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Windows on an iMac (says the invoice); Red Hat's Alternative
A user writes "According to a story at The Register, schools who want to take advantage of educational bulk licensing agreements with Microsoft have to count all PCs (and Macs!), even those not running Windows." One package of software applies to all installed PCs and Macs, including those running Linux or BSD, so schools end up paying for stations that Windows (and other programs) cannot or do not run on. Microsoft's justification is that the agreement requires an "institution-wide commitment." Coincidentally,
bc90021 points out that "RedHat announced its Linux Pilot Program for schools today. Designed to improve the overall learning experience for children, seven North Carolina school districts have already joined. One county director is quoted as saying: 'With the money we saved from not buying proprietary licenses, the school district purchased additional resources that directly [a]ffected the learning experience of our students and brought us into the 21st century.'"
The first time Microsoft settled an antitrust investigation, they agreed (if memory serves) to stop charging hardware makers per machine sold.
haha! I'm the Unix admin at medium sized (5000 student) college and I only make 36K. Does it affect my work? Maybe. Do I enjoy the lack of drug tests that my peers in industry are subjected to? You better believe it!
From http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=SAcalculato r#pc
Counting Eligible PCs
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.
The solution is simple: Buy "AMD machines" and don't count them when licensing comes around.
If Microsoft wants to treat the customers as idiots (which I will suggest more than half typically are) perhaps those that aren't idiots should act like it and not count the AMD machines.
And just so you know. This kind of stuff *does* happen, and oftentimes it *is* intentional. I'll count the iMacs, but I'm not counting the AMDs.
Erm... run that by me again?
Here's a list of the software regulated by this agreement. I'll drop the ones that are currently available for Mac (as listed on the MSFT site) into boldface:
- Desktop Package* (Includes Office, Core CAL & Windows Upgrades)
- Office Standard, Pro and Macintosh Editions
- Windows Desktop Operating System Upgrades
- Core Client Access Licenses (CALs)
- SQL ServerTM CALs
- Visio Professional Edition
- FrontPage
- Visual Studio
- Project
- Publisher
- Encarta Class Server
- Encarta Reference Library and Online Deluxe
- Magic School Bus
- Windows 2000 Professional Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
- Web Publishing Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
Now can you repeat that bit again about Mac users benefiting from this?Each bulk license is only $53. So for a large university with 5000 FTE equivalants, we're talking about a total of ~$250,000 per annum. Seems like a pretty darn good deal, wether you have to pay for a few computers that don't use the software or not. Please, bash MS for the stuff they do that is actually bad! Please somebody tell me what I am missing and why this is causing everyone to cry!
They have done for years.
I can't believe that got modded up. (!)
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
How about MATLAB?
$99 buys you the base linux version...and $159 buys you the base version along with the most useful toolboxes.
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I found your email address online at the [school] site. As a citizen of [city/county/region]who is deeply concerned not only about the education of children, but also the costs of doing so, I am sending you a link to a new program being offered by Red Hat to bring open source software into the schools to replace proprietary (read: very expensive) software by Microsoft.
This is not a marketing letter, and I have no affiliation with Red Hat whatsoever. I'm simply a local software developer who can attest that the Linux operating system can do everything that Microsoft Windows can do (with few exceptions), with a lot more reliability and requiring fewer hardware resources.
Furthermore, on a general note, I would like to call your attention to the following facts:
Additionnaly, I am quite confident that you are using Microsoft software to read this mail. I am therefore quite confident you have had a close encounter (if not an actual catastrophe) with the various reliability/security problems that seem to be the trademark of Microsoft, including (but not limited to:
- Losses of data because of a system crash
- Outlook specific viruses/worm: Nimda, Klez, Code Red
I hope that [school] will be a technology leader and simultaneously fiscally responsible enough to consider all the possibilities that working with Red Hat and other open source software providers will bring to the table.Best regards,
[Your name]
[Street Address]
[City,State,Zip]
Idea:Someone could build a web page with a generator: enter the relevant infos, click a button and presto a mail ready to be sent! We would, of course, need to refine the model and add more relevant links.
