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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."
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.
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
Better yet, I'd like to see one of the big Linux vendors set up a "strike force" to do panic roll-outs like this. (Heck, it sounds kinda fun...I'd apply for a job to do this.)
Think about it: you're faced with a huge audit, that you know you're going to fail. Do you a) pay the huge license & know you'll have to pay it again next year? or b) call in the Linux-install swat team to put Linux on every machine that you can't *prove* is legally a Windows machine, thus avoiding the whole issue for ever?
If the support & panic install costs are low enough (and the guys who do it leet enough), you may very well be able to get a *lot* of people (like the ones in the article) calling for this kind of short-notice Linux migration.
Out of work sysadmin from san jose willing to donate time for the following.
Airfare to and from
Place to sleep
Food
In exchange for this, I will help convert and train users, teachers, and students linux. Send inquiries to toqernospam@pacbellnospam.netnospam (remove nospam)
When you install a (note that, "a") copy of any MS product then you are explicitly giving them the right to audit you.
Yes, but does Microsoft have any proof that you've accepted any EULA terms?
If no, then make them get a search warrant to prove the existence of any microsoft products, and then they can enforce the "right to audit" provision of the EULA. And make them list specifically which machines they're going to check. And, once they've finally gotten their filthy little hands inside, refuse access to any machines that you know don't contain MS software.
In short, deny even having any MS software in the first place. If you don't have any software, they've got no right to come in.
Of course, school systems have even less cash than ubergeeks, so there's no chance in the world that any of these systems will force the issue, especially not in court. *sigh*
Maybe they could get Scott McNealy to pay their legal fees, to force the issue in front of a judge....
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.
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
While it may be a bad tiem for them to do an audit, I can't really fault MS for doing one if the VA is out of compliance by $20 million. this isn;t a few licenses shy, this sounds like whole departments that aren't licensed. This isn't MS being nit-picky and going after people that are 2 licenses short, these are people who knowingly are installing massive amounts of software that is not licensed. MS has every right to go after major offenders like this.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
This is VERY VERY true. There is an app called RegMon It is basically a tail -f of Win registry hits. If you run this app (or a similar one), run it and go to WindowsUpdate (with IE of course... :-)). You will be afraid.
You'll see your full (registered) name, product ID, unique ID's, everthing about your machine and you being accessed by the prompt that says "No personal information is being sent to Microsoft".
Seriously. Try it.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I *did* just try it, then searched the log for my name, etc etc, and NOTHING of the sort was found in the log. Looks like they are actually serious about the no personal information part...better check your story.
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