a judge decide.
all the more reason to dump MS products. (as if stability, efficiency, customizability and the ability to learn were not enough).
someone should mod the parent up... we don't get enough vigilante karma justice on /.
Amazing magic tricks
The school IT department should respond to this threat by simply saying to M$ that if they choose to do this audit it will be the last one. This will cost alot of taxpayer money. This should be well published in the news. Then over the course of the summer the IT department should hold a summer course on installing Linux for interested students with the final exam to actually install the linux and OS software. Show the cost savings to the voters and the media. No more audits next year or ever. End of story.
My walking off is not admitting guilt at all. You must not live in the U.S.. It's admitting that I'm not going to waste my time. Whether it's five seconds ro twenty minutes, I'm not going to bow down to some false authority.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
This is being discussed quite a bit on several of the Oregon LUGs. If you're in Oregon (or nearby) and would like to help, please join forces with one of these existing groups.
http://pdxlinux.org
http://lug.peak.org
http://www.euglug.org
One of the World's richest corporations bullying one of the country's poorest school districts.
Makes me proud to be a capitalist.
The trouble is, if 60 days isn't enough time to audit 25,000 machines it sure as hell isn't enough time to convert them to Linux.
:)
60 days may be very little time, but its not an impossible feat to install linux. With tools like Norton Ghost (which also supports linux now) or redhat kickstart, all you need is 20 apprentices and 20 cds of cloned linux images, and you could accomplish 60 computers per hour, if each load only takes 20 minutes to map(assuming good cd-rom drives). HEck, you can send each apprentice to labs of say 30 computers and that lab can be finished in 20 minutes with 30 cds. Wow, that's 20 techies each finishing 30 computers per 20 minutes, which ends up being 1800 computers per hour! A lot better odds when compared to the required 17/hr just to make it in 60 days.
Do the math and you'll see that with enough CD-Rs, enough apprentices, and and a well planned image (or sets of images for specific labs) this is just an annoyance like MS. However, this may require extra DHCP,NFS,etc servers or special configurations specific to each subnet. But I'd say anyone managing 25,000 computers prolly has this covered. Plus, switching to linux might be better in the long run for better structure and user management than winblows2k, but that depends on the capabilities and organization of the admins. Some of us are pretty lazy!
The annoying part will come when you have to pry all those users off of MS Word and standardize Abiword or StarOffice into the structure. They won't like it.
Of course, they could make their lives a lot easier and just pay the money.
"It was penguin lust...at its worst." --someone
exactly---my time is valuable enough not to waste it kow-towing to merchant errors
You're a little mixed up here... the phrases "beyond a shadow of a/reasonable doubt" and "preponderance of the evidence" are STANDARDS of proof. The BURDEN of proof always lies with the side making the accusation--in civil litigation this is the plaintiff; in crimnal cases its the prosecution. You are correct in saying that the standards of proof are more relaxed in civil litigation, but the plaintiff must still prove their case.
Now here's an interesting point. In essence, any time you purchase any MS software, you really need to factor in the cost of maintaining 100% license compliance. I figure (given how machines move around, etc.) that this has got to be at least $50-$100 per machine per year for the life of the machine. After all, that sort of 100% accurate record keeping does not come cheap. I wouldn't want to have 1 person handling more than 500 machines (imagine, he get's to track down exactly what software is on each machine that school has in closets, loaned to a teacher, moved to new lab, etc.!)
I suspect that if the price of software was put in those terms to schools any time they purchased Microsoft software, they might start seriously looking at alternatives. Compared to the base (education) software price, the compliance price might be many times higher.
Besides, what teacher wants to have the cost of the compliance agent subtracted from his budget each and every year?
Look, the "nitpicker" spent much of his post reasoning (correctly) that you can't put off paying the US government by informing them that they owe you money. Negating pretty much the whole thrust of your post, btw. If he's gonna take the time to do that, I can't blame him for correcting/clarifying the rest of your post as well.
I'm in the midst of running a Linux consulting service company in the Detroit area that focuses on schools and now to "de-Microsoft" them.
Many of the schools I've talked to love the idea of using a free & open operating system in their classes, but the thought of moving over to Linux "just becuase" is hard to sell.
Articles like these are the ammunition I need to show these schools the "light" and have them migrate over. If anyone has any articles like this one (involving schools) or good reference contacts I could use, please let me know! (see website for email addr.) I've done the Googling and found some good stuff, but it's always nice to get the word out.
-brain
I'm a network admin for a city govt. MS audited us last year. They found that we actually had a surplus of licenses above and beyond what software we had deployed. What prompted them to audit us? I highly suspect it is because we had been very vocal, anti-MS bashing to everyone we talked to and loudly announcing our plans to deploy as much Linux and phase out all MS products as we possibly could. The MS/BSA goons were furious when they couldn't find anything out of compliance. Our PD boys had fun following them around everywhere they went while in town, just itching to catch them for the slightest traffic violation but they behaved themselves.
Are you trying to imply that WinDOS doesn't have printer problems that a clueless teacher can't diagnose?
