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

What's wrong with education?

[doomicon]

"The #2 fear facing schools is the thought that teachers will not be able to use the software. No one is worried about the kids."

nuff said.

Re:What's wrong with education?

[gclef]

That may come across as annoying or foolish, but it's probably also true....just badly worded. The kids are not the ones that will have trouble learing the new technology.

That phrase should be read "No one is worried about the kids [they'll adapt quickly]."

Old MS business strategy

[fabiolrs]

This is and old and known MS business strategy. They let their softs spread freely and then demand license regularization. Companies around the world used to have no alternative but to pay thousands of dollars on licenses because mass migration is expensive, user training on new OS is expensive and many other things. Even thou some years ago linux already existed it was not a so viable alternative, so companies, even knowing Windows is not the best OS out there, stick to it.

It is pretty good to see that this is changing. Microsoft tried to do this but now there is an alternative out there and that alternative is pretty strong and robust. It is good to see that even thou MS is a large company it cant do business like it did years ago because it is not the ONLY out there.

Way to go!!! :))

The Usual MS MO

[vex24]

They love to scare you into thinking they're going to press charges and levy fines, but it's just a good-cop, bad-cop routine -- the second the outrage hits, they're a different company; flexible and understanding.

At that point we're supposed to believe MS is a big cozy teddy bear and really wants to help. They've done this more times than I can remember. It's time to walk away from them and not look back...

Two things that strike me

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

1. Public awareness, bad publicity for MS. 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.

2. Committed volunteers. As the article points out, the LUG was a big help. One of the cool things about the open source community is the freedom and diversity of work. But a pitfall is that it is not organized around a single goal like a corporation. If the Linux community said (i.e., leaders said), we are committed to getting all public schools onto free software and keeping them going, make that your priority, what amazing things could be accomplished? Instead many people would rather work on their own, probably less important projects. I love working on my own stuff just for the fun of it, but there comes a time to put down your own agenda and dig ditches for a greater goal.

Re:Two things that strike me

[47PHA60]

I have to disagree with the replies here. Bad publicity can go on forever, true, and MS can take small hits here and there for a while, but eventually the bad publicity will inspire others to organize around a better alternative.

The "Linux Community" has been negatively focused on MS for years, and now that the software itself is getting more mature, I think people have more time to devote to positive alternatives.

I think that if we try to make the entire goal of Linux "free software for the schools," that it will give people who want to crush Free Software a target to attack. I say, allow local Linux users and developers to choose their own battles. Mine was corporate acceptance of Linux from the bottom up in a professional software environment.

On the side, my consulting business has made me money while saving my clients (small businesses with fewer than 10 employees) thousands of dollars on MS server licenses, using Linux/samba as a PDC and fileserver. And, unlike a large company, these customers know that Linux has saved them real money.

When I worked at Lotus, we were told to keep focusing on the smaller customers, because a MS tactic is to release immature software that works in low-end installations, and then, as the software improves, they nibble away at the high end market from below. Linux has been using this same tactic, sometimes unknowingly. But, because the licensing is free, Linus, Alan Cox. etc can work on 16-way SMP support while I can still afford to install it in a small shop. That is an advantage MS and Lotus never had.

Educational software.

[Hiro Antagonist]

I think one of the biggest barriers to getting Linux installed at schools is the lack of software targeted at secondary-school teachers and students. I'm working on writing an open-source, Java-based gradebook application (still in initial stages, so there's no project homepage yet), and I'd really like to see people writing things like gradebooks, educational games, and the like.

Re:Educational software.

[peddrenth]

or have a CS teacher do it

More like, give it to a group of CS undergrads for their second-year university project

Yes, that's the problem

[hij]

The Portland Public School switchboard was jammed for two days with calls from Linux users volunteering to come to PDX from all over the west coast to help with software migration.

This is exactly the problem that schools face. They are looking at options, but except for an initiative at red hat, there is not a strong, coordinated effort from the linux community. Schools are over burdened and cannot afford somebody who is really good to come in and do the right thing. The schools don't need a flock of geeks, they need consistent, reliable support.

Re:Yes, that's the problem

[raskal]

The schools need a bunch of geeks, but they need them to be reliable. If a LUG could come out and say, "we have 10 committed people who combined will give the district 2 hours/day every weekday for 6 months minimum" a school district will be much more likely to listen. Having a geek say , "Sure I can help set things up" is meaningless unless that geek backs it up with a strong, long commitment to maintain what they've setup.

Exactly

[beleg777]

Quoting, "We never had any idea that there would be a reaction like this. Our two words for today are friendly and flexible."

