Microsoft vs. Northwest Schools Part II

sharkey writes "Simple End User Linux (SEUL) has an article about their visit to the ACPE 2002 conference. Microsoft's visit to the conference is outlined, as well as the school districts' attitude towards GPL software and migration issues. An interesting follow-up to an earlier Slashdot article."

Comments

Linux in Mexican Schools...

[vkg]

May be a different country, but the economics and usability issues are very similar indeed:

Wired talks about it, and there's a lot more info over on Google.

Re:Educational software.

[bcrowell]

I agree that there is a problem with availability of applications. For instance, I'd like to convert the physics labs at my community college over to Linux, but we don't have a replacement for our data-acquisition software that would run on Linux.

There are three open-source gradebook programs listed on Freshmeat, one of which is my own. I'd be interested in talking more about gradebooks off-list...

One good thing about what's happening in the article is that they may get entire districts buying in to Linux. It's much harder for an individual teacher to do on a classroom-by-classroom basis. The computer folks at my school have neither the time nor the skills to help me integrate Linux boxes into their network.

Another positive is that lots of schools are using Macs, and will soon be using MacOS X. That gets Unix's foot in the door.

If you are really interested in helping out

[datastew]

And I do mean really serious, then one place where the Portland Linux/Unix Group is collecting information is here. I am still waiting for them to contact me, but I am certainly willing.

PR hits

[recursiv]

Microsoft can't afford any more PR hits, because the next rock could be the one that starts the avalanche. It's pretty clear that the most effective weapon against MS's tactics is public knowledge of their behavior. Sure, they can smooth it over, but as they say, a tiger can't change its stripes. Meow.

Sure they can afford more PR hits. Come on. They're Microsoft. Do you really expect a few PR hits to have any significant effect in the face of overwhelming advertising power and market dominance over most (admittedly mostly clueless) users? These people have come to expect PR hits and controversy as part of the industry. "That's just how it works." Microsoft wouldn't want to raise their expectations, now would they?

Hi, I will volunteer

[Raleel]

I'm from the TriCities Linux Users group in Richland, WA, a mere 3 hours down the road.

I will gladly volunteer my time to this project. Not Just weekends. Not just a couple of hours here and there. I'm a unix system administrator with about 5 years of solid linux experience. I have experience in educational systems (I learn and admined linux at a university).

Please contact us. Our mailing list can be found at www.3clug.org.

I might suggest you see if there are volunteers from the OSDL (Open Source Development Lab) right there in Portland.

I would also suggest a good leader for this. This is going to be a lot of "heads" arguing back and forth, and having a "this is the way it's gonna be guy" is gonna work best.

You will have the people to do it. Just ask. We will save your school district money. We will make it work. You will not feel forced into a companies bottom line ever again.

--Doug Nordwall

Re:Educational software.

[bcrowell]

Cool!

But it sounds like what you're thinking of is more like research lab stuff. We're a community college. We use data-acquisition software for simple introductory physics labs. It's by a company called Vernier.