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A College Without Microsoft?
An anonymous reader asks: "My grandfather is the president of a well-known undergraduate-only college of about 7,000 students. He tells me that an alumnus has agreed to donate $2.4 million initially (and up to $800,000 each succeeding year for 10 years) to the school for computer equipment and staff if the school agrees not to renew any contract and to buy no products or services (either directly or through an intermediary like Gateway) from Microsoft. I'm told that this isn't the enormous amount of money that it sounds like and that a change-over to non-Microsoft products would be costly. I think it'd be great for college students to use computers apart from Microsoft, but I'm told that the board will look at the decision in terms of cost, not for benefit to the students. Does the Slashdot community have any points that I can give my grandfather to present to the Board next month?"
that they should put the good of the students ahead of any politics. That being said, the gift should be politely turned down. The best education these students could receive is a broad one.
That is, one that doesn't show any bias towards or against any one company's products. An education that includes zero microsoft products could be just as harmful as one that includes 100% microsoft products.
Fast forward to the first interviewer saying to a kid "What do you mean you've never heard of Visual Basic?"
You're not going to get an entire university to drop MS completely from the school for measly 2.4 million. Instead, try for a more narrow target. Something like "funds for the engineer school, if no engineering classes use MS products for classwork." Substitute for "engineering school" and "classwork" until you get a balance that is acceptable to both the donor and the school.
Here is the list of things I would tell your Grandfather:
1) Qualified (i.e. not test taking wonders) MCSE can physically manage about 14 MS Servers... However, a qualified Linux Admin can handle (depending upon variations in OS release) from 50-75. Much lower people cost.
2) The Admin time saved can be either be converted to cash (fewer employee admins), used to increase support of University Departments and Staff, or a combination of the two.
3) No BSA audits, papertrails, etc. which does not mean that inventory isn't maintained, it's just that it doesn't have to be a resource and legal liability issue (read, cheaper to operate).
4) I promise to send my son to this institution when he's ready for College (about 17 years from now).
Hmm that "real world" idea is part of the problem right there. In the real world, there's both MS stuff AND *nix stuff. A school that focuses purely on MS is just as detrimental as a school that focuses purely on *nix.
The fellow would be better off spending the $2.4 million on developing methods of teaching students how MS and *nix are related to each other, how BOTH are used in the real world, and familiarizing students with both.
The idea of a contract to remove MS products may help promote OSS, and help fight off monopolies, but it would be very, very bad for the students' futures.
...I'll procrastinate tomorrow...
Universities (i.e. locations where you get Bachelor degrees, not sure if they are called that in the U.S.) do not exist to teach you specific tools. If you want to learn MS Word or Visual Studio, you should take a local adult education class or take some courses at your tech school. These things shouldn't be taught at a university.
Now, before everyone gets all huffy, I'm not saying a university must not have Microsoft tools. You want to teach programming using Visual Studio? Go ahead. My point is simply that universities shouldn't be concerned with teaching Microsoft tools, rather they should be concerned with teaching how to solve the problems.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
The reality is, the kids are going to need to know how to use Microsoft tools once they graduate in order to be successful in the real world.
Um, just because MS is the dominant system at the moment doesn't mean it will be in 5, 10, 20 years time. If we followed that logic we'd all still be programming for IBM/360's in Cobol & Fortran
CS should not be about programming! Programming is a tool and, with no disrespect to the hard core coders it is a minor part of a CS. If they are learning project management, design, testing, formal specifications, AI, etc these will stand them in better stead in their careers than "just" knowing all the C++/Java/Perl ... libraries. So why worry about learning all about MS when its likely to be out of date when they graduate anyway. Teach the basics and let them adapt to change.
Plus, imagine all the chaos as non-computer science majors try to struggle with Linux on the desktop in computer labs and so on. It will indeed probably cost a lot more than $2.4 million in the end.
Why? Most students need to learn new packages when they get to college anyway - is there really a huge difference between learning OpenOffice vs MSOffice? Is Gnome or KDE really harder to figure out than the windows desktop? And these are students. If they're not smart enough to figure out how to use a software package what are they doing there in the first place?
Windows and Linux are just different. One is better than the other in different areas. For example, Windows has a great user interface and offers outstanding tools such as Excel, Word, Internet Explorer, etc. On the other hand, Linux has the ability to handle Internet related matter in a flexible way. Linux also allows developers to manipulate the way the operating system functions by simply editing text files. Only offering one operating system to students decreases their ability to learn two great systems. It's no different then capitalism. The success of capitalism is greatly due to the available options the consumer has to choose from. If we want American schools to produce dynamic, experienced graduates who can bring the best solutions to the work place, all mediums of education should be available.
You've already got the "somebody saying something pro-Microsoft that seems reasonable" karma, so I hope you don't mind me disagreeing with you.
In a country full of schools and colleges using MS Word, you have the gall to claim that anyone not doing so is restricting choice?! Anyone bothered by their decision can GO ELSEWHERE, or use MS products themselves. Nobody is mandating non-Microsoft products; they're just trying to get the college not to pay for them. Microsoft is free to donate them, and students are free to use their own.
The donor isn't seeking to force anyone to buy his products. He's seeking to force them *not* to buy certain products. Sort of like people protesting fur.
Your average computer user has a hard enough time telling the difference between Word, IE, and Windows, let alone between Staroffice and Word. Your argument that learning anything other than Word and Excel is harming someone is pure bullshit. There are more differences between WordXP and earlier versions than there are between WordXP and OO, so the idea that you're training someone wrong doesn't hold water. Most people don't do more than type and underline, which is pretty much the same you'll have to admit, between any two word processors.
You're wrong on your last point too - Microsoft doesn't pay OEMs to use their product. They license the product in such a way that if the OEM wants to sell *any* MS software, it has to sell *only* MS software.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Ever wonder why some universities have money to build new sports stadiums and swimming pools, but no money to fix a broken dining hall? Or why a liberal-arts school might have a brand-new Science building while the library is about to crumble?
One reason is that too many donors are only willing to give money with strings attached. You want to build a Science building, so you ask the Keck or Broad foundation to give you money. No problem. You need to raise an extra 100K here, another 100K there for general maintenance and repair, and nobody wants to give.
If you're in the position to donate a significant amount of money to a university, please consider giving it with no strings attached. I understand that sometimes it's nice to have your name on a building, but don't forget about all of the programs that get neglected because all of the school's money is already earmarked for other projects.
Try explaining to a non-geek how to use basic multimedia, dialup or broadband internet or email in Windows, and you'll very, very quickly reach the same problems.
Windows will never be suitable for the average desktop user, because to install it they have to know about things like partitioning hard disks, and formatting and stuff. It's too hard for the average non-geek to understand how to install Windows. Guess what though? It doesn't matter. Non-geeks *don't* install Windows, just as non-geeks don't install Linux. They use it, and it works. It took my incredibly non-techie mother something like 30 minutes to realise she wasn't using Windows when she came round to my house. Didn't stop her using Galeon though.
Well, I guess this will probably send you into an apoplectic fit but please understand that that is not my intent.
I would advise this student to recommend to his/her grandfather to actually go one step further and deploy free software for the university but I won't support my reasoning with a "just because" argument.
In an educational environment, students should not only be able to learn from source code, but they should be encouraged to play with it, modify it, and be able to give the product of their endeavors away. That way, their modifications can played with, modified, and shared by others to the benefit of everyone. Everyone has the opportunity to scrutinize, modify, and (most importantly) share with everyone else. I find it hard to imagine an environment more conducive to the sharing of information...aka education.
While I believe that promoting free software primarily on the campus is a worthy goal, I do not think that prohibiting the teaching or usage of alternatives should be prohibited (even if the maker of the software is Microsoft). As others have noted, there is some great software that is not free or even open-source. Much can be learned from this software so it should not be banned completely. But beware the effects of embrace-and-extend business practices.
The primary goal of any learning institution should be to teach its students. The instructors can not do that if their hands are tied by political or philosophical agendas. I recommend encouraging free software for its open nature and the ability to share (especially for the CS majors), but don't lock anything out unilaterally...especially for the faculty. As anathema as it might be to say here on
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
Because you can't *do* anything with NT other than look at it and say, "boy, that sure is an operating system."
Exactly. You want to study the file system or memory manager of an operating system? With an open source OS, just look at the source code. Certainly can't do that with NT. The point of an operating systems class is to learn the internal workings and design of operating systems (not how to use them), and Windows NT simply doesn't allow for this.
In the operating systems class I took, we studied and made modifications to the source code of Minix. Adding features to the OS gave quite a bit of insight as to how things actually work. You'll never come close to that with Windows or any other closed source OS, no matter how much you read about it.