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Microsoft, Massachusetts, and IT
Andy Updegrove writes "A big story in Massachusetts last week was the announcement by Microsoft that it would give $30 million in software to Bay State high schools and universities. Less noticed was the fact that an important economic stimulus bill adopted by the legislature lacked the amendment that sought to gut the power of the State CIO to set any new IT policies that might require compliance with certain standards (like ODF) or favor open source software. Should these two dots be connected, and if so, how? After all, why would Microsoft reward Massachusetts for taking no action to curtail an IT policy that favored ODF and rejected Microsoft's own XML format, especially after Microsoft has by all accounts lobbied so aggressively to bring about a change? As it happens, the fact is that the game isn't over yet: I've learned that the IT policy language hasn't been permanently defeated — its just been shifted out of sight to an 'outside section' of the current budget bill."
For those software companies that don't have an academic injection strategy, I suggest you develop one.
Depending on the complexity/use of your software, you put it either in the primary schools (K-12) or secondary schools (colleges). And you make it free and secure. Use license pools/server or anything to get your product into the learning process. That's where the money is. That's where you ensure your future.
Back in my undergrad days, I had access to Matlab, Pro Engineer, Mathematica, MSDN licenses, Windows XP, Rational Rose, the list goes on. I think it was Macintosh that originally discovered that putting your technology into the hands of your youth ensures your future. Why? Because Americans are predominantly lazy and we hate to climb learning curves. Macs especially build a sort of security sense that the user is safe and the machine is super friendly.
You might call this the "bottom up" approach to seeding the public with your product. Because the students aren't customers but one day they will be raised to be customers and they will decide what will be used. If you don't believe this model works, you're a fool. Time and time again I've caught myself saying, I wish I could just script this in Matlab and let it dump it to an Excel sheet. It's not that it would be easier, it's just that I know precisely how to do computations in Matlab due to my undergrad years of using it.
Now you have Microsoft trying to stop a "top down" effect in Massachusetts. Whereby they try their "MSDN Academic Alliance" strategy targeting a state's public schools. But why are they only targeting Massachusetts? Probably because of the ODF movement in the state government. If the government mandates that everyone (schools included) use ODF files and ODF software, where does that leave Microsoft? No longer the primary tool of the children, that's where.
What's the lesson to learn from this article? The squeaky wheel gets the oil!
Not enough funding for computers and software at your school? Well then, simply alert your local media and just try to enforce the ODF standard. I think you'll find that Microsoft will suddenly come (with the national media) to meet all your software needs!
My work here is dung.
Regardless of the reasons why Microsoft donated the software the end result is that the kids are the winners. Their schools are now going to have some money that would have been spent on software that can now be spent on other things to improve their education. Motives aside, is that such a bad thing?
From the quoted article:"To be fair, the commitment of Bill Gates (at least) to education is sincere"
Apparently, that is, up until now. Maybe this is the one of the reasons he's leaving as CIO (well that and to get out of the way of Vista, since there's no Dave Culter to tell him to stop pestering the project this time). Maybe he just doesn't want to be seen as a corporate dirtbag any longer, or at least, further legitimatize real philanthropic pursuits. Then, maybe not.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Should these two dots be connected, and if so, how?
Please tell me you're not from the US -- please!
Because if you're from the US the question is the height of naivete and clearly demonstrates you don't have a clue about how US politics work and the levels of bribery and corruption inherent in US politics.
Sometimes donations and campaign contributions are more akin to extortion payments than bribes.
Like Microsoft's monopoly or not (I don't), they ran into problems in the late 90s because they didn't give out much campaign contributions. They learned their lesson well.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
They want the schools to use Microsoft everything. They failed to change policy that would give people choice, so now they're just giving people Microsoft software.
Having a software monopoly helps to hold the monopoly together. They're smart, so they seek to maintain their monopoly even when it causes them to lose money.
In short, this is just a good investment for Microsoft.
Microsoft is embracing Open Source, haven't you heard? It's been all over Slashdot these last few days. Don't worry about Massachusetts, look some other direction. Hey! Look over there! A two-headed chicken...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
At the bottom of the
Microsoft offered $30 Million in *SOFTWARE* license. That's not money. That's advertising. It's the same principle as drug dealers on the corner of the street offering free shots. Once the kids are hooked, they have nowhere else to go.
