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Microsoft vs. Northwest Schools Part III
SymphonicMan writes: "As previously discussed on Slashdot, Microsoft threatened an audit for the 24 largest school districts in the Northwest. Now it appears they may be backing down, according to Steve Duin, the Oregonian columnist who orginally brought this to all of our attention in April. Not only that, he writes that Portland Public Schools is opening 16 Linux computer labs across the districts, at half the cost of a Microsoft-equipped lab. Looks like this might be more than just a PR victory for open source. I'm a senior in one of the districts (Beaverton) included in the audit, and our staff is still going crazy trying to comply. But with districts across Oregon facing major budget shortfalls due to the poor economy, removing the pressure of this audit would be very welcome."
Yep. If it worked for Apple, imagine what it can do for Linux!
During the American Revolutionary war, the British consistantly believed that the colonies were full of loyalist supporters. When they found far fewer loyalists than they hoped for, they hired indians to fight for them. Suddenly, the large number of people in the middle swung over to support ... the rebels. Oops.
=brian
In my school district, we are facing even more budget cuts, yet I never hear anyone talk about how to reduce costs other than cutting back on salaries or materials. We should be cutting back on other costs like electricity and software. By using 12v lighting, and putting solar panels on the roof of every school we could save a lot of cash. By requiring special permits for not using free (as in beer) software, we could save money there too.
The reason I emphasise the use of "free" in the monetary sense is that I'm talking about school budgets, not software philosophy. Of course once people are into using free (as in beer) software, then you can more easilly talk to them about free (as in speech) software.
t'nera semordnilap
I read Duin's article this morning, & one item that he emphasized -- & hasn't gotten any attention -- was that MS pulled this same tactic with other school systems across the US. As a direct result Randy Baker, the tech coordinator for 16 school districts (& 12,000 end users) in central Iowa, ``completely dumped Microsoft last summer and migrated everything to Linux."
Anybody have more details about this migration?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
It could backfire too, unless the staff (or more likely, some knowledgeable students) know what they're doing...
Otherwise, we could end up with a situation like this 6 years from now, when those students are in The Real World, making purchasing decisions:
"I remember Linux, we had in at my high school. It never worked right, let's just go with Windows XXL 2010(tm), you know that works."
- They'll have a longer product cycle (Macs last forever and retain their value much better than cobbled-together PCs), which means the district won't have to upgrade their hardware nearly as often.
- They'll upgrade their software for much less than with a Windows solution and they won't be compelled to upgrade.
- Macs are already entrenched in education for a good reason: they're ease of use is legendary. Quartz is, without a doubt, the best user interface ever.
- There is a plethora of commercial applications for Mac OS. These are generally easier to use and are better-supported than Free software applications.
- They're inexpensive. You can already get an iMac for $799, and the education discounts that Apple gives are significant.
So, while I don't want to start a flame war here, I do believe that Apple is the most logical solution for education. While Linux is an excellent OS for those who love choice, freedom and hacking (in the "programming" context), it isn't really ready for widespread use on the desktops of non-technical users."I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I question the truth of this post. It's rather simple to make sweeping 'man on the street' statements about a company's practice without giving any hard details about the story and this type of attack can lead to some rather convincing evidence, in the public's mind. But what we have here is a story that is quite flimsy. As much as Microsoft controls the media, it's a bit odd that the author of this post offers no link to a news bulletin about this. I mean, certainly it was covered somewhere. The local paper should have picked up on it. Where is the link, my friend? And a few 486s running Win95? Microsoft has much bigger fish to fry.
It's not that I'm implying that you're a liar. It's that I am calling you a liar.
Note: this isn't flamebait. I just want people to give some proof of the statements they make when they are not simply voicing opinions. I really don't think this story is true.
"There is an advantage to teaching kids on multiple operating systems. However Unix is not at all suitable for general introductory courses."
You're wrong there. Young kids are a clean slate. Their minds are not yet warped by one way of doing things. Kids can follow instructions and will adapt to whatever you put in front of them.
Kids learn better with a lump of clay than they do with a solid block of concrete...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Who cares about compatibility for kids? They're LEARNING, not doing anything useful. You could give 'em a Trash80 and teach them to program on it. How 'bout an apple II - teach them to code the 6502 by hand! We don't have them design a car, or audit a company, or transplant a heart, or file a brief to a court, or perform with a touring symphony. We teach them reading, writing, math, history, music. We let them PRETEND to do real things so they can apply their basic knowledge.
...I shall sit in a boat all day, drink beer, and come home smelling like fish)
They don't need Microsoft Office, they need to learn how to use a word processor, spreadsheet, database. They don't need AutoCAD. They don't Pro/ENGINEER. They don't need Timberline. They DO need to learn how to learn a computer program. They would do well to learn how a program works.
Teach them the basics, and don't throw away money on programs made, and priced, for the business market. If Linux works and keeps the budget under control - use it. I don't really care. I think there should be several OSs in each school, and each should be taught - at least the basics.
Give me a fish, and I shall eat for a day. Teach me to fish, and I shall eat for a lifetime. (or is it
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
At first glance, schools are a dream target for the BSA. They have lots of machines, minimal system administration, and plenty of rogue software installations from faculty & students. If you're looking for piracy, you won't have to look very hard if you visit a school. From the "Let's justify our existance" perspective of BSA, schools are a target that is too juicy to be ignored.
But there's a catch: Schools are chronically short of funds. Paying the BSA "fines" or submitting to extortion is not part of anyone's budget. Never underestimate the penny-pinching creativity of a school system. They won't hesitate to throw labor at a problem to make the short-term cost go away. Considering their resources (teachers on salary and students as slave labor), they have inexpensive man-hours available if there is cash to be saved.
What starts out as BSA's dream turns into a nightmare when the schools use their resources to migrate to Linux. For starters, M$ loses the upgrade revenue. Then we have students learning non-M$ technology. Parents who discover that the school finds M$ to be very expensive. If the schools are successful in ditching M$, they become role models for parents who face the same BSA nonsense at work.
At the risk of being slammed in moderation, thank goodness they are adopting Linux. Not because it's the way to go, but because it means they are no longer possibly pirating software.
... they are. Many people believe that for some reason Microsoft is evil because they charge for their product. They aren't.
... school districts crying poor ... Microsoft wanting money ...
... do they do it legally or do they do it on the sly.
Many many many people believe that tactics used are heacy handed
It's when the two get together you have horrible perceptions. Heavy handed tactics
Going to Linux solves the money issue and most of the potential piracy issues. Is it a victory for open source? Not so much as it is a victory for living within your means.
It's a choice for schools
I say legally.
of complying to EULA's.
License mgt costs Admin time sure but, getting notice of an audit could cost untold sums in legal and additional admin (checking to make sure, real sure) time in preparation.
I hope every school board across the nation is at least taking a look at this!
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
How much does Windows XP cost? (Not the "home use only" version.) How much does Office cost? And how often do you have to keep paying Micros**t?
Schools often have a lot of donated machines that don't cost anywhere near $800 each.
Also untrue. I have taught your average US high-school students (i.e. the "dumb" ones that the media and the Republicans keep telling us about) intro computer stuff on Linux. I taught them how to use emacs (optional) and LaTeX (required). Not that the US public education system doesn't need serious help -- but you are doing students an even greater injustive if you underestimate them and feed them pablum.Unlimited growth == Cancer.
> However Unix is not at all suitable for general
> introductory courses. If you have highly motivated and intelligent kids they could probably learn on anything, including JCL.
> But most kids are not in that category (just as well or else our skills would not be in the same demand).
At first glance, you might have a point. But last Saturday I heard from a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District who clearly stated the opposite: the kids actually prefer the computers runing Linux because they are more stable. And she likes them because fixing problems in a Unix-like environment is far easier than tracking down the cause of another hex dump crash in Windows.
The problem isn't with the kids learning: they do quite fine at that. It's the adults who know nothing better than pointing & clicking -- or have to unlearn the three R's of troubleshooting MS Windows: reboot, reinstall, reformat.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
A computer lab isn't just a bunch of standalone computers any more. The computers are networked, and usually talk to at least a file/print server. Students then can store their work on the reliable server rather than on floppy disks or on the individual computers' hard drives.
Once you introduce a file server into the system, the costs of feeding the MS monkey on your back rise rapidly. How come? Simple: Microsoft servers require per-seat client licenses. This is a foreign idea even in the commercial Unix world, so it's understandable that Linux folks might think it unconscionable, but it's how it is for Microsoft-addicted organizations. Per-seat licensing can easily drive your cost of operation up, to the point where you may be paying several times your hardware cost in license fees.
Another savings is that Linux-based OSes can usually be made more efficient in their use of hardware resources than Microsoft systems. "Bloatware" is no myth, which is why the "minimum hardware requirements" for Windows keep escalating. While there are some things you can do in Windows to strip it down and make it more efficient, such as substituting an alternate graphical shell for Windows Explorer, these are not as well known among Windows professionals as the equivalents are among Linux and Unix professionals. Also, due to the less well-designed integration of the Windows system, such changes are more likely to make it unstable.
There are other ways, as well, in which Microsoft systems can cost your organization more. Microsoft recommends, for instance, that you separate your services out among several machines, so that if one crashes, the others remain. While this design is also used for Unix and Linux systems sometimes, it is much less necessary -- you can usually "get away with" less hardware without risking instability.
And then, of course, there are the clerical costs associated with license accounting ... the legal
costs and downtime associated with license audits ... and the miscellaneous other costs of
"compliance" with the lifestyle demands of a
Microsoft addiction. Like any other addiction,
dependency has opportunity costs and social costs
as well as the direct damage it causes.
So no, it is not at all surprising that a Linux-based computer lab would cost dramatically less to operate than a Windows lab, once you factor in all the costs involved.
The truth of the matter is, windows is perfect for what schools teach (which isn't much). They teach 99% of students to be typists, capable of using word and mucking around a bit in excel.
Which is strange when you think about it... the age of the typewriter is dead, there will come a time when we don't have to employ wageslaves to type dead trees back into electronic form.
So, what would you teach kids if not teaching them to be typing monkeys incapable of truly using a computer? Me, I'd dig those apple IIe's out of the closet, and teach them assembly language on the 6502. Teach them to write a compiler, and write their own programs with that compiler. The first kid to write a video game in such a fashion, gets an A+ and doesn't have to do anything but play the game the rest of the year. I'd teach them how to interface to that crappy 8bit bus, and have them dream up things to interface to it. We'd build them in class. They hate crappy resolution, with only a few colors? Maybe we'd take a crack at building an SVGA card for it.
And maybe, just maybe, those who passed that class would be eligible for the classes that use Mac OSX or linux on the g4 powermacs. Why those? Because x86 stinks, even if the rest of the hardware that goes with it is tolerable nowdays.
So, unless you were serious... tell me what *is wrong* with using Apple IIe's in the classroom.
Say whatever else you want to about him, but you've got to give RMS this: selling free software (including linux) on the basis of anything other than freedom is risky business.
I remember once, just out of highschool with an awful sales job, (for home pop machines, if you can believe it), my sleazy boss used to always say: never try to sell people on cost. They'll get bogged down with numbers and you'll never make the sale. Sell them on xxxx (in that case convenience) and let people work out the numbers for themselves. His logic was that numbers were easy to fudge when you're trying to rationalize something, and better they play around to get the numbers to make themselves happy than they catch you playing around with them.
In the context of free software, the same logic almost holds:
-for a big enough or strategic enough account, you can't beat MSFT on financial terms. That is, they can always either reduce/forgoe the licensing fees or heck, _pay you_ to use the stuff if they want it badly enough. (Just ask Miguel about Vicente Fox and the Mexican initiative.) You can't, (well, _I_ can't), outbid Microsoft.
-on technical merit, they can argue any particular point into the ground, or even, for big enough or strategic enough cases, find what's broken and 'fix' it. (gasp)
But sell freedom and you're onto something. (You _may_ even have people/past-victims making the technical/financial arguments for themselves.) The best part is that, when they use sledgehammers like the BSA, MSFT make the case for you.
Try as they might, MSFT is going to have a hard time erasing the memory of these audits/sales-tools from the overworked/underfunded school systems. Sure, they let you slide on the licensing now... but stick with them and you'll never be free of the threat of the audit. (And that whether you're in compliance or not.)
The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland, Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in other contexts. Mod them up.)
Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5 workstation network for under $1,000.
Here is a quote: "All applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses".
Intel is giving free processors to schools.
It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the instructions.
"The Multnomah Education Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and file servers."
I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.
Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.
What we have here at my workplace:
Windows Professional: $275
Office Standard: $355
SQL Server CAL: $137
Exchange Server CAL: $64
SMS CAL: $40
Windows CAL: $34
Total MS Software Cost: $905
Harware: Athlom 1.3GHz, 256 DDR RAM, 20GB ATA-100 HDD, 10/100 FD/FC NIC, Intellimouse, TNT2 display: $687
17" monitor: $163
Total Hardware Cost: $850
Removing the MS software would reduce our desktop prices by half.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.