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."

Comments

Re:This would be an excellent time.

[tapin]

Nice troll.

If you're an upstanding Christian you've got nothing to fear from the Inquisition either, right?

Logic like that -- one step away from "They wouldn't be suspects if they hadn't done something wrong" -- is ridiculous.

The schools don't have the time, money, or manpower (those three are, of course, related) to handle the audit, especially right at the end of the school year. The timing couldn't've been better, nor the message as ridiculously heavy-handed.

I can't wait to hear how, in two months, the seven biggest school districts in Washington are all running some flavor of Linux.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling I'll be reading about how lottery ticket prices are going to be raised to be able to pay Microsoft off.

(On a side note, are lottery sales still used for paying for state education programs? I seem to remember that being the case when I was growing up in the midwest...)

Re:I still don't under stand

[Computer!]

News flash:

You're a fucker.

Feel free to treat your employees like wage slaves. I'm sure they work extra hard for you all the time, since they feel that you value and trust their work. I noticed that you posted one hour 5 minutes apart. Even assuming you posted comment #1 immediately after your 3:02 PM lunch break starts, your second post was one hour, 5 minutes later. You stole five minutes from the company, just like I stole the two minutes from you that it took to read my post. No, you can't have it back, asshole.