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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."
I'm assuming that they allready have some form or site or educational license. All of Microsoft's large licenses do contain contractual provisions that they are allowed to audit. However, I remember hearing that this has never been challenged in court. IANAL however.
When you install a (note that, "a") copy of any MS product then you are explicitly giving them the right to audit you.
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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.
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...
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
I guess you missed the part where they said this is an ANUAL FEE.. Every year the school will have to cough up half a mill to MS for licensing fees.. This is for PC's they already have lifetime licenses for but they don't have the time or resources to prove it.. Just having the fancy little scrap of paper isn't good enough either.. They want invoices to prove it was payed for too.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
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.
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.
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!
>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.
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?)
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
IANAL either, but you heard wrong.
One would think so, wouldn't one? But not in a Microsoft world. Microsoft insists on seeing the physical license. No license means non-compliance, time to cough up. What this means is that in the future schools will be forced to stop accepting donations unaccompanied by the proper license. What a shame.
I'm just glad I live in a country beyond the graspings of Microsoft.