That is exactly the problem. They don't try to decide if it's good or ok or ethical, they try to decide if they can get away with it. If they don't forsee money loss they don't see any reason not to do it.

The problem is

[snarfer]

The problem is that Microsoft's licensing requires the schools to decide NOW, and then locks them up for years. (Right in the middle of finals.) The same is true for their corporate licensing. They have to decide NOW and then are locked up for years.

Desktop Linux isn't quite ready. It's getting close. That's why Microsoft is forcing them to decide NOW. And it isn't really a decision now. Maybe even in a few months. But, of course, Microsoft is forcing them to decide NOW and commit to years.

So they have to choose between Office and Star Office NOW, (and that means 5.2, but even 6 isn't QUITE right.) Or gobeProductive, which is really great on Windows, but isn't QUITE ready on Linux yet, and there isn't enough time to do a proper evaluation anyway. So they have no choice, really, except to commit to Office.

So it's just another monopolistic extortion scam from the company with $40 billion cash in the bank. You'd think that the corporations that are the victims of this licensing scam would recognize what they have unleashed by putting Bush into ofice. Or you'd think that the municipalities with the school districts would be talking to their members of Congress. Education was suyppose dto be the big Republican thing, right? But the first thing Bush did was free up Microsoft do go after --- other corporations and school districts! Is this really the kind of country they wanted when they coughed up all that cash to put Bush in office?

M$ acted like any business would...

[TheNecromancer]

Flame me all you want, but Microsoft reacted the way that any business would when confronted with angry customers. Sun, IBM and others would have reacted in the same manner if they were in MS's shoes.

Never underestimate the power of bad customer support or angry customers!

The overlooked option

[feldsteins]

It hasn't been mentioned in the article, nor in this discussion so far as I can see...but is nobody aware that the computer maker that sells more boxes to the educaton market is Apple?

I realize that many in the slashdot crowd see any solution other than free/oss ones as inherently evil...and that companies with these solutions are engaged in nothing short of extortion and theft...but c'mon. Isn't one of the best options for these schools to simply buy more Macintoshes? Of course it is!

You are right!

[smoondog]

You are correct. Unfortunately "any business" doesn't have monopolistic power, either. The reason we have laws against monopolies is to prevent business from applying normal business practices in a competitive vacuum.

-Sean

Re:This should help Apple

[snarfer]

They would still have to license Office. Linux really is the answer.

Microsoft is very smart.

[PotatoHead]

Their first move was to appear sorry, smooth over the tense situation then, MEET WITH EACH SCHOOL ONE ON ONE.

Diffusing the group is their primary objective. Once this is done, they can continue to manupulate the ones in charge into bad contracts.

PR 101 in action here, I am surprised that these two did not see it coming.

Schools Interoperability Framework

[ObligatoryUserName]

If I were you, I would write my applications with the Schools Interoperability Framework in mind, so that it can communicte with other programs run by schools.

Linux is PERFECT for schools

[bluGill]

I remember back when I was in school we had big problems with comptuers. Seems both the macs and the PCs were single user systems, and so students would regularlly, and intentionally change something on the local disk. (the stupid ones just deleted something critical, the "smarter" ones changed something subtile that you didn't even notice for a while. Remember, these are teens going through the worst years of their life from an honesty standpoint.

Linux by contrast was designed from the ground up to be a multi-user system. Give someone a login, and they get access to their files, and only their files. They can run programs, but only the ones allowed by the administrator. (it is fairly easy to mount home noexec, and move programing students to a different disk)

I graduated in 93, so win3.1 was the latest windows, and the macs were m68k. things have advanced some (windows 95 is a little better for multi-user, but it still sucks compared to linux when you cannot trust the users)

Remember, these are students, not employees. They are immature, and untrustworthy. (I wasn't, and I was one of the more honest students)

AAA-like organization for Linux?

[mttlg]

As mentioned in the article, the biggest concern about Linux in schools is support. Somehow, I don't think telling them that Larry over at the local LUG said he'd help out if you run into trouble would go over too well with the administration (assuming the debate even gets this far). It would seem that if there were an organization like the AAA that offered emergency support, training opportunities, and instructional publications all for a low annual fee, regardless of what kind of Linux boxes/boxen you have or where you got them, a lot of the reluctance to switch to Linux would be removed. (I know that there are some small companies that do this sort of thing, or at least there were during the .com boom, but I'm thinking of more of a LUG-for-hire outfit.) With the current situation in the Northwest, the stage seems set for a few of these organizations to spring up, eventually merging into a single nationwide Linux support organization. Anyone have any venture capital they need to get rid of?