Support is no less an issue for WinDOS than it is for Linux. OTOH, it is remarkably easier to do remote tech support for Linux or Unix.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Go to http://pdxlinux.org and join the mailing list. Let them know you're available to help out.
They are pretty much targeting the smaller and weaker state and local govts that don't have the resources to defend themselves. And they're not doing it in any of the states that are still suing them, only the other states. Makes ya wonder doesn't it?
If I were a legislator in the soverign state of Oregon, I'd introduce legislation that recognizes audits made under these conditions as a form of extortion. Give the user 180 days, or when your auditors show up they're risking felony charges. Both sides can play hardball.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This would be a perfect time for some large linux distribution company, or a consulting company to step in and donate time to help them migrate entirely to Linux. It would have to be a disruptive migration because of the audit in 60 days threat but they could do it.
Why not form The Linux Marines? We could get nifty bomber jackets, patches for our units, medals for each school we saved, and make a big fuss out of it.
All we need are a few distro disks and some good techs willing to fight the good fight.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Doesn't Microsoft "donate" money to schools? If so, don't they receive tax relief for doing so? How can they then strong arm these school systems into paying back the money in licensing fees?
It seems like they can artifically bolster earnings by circulating money through donations.
Or maybe I know nothing...
As computers become more and more ubiquitous, M$ needs to maintain it's stake in the educational market. Why? Because what the kids use at school they are likely to use at home. Therefore, if a free OS like linux was to take over the market, it will make huge steps towards disrupting microsoft's position as King of the Mountain.
I'm going to address some arguments now as to not waste time:
When Apple controlled the educational market, most students did not have computer at home thus why Apple is not the leading OS because of its role in the educational system.
Yes, parents are not more likely to switch because their children request it. But the children growing up using Linux will balk at M$ products when they get their own computer, which is occurring at earlier ages. Thus, M$ will still lose some of it's market share.
Really, it seems M$ is pursuing this avenue of monopolistic practices because they are threatened. When you threaten and corner an 800-lb gorilla, it's going to attack.
So, if your Bill Gates, and onthe stand trying to tell the judge your company isnt an abusive monopoly, would you think its a good idea to start shaking down schools for money? Is that a good way to make your point?
What is the legal basis for these audits? I mean, can I just show up at your house and demand that you prove that your watch is in fact yours and that you didn't steal it from me, nor bought it from someone who stole it from me, nor bought it from someone who bought it from someome who stole it from me...?
Did anyone think that just maybe Bill Gates himself didn't order this? Half the posts I see are Bill this, Bill that. I'm pretty sure every single thing that Microsoft does doesn't have to go through him.
Random employee: "Uhh, sir, we're out of coffee, is it ok if we go get some more from the store room."
Random boss: "Let me call up Mr. Gates to clear it with him."
Uhh, no.
~Me.
You know, it appears a lot of folks reading this and saying "Just install linux!" haven't worked for a large, understaffed, overbudget, lumbering beaurocratic organization.
Installing and configuring the OS is easy. You also have to configure it to replace the existing system.. which is a fairly big, intermeshed bailing wire and gum affair with very little organizational order.
First, you have to replace any apps they are using to their linux equivalents.. oh, and dont' forget to migrate their existing data: MS word documents, spreadsheets, databases, etc. Hopefully, payroll is not on an MS driven system.
oh, and by the way, do all this without interrupting or depriving them of their current system while the new one is being installed, troubleshot, fixed, etc. (what, are they supposed to stop working while the linux is brought up to speed? )
Now, take the overworked, underpaid faculty and staff (whom, if you've been in school in the past ten years, you'll remember is in a constant state of Crisis Mode) and train them to use the new system and apps.
Y'all would have a riot on your hands.
Personally, I think Apple should step up to the plate.
State of Oregon could simply declare the software State property under eminant domain.
But I like the idea of upgrading those computers to GNU/Linux better.
...simply for the use of j'accuse
:)
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Isn't a corporation's first and foremost responsibility to its shareholders?
Time's up!
GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
In Oregon, the education budget is taken primarily from property tax, although, I believe that there are "project" funds taken from the state lottery. I'm not sure, but I think "project"s are things that are one-time expenditures - like a school building that needs a new wing built, or a highway that needs repaving - that sort of thing. Of course, there's a whole bureaucratic process to go through to get lottery funding of a project....
I'd rather be flying
You failed, loser.
Throughout all the comments I see here, everyone just says, "Let's just switch these computers to Linux so they don't bother to pay them anymore", or "This is why they shouldn't rely on only one operating system". People in the school board really don't know of alternatives, sometimes you can even ask the System Administrators of schools who are just some honest, middle-aged workers who just recieved an MCSE who don't even know what Linux is.
Not only that, but I remember in Elementary School, there used to be that PTA night where Microsoft Employees come around to show products and encourage them as i've seen in one of the earlier comments.
Many kids may also be arrogant about how to get to programs they already know "I don't care about computers, as long as I go to Start>Programs>America Online that's what I'll use, would be what most teenagers would say. Not only are schools scared of change, but something like implementing Linux will take a a long time before it can be adopted by both teachers and students, so they may have documents sync well with AbiWord, Gnumeric, KPresenter and such.
