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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.'"
Would that include the old Mac case that the network admin changed into a fish bowl too?
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
by eliminating the accounting necessary for Microsoft licencing?
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
With all this MS licensing crap, why do schools even consider going with it? Even if they don't go to Linux/BSD, iMacs are perfectly good replacements for windows, and they can do anything a Windows station can (that a school would need, anyways)
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
What about graphing calculators? I mean, how far do you go? Slide rule? Abacus? They are all computing devices.
I don't think it's going to be long before people/organizations actually start READING those agreements they sign, once word about this kind of stuff gets out (school board meetings, company newsletters, etc). THAT'S when the shit will hit the fan for MS.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
"Look, just because you can't even install or use the software doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it! I paid $25,000 to your campaign, and I want my $95M in revenues, dammit!"
Doesn't that just mean giving up?
"Well, they can force us to buy licenses of Windows we don't need... we might as well make the best of it and figure out uses for all the extras."
I guess they should also just install Windows on any *nix machines too?
Would be a shame if they got to choose, huh?
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
On the other, I don't know if I should direct the statement at Microsoft or its customers.
Institutions should just refuse these licenses on principle.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
In the US "Microsoft Schools Agreement 3.0," for example, "100 per cent of all Pentiums, Power Macs, iMacs or better" are specified, whereas the FAQ document for the UK Microsoft School Agreement says "You need to count 100% of all Pentiums, Power Macs and iMacs."
So AMD's are OK? Phew!
...about computers or about Windows? Linux and Windows and MacOS will all do the same business functions (spreadsheets and whatnot), but if you want to delve any deeper into how computers work and what the OS really does the 3 OS are certainly not equal. Windows will only work to a certain level of advancement in computer know-how, since it focuses entirely on apps. So if we really want the kids to learn something about COMPUTERS, shouldn't we go open source and teach what makes them tick?
Murphy was an optimist.
As if the consumer wasn't enough those scumbags are now trying to extort money from out education system. I personally am going to go about getting every school in my area to at least aknowledge the existence of sowtware suppliers that don't screw their customers over. As a high school student myself, this senseless waste of taxpayers money on Proprietry sowtware sickens me. My School has every M$ Application it's possible to have and the result: I'm the only person in a 1500 pupil school that knows how to use an OS other than Windows. For M$, this kills two birds with one stone; they can extort money from schools in the short term and then cash in on the fact that the've raised a whole generation of people that know nothing but their crappy software in the long term because they've discouraged their school from even providing an alternative to Windows. Sorry if this is too much of a rant but this really bugs me.
Microsoft license
Squeezing money from our schools
Linux saves the day
Perhaps come up with a one-CD, bootable Linux distro specific for high school. It doesn't have to have 6 word processord and apache and 4 window managers and etc, etc, just a very few workable apps. Bare bones, simple, clean, works on "typical" school hardware.
Sounds like we might see more schools systems (with Mac + Linux and no Windows at all) bragging about the money they saved and the purchases they made with these savings. It would be nice if they could network and share expertise. Might also be nice if Macs and Linix interfaced a little more seamlessly.
=brian
PS: This might be another occasion where Microsoft's aggressive policies work for us and against them. If they really are hard-assed about this "all or nothing" licensing, several schools systems will choose to opt out, especially those that are Mac-heavy.
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?I couldn't find a reference to that suit, but here's a story at CNet which discusses this. Note this paragraph:
The article is actually discussing a stunt Microsoft pulled to get resellers to tattle on anyone who bought a PC without Windows.Bill & co. never cease to amaze me -- but what amazes me more is that so few people have caught on to what they're doing.
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
Schools can't afford that - what $400 equated to in a school of 600 with 100 computers, was literally the entire IT budget. The school I'm involved with rejected the "offer", only to be told that doing so meant they were no longer licensed to use Windows or any other Microsoft product - even those supplied OEM. That is, "since you broke the contract here, we're nullifying every EULA you've ever seen!"
My school has since switched to 100% non-Microsoft products (Sun, Linux, some macs) and haven't regretted it since. They're able to use older machines as thin-clients of sorts, and with a couple of bright students and a lot of learning, they haven't needed to look back.
The Department of Education are not amused, and neither I imagine are Microsoft. Education Queensland have used the carrot ("but this is so much easier to account for than Linux, and here, we'll give you 10% more IT budget than last year...") and the stick (need I say more?) approach, but it so far hasn't worked.
Windows upgrades $18
Core $15
Office $24
all three of the above $48
SQL server, Visio, FrontPage, Project, Publisher $5 (each)
Vis Studio $2
Looking at their education main page, I believe that this is an annual license fee. However, let's assume you're the head of I.T. for a school district. Do you really think you're going to get a better deal than that for those licenses?
Don't think so. So, you swallow your indignation (if you have any), and buck up...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
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