Re:Educational Software?

[WetCat]

Can you be more verbose and describe here what that software do (especially WinSchool)?

I think Slashdot readers will be able to try to find substitutes for you.

I also think that about 99.9% of all slashdot readers never heard of the software names you presented...

Too many computers in schools

[Webmoth]

I'm wondering why we even need computers in grades K-6. I can't really see how it helps the learning process; I and generations before me did just fine without computers (the first classroom computer in our school came when I was in the 6th grade).

I can understand giving the teachers computers for tracking grades, lesson planning and such, but I think it is not appropriate to use it as an educational tool for young children.

One should learn to do basic skills -- reading, writing, arithmetic, social skills, arts -- without the use of computers. You will get a much deeper understanding this way; you will be able to solve problems much quicker.

I think it is ridiculous that grade schoolers are being made to write reports using computers. Perhaps using the internet for research is OK, but with a computer the student doesn't learn spelling, grammar, or penmanship because the comptuer does it all for him. Use the computer as a reasearch tool, but write the final report by hand. You can't learn to write by typing.

Once you learn these basic skills, then (and only then) should you use the computer. Granted, when I was that age, computers weren't widely available, but we weren't allowed to use calculators until algebra, and typing was prohibited until you were an upperclassman. If the teacher couldn't read your handwriting, well, that was YOUR problem and you got an F.

A computer is a tool, but we're teaching our kids to use them for crutches because we're too lazy to teach them how to do things for themselves.

Re:Too many computers in schools

[happyclam]

Many excellent points. In elementary school, however, computers are not widely used for things like writing reports (at least not in the dozen or so classrooms I've seen). Instead, they are used to run educational games and programs focused on certain skills or lessons. High-tech worksheets, letter and number exercises.

The best use for computers in elementary school I've seen was for long-distance communication/collaboration. My stepmom's 5th grade class hooked up via email/message boards to collaborate on various projects; the usage was on the order of a music or art class: pretty much once a week, with structured objectives. And my stepmom's computer literacy? Somewhere around my ability to read/write sanskrit (i.e. nil).

Where I see computers can play a role in elementary school is in promoting diversity and in exposing underprivileged schoolchildren to computers. Thus: The little rich kids who play with computers at home all the time (like most of us here were) collaborate with a poor rural or inner-city classroom on a research project using the internet. The poor kids at the other school who don't even have books or pencilss at home would get the benefit of exposure to computers, hopefully reducing the technology gap between the haves and the have-nots. The rich kids would get a taste of diversity, hopefully encouraged to interact with their sister classroom's kids individually and as a group.

Does this alone justify "computers" in elementary classrooms? Probably not. But if all schools are wired, I don't see why a single linux server couldn't have several dozen thin clients in the classrooms to achieve these types of applications.

Re:Too many computers in schools

[JonToycrafter]

and typing was prohibited until you were an upperclassman. If the teacher couldn't read your handwriting, well, that was YOUR problem and you got an F.

And that's the point, isn't it? Speaking as someone who spent three years at a school for students with learning disabilities, because I had/have subtle motor problems that makes writing for me especially difficult, I would be the first to welcome the death of "penmanship" as a graded skill.

For years, people assumed I was unwilling, or unable, to do my work. I failed classes that required any amount of writing, and in 4th grade, that's pretty damn hard. After three years of intensive occupational therapy, and self-paced learning, I managed to not only finish high school, but get accepted to, and earn a degree from, a first-tier college. In an average week, I rarely scrawl anything more than a phone number or two, and that's usually in Graffiti, at that.

I agree that computers aren't necessarily an effective educational tool, especially in a classroom setting. However, many of the skills you mentioned simply aren't as relevant to one's education as they were when they incorporated into the elementary school curriculum. It's important for us to rethink even the fundamental elements of the educational process.

And while we're at it, let's start by rethinking the assumption that assumes that the purpose of education (according to the Federal Gov't) is for us to be efficient economic producers. I'd rather use my education for MY own improvement, not the GDP's.

Re:My Local School District

[Lumpy]

you have a very delicate situation on your hands. you need to be sure you dont bad-mouth windows or MS. but show how "this free version is as good as the windows version.

if you keep talking in their terms and stroking their egos you will get very far and win completely.

Open office introduction... "It's not as nice as Office XP yet, but it costs nothing to own, has zero liability, and can do most of your work, want to give it a try?" if you throw in the fact that they can legally give copies to students, faculty, and even to parents, stranges, and bums on the street AND they can never be charged,or audited for it.... it starts looking a whole lot better than anything microsoft can make.

good luck! and good hunting!