While implementing Linux as a free solution giving schools more power over what they use the money for, it needs marketing and customer familiarity. Companies like Mandrake and Red Hat should just go out there and market as well as make their products a few steps closer to how aWindows looks and feels.
It is interesting to see this on slashdot. I currently work/live in Guatemala (Latin America). The Business Software Alliance ("Microsoft") sent letter all over the country to various types of institutions including Academic and politely but firmly did something similar as what other are commenting. It seems to me that they have a right to be paid for their efforts, but I believe that people have the right to the presumption of innocence unless there are good reasons to think otherwise.
Although some of the legal discussiones don't necessarily follow for our legal system, it strikes me that our current laws give Intellectual Property owners to much influence over the system.
Another thing that compounds the problem is that the average income and the exchange rate make it even much harder to purchase software legally. Let 's say a give piece of MS software costs USD $500. That for us would be like around Q4,000 or four time what a secretary makes monthly. They are just forcing people to pirate software if the want to charge the same as in a first world market. It would be smarter to price adjust it for our country.
Seriously,
That's the criminal system. MS or any other U.S. citizen can file a civil suit with NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER on ANYONE claiming ANYTHING. And the person sued has to prove that they have nothing to do with the allegations. Proof means needing a lawyer. Needing a lawyer means needing money. If you don't have the money? To bad. You better find a way to settle out of court. And even if your lawyer gets you out you have to pay his fees.
The civil system in this country needs to be revamped.
P.S. Yes there are some states that have laws to discourage this but . . . file the suit in a different state.
Can anyone say time for another major organization to take the leep and start using LiNUX + Open Source software as their default platform?
Last Year's"City of Largo"(from dot.kde.org), among many others are perfect examples of success in this transition. Yet another example of strong armed M$ tactics to retain their control of the average desktop computer. ANYONE AT THE DOJ READING THE NEWS LATELY??
You previously agreed to let them in. When they decide to come in you have no right to "shoot them". If you refuse them entry their recorse is to get a judge to send a sherrif. (which they have done)
What makes this even more disgusting is that the concilieri from the Gates Foundation last week's PTSA meeting at our son's high school (in seattle) doing their best to make everyone present feel all warm and fuzzy about how Chairman Bill's largess was going to enrich our childrens' education.
This was apparently happening at the same time that the soldiers from Microsoft were making the district administrators an offer they couldn't refuse.
What about just formatting all of the boxes with Microsoft OSes.
... people actually need their data (duh). But you could come in with a linux file server, back all that crap up, then blow out all the no-license windows boxes. This would at least buy the schools some time and I'm sure it would cost less than half a million (which is what M$ is looking for). It'd be a pain in the ass, but possibly save some money.
I mean, M$ can't get you for owning a blank hard drive can they? Sure you couldn't do it to all the computers
"Come on in M$, audit all you want I'm sure you'll be very pleased with our compliance."
I think that if you took the teachers in your district, and said to them, "you can learn to use this new free software, or we can lay off 20 of you in order to pay MS license fees," you'd get a much different reaction.
:)
Granted, you, personally, are probably not in a position to make such a statement. But, in effect, this is what MS is saying, although they would prefer that people not notice the fact that the first option exists. And the end result may be that you are now in a better position to make your point.
"Hi, would you like me to help save your jobs?" sounds much better than "hi, would you like me to give you some free thing you've never heard of?"
Yeah yeah, "-1, Troll" but you know it's true.
pherris
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Replace the MBR with the LTSP boot, except for about 1/100 which can install the full LTSP as a server.
Or image demolinux in a similar manner, or remove all the hard drives (might take longer), and run them through a fixture and make them ext3.
Think about it.
... after all, after what they pulled with CP/M, how do we know they're legit?
...
If every distro audited every division of Microsoft
They could be bundling in LGPL or GPL or other licensed software in their ship code and we have to get in there and seize those computers and make them prove they have licenses to use them.
It's only fair
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Boy it sounds like MS re-invented their favorite market power ploy... remember how they were barred from OEM contracts like this? Remember how OEMs paid for a copy of Windows whether the computer shipped with it or not? And how because of that they were strongly motivated to always preload it even if the alts were free? And now we have this new contract... the school pays for MS whether they use it or not. Very scary stuff.... Why in the world doesn't the mainstream media pick up on this company and its butal tactics? People seem to think that since its software and not a car or a chemical, it's somehow benign compared to other indutries. MS may not kill you with toxins, or cause oil spills, but in many ways they are far more evil than any other company around. Isn't there something just sick about teachers losing their jobs so MS can add to their 37 billion dollar cash pile! d
Here it goes an unwanted advice: Fast audit protection: - Format ALL student used computer. - Check management computers. Better than paying "revolutionary fee". Anyway, in Spain we say that "quien con niños se acuesta mojado se levanta".
There is a place in Redmond that needs its property taxes raised about $500,000/yr.