I work for a K12 school district, and there are two types of software in use....we have the busy programs (drill and kill X blaster designed to keep the kids busy) and we have the application based applications (word processor etc).
In the application type of programs, teachers are reluctant to adopt it without either a textbook or a manual for themselves. The high school offers a course using Office 2000, and even though I can demonstrate all the advantages of OpenOffice, because there is no text book, the teacher feels he can't teach the course.
We also get a lot of software from the book publishers themselves that include supplmental materials to the textbook purchased. Almost to a tee, teachers feel they MUST use that software (use means install and never actually use), but the software is never, ever Linux based.
Finally, the busy work software, the X blasters. I don't like them personally, but teachers get hyped because they saw an article somewhere saying X blaster helps reinforce whatever skills. If the article wasn't software specific they wouldn't look so hard at that particular package. Because the article says program Y reinforces basic skills then they clamor for program Y.
There are still some stumbling blocks to implementing Linux K12 in the schools, we are *slowly* moving that way but it's taking LOTS of communication between myself and the teaching staff. The reassurance also comes from education (showing them linux won't byte), demonstrations of linux and software, lots of reassurance and hand holding. Not many schools can devote that type of resources even when the cost of the software is free.
*WARNING* Some moderators may see this post as a Pro Microsoft Post (TM). It is advised that they do not read it, to avoid raised blood pressure on their part and decreased karma on mine. ;P
The reason Macs are included is because you are licensing *all* of the products in one yearly payment. i.e. you pay £40 per computer (in the UK) and you get to use the latest Office, Windows, Works, CALs, Encarta and Visual Studio on any computer. If you look closer that does also include a terminal services CAL for each computer so if you're stuck on P133s you can still use the School Agreement to 'run' 2K and Office XP on all of your computers with a meaty enough server.
I don't know how much of the above software applies to Macs, but I know Office does and the CALs probably do too. I think MS included Macs not only to make money but also so that it would be a 'catch all' agreement - one of the really attractive things to schools is that it means no more worrying and auditing software - just add up the total number of PCs and install as much MS software from the list as you like on them. What's even nicer is that when you get new computers you don't pay for the licensing until the agreement is renewed at the end of the year, so you get up to 364 days free software usage.
To be honest for some schools it's a good idea. If schools are mostly MS shops (like the one that I work in), then it gives you the opportunity to standardise on versions of Office (instead of 95, 97, 2000 and XP) and Windows (instead of a mishmash of 95, 98, 2k and NT4), *and* upgrade when new versions come out. To be honest, if MS was the only option this would be a great deal - £40 per year for all Windows and Office upgrades would easily work out cheaper if you wanted to stay cutting edge.
I'm torn with the School Agreement. On the one side I do genuinely think that Windows is a better platform for education ATM (having tried out K12LTSP and so on), but on the other side it seems like a huge amount of money and the idea of renting software is something I'm very wary of. Maybe in a year's time Linux will be a superior contendor - let's wait and see!
' Ore stabit fortis a fine placet ore stat '
- found on a park bench
You might find it helpful to open this page while reading this message, as it gives you a very clear overview of the different licensing options MS has.
This is School Agreement 3.0 that the article is referring to. Way before SA 3.0, there was SA 1.0. The 1.0 agreement was designed to give schools a fixed-price-per-year subscription for everything they could possibly want software-wise. There are plenty of other academic licensing options available.. this one was incredibly cheap (roughly $50 per seat per year max, decreases dramatically in volume) and makes sure you've got everything covered. Education is a unique market to sell software (assuming they are going to purchase software and not use open source) because money comes through an annual budgeting process. If a school can say that they have (x) computers and each one costs (x) in each budget cycle to keep in software, that's something that can be planned for. Buying software (er, anything) when needed is darn near impossible in many schools. The other advantage is that when a new machine is purchased, Microsoft includes it on the license until the next yearly cycle. Therefore, if you have 100 machines, you can buy 500 more without any software and be immediately licensed without any charge until the next year, when you pay Microsoft for 600 seats. Because of the free-software-for-new-boxen clause (which is VERY helpful... software acquisiton budgets and hardware acquisition budgets often do not coincide) Microsoft requires that every box in the school be included. This is only one of many options!
