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.'"

Comments

How much money can be saved . . .

[fetta]

by eliminating the accounting necessary for Microsoft licencing?

Re:How much money can be saved . . .

[ackthpt]

The funny, or should I say ironic, thing is schools got along for centuries without computers, let alone Microsoft stuff. Isn't it a wonder, when you add it all up, what it costs to involve computers in education. Certainly students will need some familiarity with computers, maybe even some common apps, like word processing or spread sheets, but it seems to me that a book is still a book and a pen is still a pen, if you can't work with either of those, you'll be lucky to get a job pumping gas.

Re:How much money can be saved . . .

[r_j_prahad]

You might want to do what we have done. We have given our software auditing people a project code they fill in on their timesheets. So far this project, preparing for MS-Licensing 6.0, has cost us about $60,000 for about 1150 desktops.

We could have hired a pretty damn good UNIX sysadmin for that much money.

calculators

[mach-5]

What about graphing calculators? I mean, how far do you go? Slide rule? Abacus? They are all computing devices.

Oracle and California explained!

[Tackhead]

If Microsoft can require an iMac to have a Windows license, maybe that's why California "needed" to buy 250,000 Oracle licenses, even though that's more than one Oracle license per state employee!

"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!"

Re:Virtual PC

[Dephex Twin]

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

Enough

[flacco]

On one hand, I want to say "This fucking insanity has to stop."

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.

Is an AMD a Pentium?

[MagnaMark]

From the article:

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!

How Low can M$ go?

[greg2000]

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.

*cough* *sputter*

[realgone]

The Microsoft agreements provide other software than the OS. Most Mac users use Office and therefore can benefit from an agreement.

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?

Re:Exactly what they used to do with OEM licenses

[Da Schmiz]

Yup...

I couldn't find a reference to that suit, but here's a story at CNet which discusses this. Note this paragraph:

The U.S. government in 1990 accused Microsoft of coercing computer resellers into paying a fee for each PC they shipped, whether or not a Microsoft operating system was actually installed. This action long preceded the separate antitrust case filed in 1998 by the Dept. of Justice and 19 states.

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.

Re:When will they figure this out?

[phyxeld]

iMacs are perfectly good replacements for windows, and they can do anything a Windows station can (that a school would need, anyways)

Nope. What it won't do is run office.

Macs run office, dude.
They have done for years.
I can't believe that got modded up. (!)

Re:Are we teaching the kids...

[||Deech||]

Ergh! I'm sick of people deciding what's too "advanced" for our children.. Oh no.. that's too *harrrdd*... They can't possibly handle *that*! I say BULLSHIT! Children's brains are like great gaping holes that you can pour information into. They adapt, their thought processes are never going to be in better shape to learn. Teach them multiple languages, they will pick it up *easily*, teach them the workings of the OS on a low level, even if they don't use it, it still will help them in the long run! How much of that Earth Science are you using now adays? It's still a requirement, because it's part of your environment. So will computers be when these kids get out of school. Show them we have the confidence in them to learn and give them as much information as we can. How many kids can organize their thoughts and think logically? Don't you think learning a programming language would help? My daughter (10) is currently working on learning BASIC on my old PCjr. No, she'll probably never actually apply her "L337" Basic skilz, but she's learning to plan her ideas, and logically comunicate her thoughts to the computer, and that, my friend, is some seriously valuable lessons.

Re:Are we teaching the kids...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

How does running a BASH shell help anyone learn how computers actually work?

OK, it doesn't help you understand all that solid-state stuff, but that's not really relevant. On the other hand, command-line interfaces absolutely demand a greater awareness of what each program does, what it expects, and how it interacts with other programs. Plus it encourages a can-fix attitude to problems, as opposed to the learned helplessness of most GUIs.

I have experience with this.

[The Fink]

Recently my own state (Queensland, AU) implemented a similar thing within the public school system here. Basically a Burgundy Select license pack - "unlimited" licenses for any product within the pack (including education editions of stuff like Visual Basic), and a fixed cost of AU$400.00 per computer per year. Regardless of what kind - mac, Linux box, PC, you name it. Unless it was a server-class machine, where it costs $1200.00 (again, regardless of what it was actually running).

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.

Yeah, it sucks, but did you look at the pricing?

[Corporate Drone]

OK, it strikes a nerve to see them set those kinds of terms and conditions, but look at the prices:

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...