Go fer it.
It would be great if someone could create a website listing all the known audits that Microsoft has conducted in recent times and the financial outcomes of these audits. It could turn into a powerful tool to promote the use of an OS that doesn't carry such huge expenses in terms of both initial cost, as well as the administrative costs of maintaining software and licensing information about every computer in the organization. Has this, or something similar, been done already?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
isn't that on-topic? :)
whats that you say? they can still audit? oh shit where did we go wrong in our thought process? Heh.. mac is just as capable of being audited as a windows machine and microsoft knows it. No steve jobs is probably realizing this too.
I was a student in high school in the Lake Washington School district in the mid 90's. The "LWSD" is the school district which encompasses the Redmond/Kirkland/Bellevue area which is of course home to MS. I did a lot of volunteer and paid work for the district, but mostly did sys-admin type work.
The district admirably resisted the MS juggernaught until around 1995 when PCs started to pop up in the schools.
As a volunteer administrator on the district's student run email system (LWO, which is now defunct and to be shut down) http://lwo.lkwash.wednet.edu I attempted to encourage the district to use a groupware solution other than Exchange (even though we were on a NT server ourselves). I felt something more appropriate to an educational environment (i.e lighter wieght) was needed. LWO was a fully functional and operating groupware solution already running to service students. A faculty system could have been easily integrated into the student system. Of course this was rejected and I feel it was largely because an exchange implementation was more or less subsidized by Microsoft and forced upon the district by MS employee parents as part of a mass migration to Windows everything.
Schools are interested in delivering the best education possible to thier students. If they can save money by switching to a cheaper solution (read subsidized by MS to suck you in) they will do it. By the time they realize what is going on it's too late. A large part of this is the repercussions of the tech boom of the 90's. A lot of GOOD tech people who would have gone to work in the education field instead went into the commercial sector. K-12 schools got stuck with the bottom of the barrel in terms of technical personnel, people who were really not up to the job or understood the long term ramifications of what they were advocating. Now you are seeing the results, total and complete Windows domination and little chance for inroads by anyone else.
I am a student in the Beaverton school district and I help out with setting up the computers in my high school there. I have been trying to talk the people in charge of technology stuff there into linux, which they like the sounds of. The biggest problem I am seeing, however, is the total lack of experience with anything other that Windows or Mac for any administrators in our building. I think Linux would be a great option, but what do you do if nobody knows how to administer it?
Besides K12LTSP, there's Blue EDU. Look both of them over and then offer to help out if you're interested in making your proposal a reality.
Nasty suituation, eh?
Guess what?
:)
I run a residence network at a University.
It's pretty much a public network. Phbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt.
You clearly haven't seen the myriad of ways of "cluster" installation.
It could be done in half the time. Even less, depending on the hardware. If one can install hundreds in a few hours, thousands in two months is not hard.
If all of the sites share a fast network, it gets quite speedy.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Did BLACKMAIL become legal? How is this any different?
It's about fucking time that the RICO act applied to companies like MS and their industry cartels like the BSA. MS, after all, is a CORPORATE FELON now... Convicted and everything, despite the odds. What RIGHT and place do they have to be threatening people?
Of course, I actually hope MS does more of this. Nothing will convince people that they need to go GPL more than to have the barrel of the legal gun held to their heads.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
OK, are you going to at least try to read what he volunteered for? He said "...or anything they need", which could include that (especially since Linux provides such nice remote admin features), or he could help them perform the audit, oh wait he said that to.
Glad to see you are reading the whole post, there coward.
Besides, if a teacher (or official sysadmin, you do know what those are, right?) can not learn something so simple in six months, they should find a better job.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
By installing an MS product you must say YES you agree to the EULA. By doing so you give them the right to audit you, you said yes to the agreement.
No one has ANY right to bitch about that. If you didn't read it, and can't deal with the consequences, that's your fault. Quit your imature, irresponsible whining.
Yeah, ms's practices are cut throat, assinine, invasive, but it's not like you didn't have warning... how many of you click yes without looking?
25,000 computers licensed for 500,000 is a steal. I say shut the f$CK up or don't run MS software. It is your choice.
But quit the damn whining.
Write Microsoft product requirements into your next RFP!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
TRUE the smallest Districts would have to struggle with making legal fees for any PROTRACTED legal battle, and TRUE that would be draining if there was a "tooth and nail" battle, BUT...
...there won't be any such legal battle(s) here, BECAUSE these types of licensing issue(s) have been litigated to death, and long ago became "Black Letter Law", well before the personal computer and MS....
thus far, and virtually without meaningful legal exception, Courts (trial and review) have told contractual entities (over and over and over again) that they are responsible for understanding and upholding ALL the provisions of the contracts they affirm
if the District(s) involved here could demonstrate that MS is either misconstruing or wilfully misinterpreting the EULA, a trial Court just might void the contract(s), leaving the District without ANY MS products...
but, i'm assuming you've read (and understand) the MS EULA...it is one of the most amazing licenses i've ever read....it is clear, concise, brillantly constructed and written and gives EVERY right imaginable to MS and simultaneously relieves them from EVERY form of liability....