The schools can keep their $30 Million in the pocket when they use Open Source software just as well. The difference being that in a year from now they can get the next version for free too...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Actually, yes. Unlike almost anyone else on line, I use my own name, so that people can tell when I (unlike, I'm sure, many others) offer their own writing. I've had c. 25 of my pieces taken by Slashdot, some submitted by me and some by others, presumably because the editors think I have something to say that other's would like to read - not just the news, but perspective on that news. Also, I have personally broken many of the most important stories in the ODF saga, such as Peter Quinn's resignation, the approval by ISO/IEC, and now the shifting of the public amendment to a budget bill, out of sight. - Andy (not "anonymous coward", not a pseudonym, and not with the "post anonymously block" checked)
It is a bad thing if you want your kid to suceed in life and not just with M$ software (diploma). Giving your kid the ability to manipulate software helps your kid learn more because learning isn't subjected to "the Microsoft way of doing things". Long term sucess requires the source code (knowing how someone did that in the past).
It's almost the same as when the NFL sold out to EA. M$ is just using this as good P/R and the kids will like it because, hey, it's free stuff. Then again, some of these kids don't even know the potentially disasterous effects of using a M$ OS and neither do their teachers. Who wants to bet in a year, 50% of the software donated is infested with your everyday mal/spy/adware courtesy of their M$ OS.
hiphop-universe.com
Microsoft has a long history of donating to charity and then taking a large tax deduction for the full retail price of the product. Since the physical manufacturing costs are so low for software after the initial investment of developing it, free software for education is both a PR win for Microsoft as well as well as a great tax shelter. But more importantly the schools that accept their software will now be future customers. And, the kids that use them will grow up to be consumers. They have been doing this for some time. They even give themselves the full retail sales price deduction for the software which is not customary among corporate donators (or at least it was not in the past).
And don't forget about the anti-trust settlement which allowed them to print money in the form of free software on CDs. Now, that's a sweet deal any company would jump at. Apple's opposed the deal since it hurt them.
Yet even in the US I recently read on a republican blogger's page someone comparing emacs (she called it emac) with M$ Word and dubbing emacs of being a word processor of lesser quality.
Let's be fair here; being uninformed about what emacs is, and writing a poor comparison in her blog has NOTHING to do with being a Republican.
If Mass. can deploy OO.o or other office tools for free, then the value of M$'s office tools to those same institutions is...essentially nothing. So what we are finding is that M$ is giving away software that is being given away by others anyhow. Granted OO.o isn't the same thing, doesn't have the same shine or finish to it, and is probably several years behind M$ in terms of features, but I am willing to bet that the vast majority of schools and schoolkids won't notice the difference.
Heck, I use office products all day every day, on one machine that has M$ office, and one that has OO.o and I can't say that I have noticed a significant difference in terms of my productivity, either.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Is this their new business model? Bribery and intimidation? Because it's not working.
Works for me...Bill Gates sent me an email saying he's gonna send me $50K if I reply to it.
>Is this their new business model? Bribery and intimidation?
"New"?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I'm from MA, and the schools I went to all outfitted themselves with macs. Schools (other than colleges) don't have the budget necessary to get an IT team to set the school up in linux. During one of our shop's arguments with the dean (drafting, as the only windows shop we were under constant administrative fire) he actually showed us the budget charts; It would cost more to pay someone to set everything up with linux than it does to just buy something that doesn't need to be configured. The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it. Each new class of kids has to be taught how to use it. The learning curve between windows and macs was deemed to be much smaller. My school decided that having all macintosh computers would be something they could boast about. Unfortunately, schools are required (some law, according to the dean) to pay an absolute premium for the macs. Schools get no mac discount in MA. My high school had 500+/- computers, and they paid $2200 for every one. A windows box would have cost them $500 each. With the limited budgets of schools it is hard to justify running anything except windows. Interestingly enough, the macs always gave the IT shop trouble. In the four years I was there, each machine had needed repairs of some sort done at least twice. My shop (Drafting) was the only shop that had all windows computers, and we never had any problems. Our prints were kept on an old novell server, that worked flawlessly every day.
Why should the state legislate favoritism toward open source software? Aren't they supposed to be unbiased and viewing IT policies from a strictly pragmatic point of view?
perhaps 'education' is best served by teaching students the principles of spreadsheets, wordprocessors, and presentations, rather than 'click button X to accomplish task Y'?