The reason Macs were included was dualfold - the agreement covers BackOffice Client Access Licenses, for one - for consistency, Microsoft doesn't want you dealing with having some computers covered for BackOffice and others not, thereby allowing you to 'fudge' on your servers - and the inclusion of various Mac-based software (office:mac, etc.)
Would this be a bad license if it was intended for everyone or the only option? Yes. Did it save my school in budget crunches becasue current software we needed (While open source is nice, let's be honest - it's neither designed for nor up to the usability needed for an educational deployment) could be billed as a required expense instead of an optional upgrade was available? Yes.
Now the confusion came up when Microsoft redid the license as School Agreement 3.0. Now, instead of receiving a package (which included Windows, Visual Studio, Office, BackOffice CAL, etc.), institutions can pick and choose products. The old option is still available for roughly the same price as a "desktop/client bundle" plus a few upgrades (Visual Studio is $2 a seat, for instance). There are a few minor differences which are detailed on the Microsoft licensing website... and a few changes for the better, like allowing schools to buy Microsoft software and simply give it to their students. (This is a great development for Visual Studio, for instance... Pay $2 per student in a CS course and they get development tools. Is it a GNU tool? Nope, but it does create young coders who will discover open source later.)
Because the basic premise of the agreement is the same, and options can be added and subtracted, they apparently didn't change the counting restrictions since 1.0. The difference now is that because you can order only certain products, people who don't fully buy into the plan and *only* purchase PC products wind up buying more licenses than they otherwise should. If this happens, school agreement should be avoided at all costs. IMHO you should only buy into this arrangement if you as a school want a large percentages of the stuff; simply licensing Windows is not productive here.
To be fair to Microsoft, pricing on these licenses takes into account the fact that the software will probably not be used on every box. Think about it... a single license for Visual Studio.NET Pro Academic runs $99, while the per seat cost here is $2. They're obviously recognizing that secretaries and many teachers' desk machines won't be running Visual Studio. In the case of Windows, the license cost is $18. That is far less than a volume license of an NT-based professional OS has ever cost in 100-300 unit quantities - so the acknoweldgement is made that not every machine will be running Windows that is counted. (If it does, then you get an even better deal. That's why this only makes sense for some schools.) This "subpricing" strategy is not something I made up - they do detail it on their licensing site.
If interested, these are the prices:
Please mod this message up - the discussions so far haven't been acknowledging what the license is really about. For a task that is already very difficult (especially for those of us who'd rather not buy the stuff to begin wtih), School Agreement makes school IT admins who are forced to work wtih MS products' jobs much easier and (when signed properly) can save money.
Ben
I'm not kidding here! Ask any Mac zealot about Windows and, after he stops foaming at the mouth, he'll mention that the Mac can run *more* apps than a PeeCee because it can run Mac applications, Linux applications and--with SoftPC--Windows applications.
So long as the Mac community keeps telling people this--and they do--Microsoft has every right to count iMacs.
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
We all know that MS is the root of all evil in the computer field. These issues with schools are getting some attention, but not nearly what MS negates with their brain washing of PHBs and techies at their conferences. (It takes weeks to deprogram some of the guys at work after attending an MS seminar!) What we need is to somehow get this message out to a broader audience. OSDN-sama, have you considered making a television commercial? Perhaps a good looking school teacher with a child and dog who was forced to give up her job to allow for higher school IT costs from Microsoft? Go to that school district in Austrailia who did away with MS and show how productive their IT staff has become - and the sexy teacher riding on horseback that didn't have to be fired because they found a way without MS. IAMAAdvertiser, but my little brother is. Make a commercial for the general public showing that life does go on without MS. I think his advice has merrit.