The chances of sucessfully (i.e., surviving judicial review) litigating a licensing violation of the MS EULA AGAINST MS are roughly the on the same odds as RIAA stopping MP3 piracy....
sure they exist, but don't hold your breath
so, the District(s) involved won't even seriously litigate this, because any reasonable (and responsible) law firm will tell their clients "suck this one up, and next time don't sign contracts you don't want to adhere to"
interestingly, this might well be a strong selling point for a Red Hat/Mandrake/???, if they are smart enough to hit the K12 market really hard..
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Well if you had been keeping track of the story --I mean over its whole duration-- you might understand that MSFT HAS ALREADY WON.
All they're arguing about now in court is whether MSFT will get off Scot-free or with twenty lasshes from a hypoallergenic featherduster. It's all a vile pantomime show put on for infotainment of the few constituents out there in tv-land who "expected something to be done about this".
Between the far right DC Appeals Court and the noddin'-'n'-winkin' Ashcroft DOJ, all prospects of serious antitrust restraints and remedies have been preemptorily shoved under the rug leaving an ersatz choice between 2 proposed "remedies" neither one of which could begin, even if applied for 100 years, to impact the core antitrust issue festering at the center of this case: that is, Microsoft's power to penalize ISVs for writing apps for an alternate PC-OS and their co-equal power to deter OEM PC makers and retail channel merchants from preloading an alternate OS, thus removing any incentive for ISVs to write non-MS apps.
After this "trial" is done, the monopoly is going to be very much intact. All the 9 non-consenting states are really asking for are some cosmetic changes to the face of the monopoly perhaps to save their own face. If you look at what they want, it's ASSUMED right down the line that Microsoft's OPERATING SYSTEM MONOPOLY WILL NEVER BE CHALLENGED.
All they're trying to do is make the monopoly desktop safe for the likes of AOL -companies that have been heretofore Micorosft's partners in crime. Save the henchmen! seems to be the rallying cry behind the state's advocaacy of "tough remedies". What a joke.
The basic current arrangement of total control and windfall profit which favors the preservation and extention of MS' monopoly, and which arises from MS' monpoly, WILL BE UNCHANGED BY SO MUCH AS A HAIR'SBREADTH when the term of the "remedy" is over.
It really is all over and done with already - but some people (like yourself apparently) still don't quite get it. But Bill Gates does, which is why he was described by court reporters as "relaxed and easy-going" on the stand today. This was just a victory lap for him.
Yeah, I noticed the annual fee, although I didn't really think about it as much before. The annual fee is obviously part of Microsoft's eventual plan to switch everyone over to renting their software, but it opens up a very obvious hole. When you purchase software, it is good for at least three years, longer for most schools. It's a real investment then, and it's far more long-term.
With the annual fee, schools will have this item sitting on their budget each and every year, to be re-evaluated each and every time. It makes it a lot easier to switch away if you have to renew the software yearly, because it's not a long-term investment any more. This year they could spring for the Microsoft license package to avoid even more expensive legal troubles, and spend the rest of the year carefully planning and implementing a full-fledged switch to Apple and/or Linux.
The subscription model is going to wind up being their real weakness, especially once it's enacted everywhere. The need to decide yearly whether or not to pay a fee is going to compel people, at some point in time, to switch to where they don't have to pay, or simply pay a lot less. Hopefully this will lead to very good things in the long run.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
25,000 machines at 500k is $20 a machine.
No linux swat team can deploy for less than $20 a machine. I'm talking about people costs here. Have you ever done a deployment this size? The cost is huge, and I'm not talking about licensing.
Jumping on people's machines and deploying linux is a great way to give linux a bad rap. Training 25k people to use linux would exceed the licensing fees alone.
They will probably just pay the fee because in the short and long run it's cheaper.
Jesus, can no one spell?
We ain't paying no more stinking fees and if you come in, we'll switch every single machine in the joint over to linux...if nothing else, just to piss you off.
How the fuck a *** PRIVATE *** company has the *** POWER *** to force a *** GOVERNMENT ENTITY *** to face an audit??? The state government should call-in the state troopers to fire at will on microsoft goons!!!
When I was a student 3 years ago at my local junior high school, I was on the student tech team helping set up all the computers around the school. Pretty much every new computer we got was a Dell, (minus the imac/g4s for the art department). We had a simple system to keep track of all software on each system.
1) Unpack computer, hook up, power on. Enter in the Windows Key on the shrinkwrapped package. Computer ID (room/letter) goes on the shrinkwrapped package and goes into a box, which are in a secure storage facility.
2) Novell User System Login installed, confirmed that it worked.
3) Microsoft Office 2000 Installed on EVERY MACHINE! This kept it simple, every system had all of the same software installed (minus a few "special" labs). That made keeping the software on each machine indentical, and records slightly easier.
4) Microsoft Photo Editor installed. Same reason as above.
5) Network printers set up. No big deal here.
6) Foolproof security installed. This was a "decent" piece of software that kept students (minus me and a few others) from doing almost anything. All saving had to be done on the network server, and nothing could be isntalled.
6a) Now we use a system called Fortress. This is much better, because we can integrate access with Novell user names, meaning if I log in as techsup (techsupport) I have full access very easily.
Anyways, the moral of the story is to keep solid records from the beginning. Our tech admin kept very good records, and anytime an audit might occur, I have no doubt that everything would work with no problems whatsoever.
Now think of the good P.R. Microsoft will get for that...
Just because some bigheaded store owner or bill gates says something doesn't make it law.
https://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug/2002-Apr il/001730.html
Thank you Paul Nelson for this thoughtful answer!
Microsoft has gone too far. I'm done lurking here.
/. allows you to access that).
As a producer, director, and designer of educational software, I have been noodling a plan to help open up educational software for a couple of years. The past few months have solved a lot of problems in this area, and I am especially intrigued with the K-12 Linux work going on in Portland.
I am the co-designer of The Incredible Machine, and I want to see software like that essentially given to the schools. Now that the fine people in Portland have solved the operating system problem, and free computers with enough power are routinely given to schools, we need to spearhead an effort to get more software created for that Linux on P200 platform.
I have held off getting involved because I have a couple of start ups, but this move by Microsoft has pushed me over the edge. My start ups create games, and have some game development technology that could kick start this effort. I don't have time to help install Linux, but definitely want to get in touch with people that are interested in pushing MS out of the classroom. My email is posted on my site and in my profile (but I'm not sure
Jeff Tunnell
www.garagegames.com Independent Games
... and CodeWeavers has some software that can fill in some of the gaps. Granted, it's proprietary software, but it's probably one hell of a lot cheaper than the alternative...
With that being said, the school needs to choose wisely what they are going to do now. Do they really want to a shitload of money that they don't have to a company that just fucked them over? As consumers, they vote with their dollars, so if they give them money then they are basically saying that what Microsoft is doing it ok. I couldn't see anyone agree with that, so they need to go with the alternatives.
They might as well go with Linux, since they don't have money to spend on anything else. I barely have any experience with any flavor of linux (i've used super old versions of redhat and gnome), but from the looks of it, even that old system configured correctly would work. Working for a school, I can tell you that the vast majority processor cycles spent are either with word processing or a web browser. Using Linux at home might be a stretch, but school demands are minimal, so I think Linux would be a viable alternative. It'll have to be, because without money, there are no other alternatives.
This is a great story to keep watching. I wish the guys in the northwest the best of luck. I suggest slashdot post a followup story after the 60 days to see how they're doing.
Unfortunately you're right. (So are just about all the other "why migrating to linux will never work in a school district" posts.)
The only solution I can see is to stop using the computer as the classroom crutch ("but I can't write my term paper unless I have Word!"), and go back to the computer being a tool for learning computers. Give each kid a CD, a partition, and a login, and make the semester's work be having each kid get that machine into a usable, maintainable state.
Maybe that way the kids would actually learn enough about computers not to be terrified of them (and do it at an age where their minds are still flexible enough to accept it) AND they'll go back to learning the 3Rs (which kids uniformly hate, but are essential for Real Life) that have been so sorely neglected over the past couple decades.
Well, that's MY fantasy for today; what's yours?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Some else mentioned this, but it needs more hightlighting: the "School Agreement" that the schools will be (at least for a year) forced into requires that they pay the fee for every "Eligible PC".
That means PCs running Linux.
Read that again: Microsoft is going to collect per-machine license fees for Linux machines.
Now ask youself what chance you as a teacher have in trying to put Linux on a PC? You will get marching orders from the school admin types: You MUST uses Windows, we PAID for it!
The MS objective is not to collect more money from schools, it is to force them into an all-or-nothing commitment; and we know that most school systems can't realistically eradicate Windows at this stage. They will eradicate Linux.
Let me start by saying I've used many an OS and much software (even written some) and I'm not too zealous about any of it, these are just my observations. Also, the views expressed in this post are not the views of my employers or colleagues, they are my thoughts only.
I teach cs at a high school in one of the districts mentioned in the article. I've read the internal emails about the pending audits. First, let me say I'm too busy teaching to worry too much about this at our school, especially because I doubt it will be a big problem at our school because our sysadmin is on top of things and saw or heard this coming as early as this fall. We have site licenses for much of our MS software anyhow.
The district is another matter. Our school's network is Win2k and locked down to students (read: difficult for them to install warez on) but the rest of the district is full of iMacs and older Macintoshes. I've used Macintoshes and they've got their place, but they're not the most secure multiuser machines running anything pre-OSX. This is just to give some evidence of why I agree with what a few posters have already said: doing this audit is almost impossible given the current state of these school districts (read: many random computers, not much dinero)
Finally, and most importantly, in a more fair world we should get a deal from MS on their software because we're teaching it to a captive audience during their formative years. Any potential pirated copies of software are being used to introduce kids to MS software which they will then seek out through their college careers and after. We assign kids PPT presentations and teach VisualBasic in our first two programming courses (before you go crazy on me, we also teach Java, Unix/Linux and a higher level cs course where kids code in C++, and hopefully a bit of Scheme next year).