If that were the case, then perhaps educated students would be able to rapidly adapt to new interfaces rather than being stuck when a different product (or a new version of the product they were schooled on) is put in front of them?
IMO, kids that memorize button positions rather than learning principles are always going to be less productive, as even the same exact product will go through version changes, menus are replaced with ribbons, the UI flavor of the day (say docking windows or floating animated helpers) is tried out, etc.
IME, the real world in IT is one of constant change, and the folks best positioned to thrive there are the ones who are able to easily cope with multiple interfaces to the same basic task or principle.
This isn't a reward: this is good marketing. It's marketing because it costs Microsoft next to nothing to give software away (they've already paid to create it, and MA wouldn't buy it from them -- hence, very little lost $$). However, by giving it to students, they can train future generations on their software, thus helping to lock them into Windows & Office. When these students go out into the Real World, their only software experiences will be on MS stuff -- and thus, their employers will have incentives to use MS stuff rather than retrain them for something else. It's good marketing because, as stated above, it doesn't cost MS much $$. And smart companies always jump at the chance for cheap marketing.
/dev/random
Maybe you are really bad at teaching your students then. The "basics" of word processing, using a spreadsheet, or creating a presentation typically apply across most office suites. Rather than teaching students to memorize exactly how Microsoft wants you to do things why not teach them to think logically and learn how to "learn" and adapt.
When I was growing up and going through grade school MS Office didn't have the monopoly it does now. I learned on Word Perfect, a bit on Lotus products, and some other package on an old Apple. Today, unfortunately, I have the great pleasure of having to work with MS Office all the time. I am still able to do my job, and quit well. So did not learning MS Office specifically in high school disadvantage me? Absolutely not!
Teach your students...don't brainwash them
The schools would have a lot more than $30 million if they didn't spend any money at all on commercial software, using free software instead. Free software in schools is interesting in that it's one thing that's both better and cheaper at the same time.
What constitutes a better education? Should children learn to push buttons, or should they learn the fundamentals? Using MS-Office in schools because that's what most of them will use professionally later is like having them read the National Enquirer instead of Moby Dick.
Microsoft wins when it stick a new generation of kids with its software. The kids will then be on the "Microsoft track", much more likely to use their Microsoft skills to ensure more Microsoft software is bought for them, and the people they communicate with, for the rest of their lives.
With so many colleges, Massachusetts is very influential in forming "software habits", apart from its rank as the 4th most populous state.
If Microsoft can use those "free bags" of smack to lure the state into making Microsoft's brand of junk into law, that's a big bonus. But just getting the kids hooked is worth doing, even if they have to wait for the state to require addiction.
--
make install -not war
Students are supposed to learn concepts, not specific commands (that's what vocational training is for).
OOo is a standard modern office suite. In fact, OOo is probably a better tool for learning the concepts because many features are available more cleanly and rationally in OOo than in MS Office. Furthermore, because OOo is so similar so MS Office, students actually do effectively learn MS Office as well.
Teaching MS Office is also a disservice because it basically puts students on a path where they will end up paying thousands of dollars over their lifetime to Microsoft, for functionality they could get for free.
Of course, heavy usage could be difficult.
On the other hand, I did all my Numeric Methods, and Numerical Methods for Differential Calculus homework on Octave.
I even used it lightly for Automated Learning, in order to solve QR systems within a Java program. No problems whatsoever. Of course, people who need Matlab, do need Matlab, for example for binary compatibility, or running existing programs, but Octave is worth a try, if you need a package for numerical stuff, and you know Matlab.
There a nice community at http://octave.sourceforge.net/ where you can find implementations of common algorithms, when you find the base package lacking.
No, kids will always still buy whatever their parents get for them, which usually happens through marketing, or whatever they have at work, etc. The schools haven't had any real power over this, ever.
So 50k machines out and say $300 per seat (IMO way too low but ...) equals $15M USD in hardware upgrade costs.
Before people freak clearly some machines would need replacing anyways but how many could be still used if they running something like ubuntu, xubuntu (lighter system requirements than the stock ubuntu) or even pupply gnu/linux? Why not phase in the upgrades and squeak an extra year or two out of the older hardware?
This is not a dig against MS but at the MA elected folks that agreed to this IMO costly "gift".
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST