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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...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
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."
Yeah, but maybe if the kids in school use linux, they won't be so afraid to touch a computer that doesn't have windows on it.
It's amazing how much Microsoft relys on users being absolutely scared to death to use something other than windows. If kids learn its not really all that different to use a windows machine as it is to use an Apple or Linux w/ Gnome or KDS, then thats a good thing. Maybe all those single GUI arguments will go by the wayside, too. We should be teaching our kids how to run a computer not exactly what button to click. GUI environments are alike enough that you should be able to teach students the basic concepts that make any GUI workable.
I wonder whether Microsoft includes the cost of software audits when calculating TCO...
> 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.
I don't agree at all. School should not be the most expedient means of preparing their charges for the workforce.
Even if school is actually just to turn out a legion of docile sheep ready to submit to their supervisors (which does seem likely), do you actually think that someone who can use KDE is going to have more than 2 minutes of trouble figuring out winwhatever? The GUI changed from 95 to 98 to NT 4.0 to ME to XP. That doesn't seem to be a huge problem. And kids have less fear of tech than grownups, so a different UI is less stressful.
For good or bad, most of these GUI environments are pretty much the same, as is the common software which runs in them. Click on the picture of a printer to print, click on the character in italic to change the font to italic, etc. It's not very difficult to made the adjustment, in my opinion. Figuring out which option is on what menu can be a pain, but that's what Help is for, no?
Besides, if other schools are like the ones local here, all they're teaching is basic stuff that most kids could figure out in an hour or so if the needed to: word processing, spreadsheet basics, etc. Kids come into schools knowing how to use a mouse and keyboard and even if they don't it takes less than a day to teach them. I don't see a real threat to their 'competitive advantage' if they go to a school using Macs or Linux boxes in place of Windows.
The more I keep dealing with computers, the more it resembles a bad redneck romance: constantly flipping between "I love you so much!" and "Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?"
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.
How much of what you learned in high school have you carried with you into Post College days? Into your career? Be realistic.
I was one of the VERY few folks fortunate enough to actually have a mini-computer at my high school in the 80's. The fact that I was introduced to Unix without all the scary BS that the media presents about steep learning curves and other such tripe has helped considerably. The child user will NOT be restrained by learning the more complex model of computing before learning windows. With the pace of computing being what it is, I would say that the unwashed, undereducated masses that *gasp* learned Unix instead of Windows would indeed be far better off for the experience, since the unix model has a tendency to be much more applicable to the real world 5 years from now. As it stands, learning windows 200x gains you nothing, since the 'Experience' will change in 2 years anyway, and the programming model along with it.
This is an observation gleaned from watching several major employers grope their way back to Unix after disasterous ERP/large package attempts on Win2000/SQL Server. Ask any consultant, Windows rules! (heh, at 400$ an hour for cleanup fees).
Oh and BTW, knowing how to use excel does not mean you can do anything meaningful with it. I've seen way to many MBA assholes who are 'excel wizards' but have no idea how a business runs. Pretty graphs and powerpoint presentations do not a business make. Down there, wayyy down in the core of most systems, you'll usually find Unix systems. I know this, it's my job.
My gripe here is if folx were faced with actually having to learn anything along the way, everyone's life would be easier. IT gets better users, Management gets... better users. Technology gets easier to implement, etc.
On the other hand, the problem of who will teach it is a bit more questionable...
Chitlenz
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
If this isn't blackmail and anti-competitive, I don't know what is.
If you registered even one copy of their software within the organization/school system, then MS would have the notion that you probably have more than one application of theirs... then they would have cause to audit you. Yes, it is a damn shame that MS (or any other company), but people still don't read/understand what they are agreeing to when the 'agree' to the EULA of any software. There was a story posted to /. not too long ago about this very topic...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
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.
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
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..."
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
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.
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!
Of course, that would dispute the reassuring reminder that "no information about your PC is being sent to Microsoft" (or something like that).
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
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.
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?
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.
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.
how many unix admins would you need for 25,000 boxen
one good one
seriously, tho you make a good point - I think this sort of thing is best done by making a "golden master" image that is used on all machines. something generic enough that it doesn't have to be tweaked. then if something is borken the teacher just has to reimage the machine
> seriously, tho you make a good point - I think this sort of thing is best done by making a "golden master" image that is used on all machines. something generic enough that it doesn't have to be tweaked. then if something is borken the teacher just has to reimage the machine
Think of the problems trying to get away with a *single* golden image CD for alllllll the various kinds of hardware a school district winds up with after a few years of donations, etc. A suitably modularized kernel will *probably* handle all the various motherboard, NIC and disk I/O hardware, but the audio/video setups of a single master disk would drive X crazy. I think the idea of no tweaking is wishful thinking.
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?