Do you recall the controversy a few years ago when people found out Microsoft was paying college profs to push MS products. Seems the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the other direction (picture that bowling ball on the string trick that everyone from Feynman to Bill Nye has done and imagine the ball swinging back and cracking the demonstrator in the chops)
Ultimately, will our school transition to linux on the desktop? IMHO, probably not without a very serious nudge; more serious even than this possible audit.
If this is anything like my school, there's some (teacher) machines with all sorts of network software, gradebooks, etc. These are all legit and have registration stickers on them and stuff. But the problem is the multitude of other machines with either just Office on (for student use) or very simple network access (DHCP I think) for the web.
It would be easy, I'd assume, to make a CD or CD/floppy pair which you can just stick in, answer a few questions (teacher-level, non-techie) and have it format the drive, install linux with free office software and web... Make these so the school can add their printers/network configs and burn them. This would eliminate any trace of M$ on these puters.
Well, reading some of the posts, it seems that a lot of people are interested in volunteering and helping out. While others may call them fools, I think it's a great kind gesture that's kinda rare to find these days. So here's a big good luck from the other side of the world to all you people in convincing the schools and helping them out and all!
Does anybody actually know what these schools use their computers for?
To put it in another way: how many educational software, like math/reading/writing/science software run on Linux? How many in-house educational applications are there running on these machines? How each is it to migrate those applications to Linux?
At some point, all these local schoolboards, universities, non profit organisations etc are going to have to tell Gates & Co that they're not going to put up with this crap, and theycan take their Windoze and their licenses and insert them anally.
For that matter, I still cannot understand whyall of these schoolboards, who have been cash strapped for years due to government cutbacks, have not seen Linux and Open Source as the obvious solution!
Somebody please send any and all of these institutions a set of Red Hat discs!
This reminds me of the article on Salon last July:
c ro soft_school/
.SXW Open/StarOffice Writer XML format (this doesn't include what's on the student computers).
o gy Coordinator
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/mi
In a similar situation to the Oregon issue, the Philadelphia school system was found out of compliance. You have to remember that this is a school system that was recently taken over by the state gov't and partially privatized due to the city's mismanagement.
I went to a Philadelphia school (Yeadon) in the 10th grade in 1982. They had these TRS-80 Model Ones (vintage 1977) that hadn't seen the light of day until that very year because no one was qualified to teach them.
I now work as the technology coordinator for the Linden Hall School in PA, USA. When I took this job 3 years ago I was very pro-Microsoft. Then I realized how very different an underfunded school environment can be.
The Salon article was the final push that motivated me to pursue open source software everywhere possible here at the school. It gave me the ammunition I needed to convince skeptical teachers and administrators. I imagine this article on M$'s tactics on Oregon schools will push other admins like me to think more seriously about open source options.
We have been using OpenOffice.org since September and plan to move to StarOffice 6 when available. It isn't perfect, but it sure is nice to report the bugs we find and actually see them fixed in the next revision!
Contrast this with how long it took Microsoft to fix numerous bugs in Office 2K and it doesn't seem like such a disadvantage. This year alone we saved over $10,000 on licensing. Apparently OpenOffice can't be too difficult to use either. As of this morning, I counted 2411 files stored on our server in the
Of late, I've gone one step further in my thinking about all this. Why do schools - the biggest training and indoctrination centers of them all, have to pay ANYTHING for software - especially Microsoft's?
Schools train the students on Microsoft product so when they get out in the real world, they fully expect to see it on corporate desktops and their own computers. In short, schools are providing a huge service to companies like Microsoft and Adobe.
Now here at Linden Hall we have the option of using M$ product and we still do for a great many things. But we are a private, non-profit school with a (hopefully) competant sysadmin (me) and a reasonable budget big enough to stay compliant with licenses.
But financially strapped, publically funded schools are basically providing Microsoft with free advertising and training with OUR tax dollars and in my opinion, this is a great example of corporate welfare.
I don't hate Microsoft product BTW. Some of it is brilliant. I hate their tactics. I hate the thought of my being involved with the promotion of those tactics, no matter how far I am personally removed from them.
Are you in my position at a financially strapped school and living in fear of a BSA audit? Or, are you a school that has been increasing use of open software? Want to know how well OOo has worked for us? Let's talk! Please feel free to send me an email (remove the NOSPAMM).
Chuck Hunnefield
admin@NOSPAMM.lindenhall.org
Technol
Linden Hall School for Girls
www.lindenhall.org
Lititz, PA USA
"OpenOffice.org - Start doing the impossible!"
A thread on the same topic on pdx.general and alt.culture.oregon.
Help us build a better map!
What stake does Microsoft have in Apple 45%???
Last time I checked Mac OS doesm't install on PC's. At any rate, the new version is a unix clone!
Making Bill the richest man on earth is the result of your stupidity. Learn to live with it because YOU let the only real altrernative die out nine years ago, when Win3.1 was still busy beefing up it's long tentacles. And Linux can only crawl behind the monster as long as real commercial development is encouraged. By that I mean that you'll only get geek attention from all that open source lameness (for the majority of apps) because no one has bothered (remember user-friendly ?) to adapt Linux to "ordinary" people's uses. Until you, the open source freaks, realise there is still a LOT MORE effort to be put in the ease of use and the making available of a rapid development environment,MS can only become an ever hardened black granite pyramid. I'll continue to ignore Linux for anything other than web serving as long as there is no reward for the hard work (of another age) necessary to get anything done on this free platform. Oh sure , you get some glory but at the end of the day, what's going to pay the rent ? You let the Amiga die, now deal with the consequences and learn to like MS cause you're going to be eating a lot more of it in the near future (Bill busy buying up content left and right and making billion $ bets on all tech alternatives to PCs for distribution...)!
As everyone says, there is not much time... why not come up with a plan to wipe all nonessential PCs? Surely a bunch of the 25,000 PCs are in student labs.
Take a count of what you know you have, and identify how many of these labs you can shut down for the audit. That would give you time to migrate those to proper licesnes or proper OS's, whatever the district chooses.
Granted, I don't know the terms of the agreement with MS, but I wonder if putting the machines beyond booting (by removing the hard drives or RAM) would be enough to prevent that machine from being counted...
Pat.
I followed some of the links to k12ltsp and was wondering how schools afforded the servers required ... then I found this
With second hand kit they are mostly running PCs as diskless X-terminals; but this needs hefty CPU & memory from the server (see here for SunRay server requirements, for comparison). Often the clients are capable of something more, but you will have a range from crap to very very crap PCs, so how do you balance the load correctly, instead of just having 2 client configs, thick and thin?
Their solution: turn your terminals + server cluster into an OpenMosix cluster, so you claw back every last drop of CPU power on your network. NICE!!
Obviously this moves more load onto the network, and I'd like to see how that scaled - but this is a really cool solution to building a network from second hand kit.
-Bazzargh
A dream about this last night - SWATs - software attack teams - as soon as someone is under the crunch of MS, experts from around the world swoops in on their city and migrate them in less than a week to a new platform. The dream got pretty intense as MS kept upping the ante - sending out more and more demands for audits, using mafia connections etc. But it was cool seeing them get screwed back again.
I was just recently hassled by somebody who asked for my driver's license for a credit card transaction. This time, I was in a hurry, so, for a change, I just showed the license. She looked at the license, and handed back my credit card. I then signed the receipt. Note that, at no time did she check the signature against the credit card (which is what she is suppoesd/i. to do)! The last time that I refused to show my license, the clerk similarly didn't check the signature. Completing the transaction required summoning the manager, who then asked the clerk why he felt he needed additional authorization. The clerk just stated that "it's just something that I always do".
That is the basis for my complaint, and the reason that credit card companies dont' like this practive. The "experience" of buying with a credit card should be the same everywhere: (1) check the signature against the credit card, and (2) use the machine to get an authorization code, which can check to see whether the card was cancelled. Once they have done this, the merchant's ass is covered.
On the other hand, if every store were allowed to make their own policies, some might require driver's licenses, others could require two forms of ID, some other fascist clerk would ask for a birth certificate. This is what the credit card companies are trying to avoid.
I know that the requirements for authorization are stated in the Merchant Agreement. What I don't know is whether there are any punitive measures for a merchant who violates this aspect of the terms of the agreement...
Remember Windows is just the O/S. What about all educational software around that "runs only on Windows", and other learning tools?
A Computer Sciences Lab could be better off just using Linux, but regular kids will have a hard time running stuff on a Linux machine.
I'm a network admin for a city govt. MS audited us last year. They found that we actually had a surplus of licenses above and beyond what software we had deployed. What prompted them to audit us? I highly suspect it is because we had been very vocal, anti-MS bashing to everyone we talked to and loudly announcing our plans to deploy as much Linux and phase out all MS products as we possibly could. The MS/BSA goons were furious when they couldn't find anything out of compliance.
I love it! That's as good as getting audited by the IRS and receiving a refund in response. Now, if only more audits would have these results... (You probably had better bookkeeping than most; it's common for documentation of licenses and purchases to be misplaced, unfortunately...)
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
I don't think the point is with the audit itself. I think the schools are more concerned with the timetable... If their scholls are anything like the schools here in the midwest, hey are vastly understaffed, and likely made plans last September for things they only hope to get done before this May. Dropping everything just to perform an audit 'right now' just because MS wants to be a total ass is unacceptable. Going to court just to get a bit of a delay to give them some REASONABLE time to do an audit might have a chance. All it might take is a Judge disqualification (each side can get one no questions asked here) and a continuance or a reschedule of the appearance to get them enough time to get it done.
On another note, I think a better guide to schools accepting donated pc's would be to insist on them being formatted immediately upon delivery, or even before they are accepted. If they have the software and licence with them they can always be reinstalled before being put back into service. If they decide to install another OS later they can then skip the formatting step.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm