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UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In
Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.
Hooray!
Common sense arrives at last. It's only taken more than a decade! Now, could we possibly do something about the actual REAL problem, being the Research Machines monopoly over just about every government contract to do with schools and the majority of the school market in the UK despite their poor support, substandard hardware, astronomical pricing and hard-sales tactics and MS-only policies that thus reinforce the MS monopoly?
(If you didn't already guess, I work in schools within the UK).
We used to be much more unix-centric, but there is now a very heavy windows bias. The admin staff (as in beancounters, not root) have too much control over computer policy. They assume that all we need to run is MS office and a access a couple of university databases of student IDs and cost codes. They don't understand why some of us want to run strange packages they've never heard of. It's getting harder to run Linux/Solaris/whatever. There is currently no official access to university email without Windows (although there are hacks to make it work). Remote administration of Windows machines is being introduced. It's sad. Unix admins cost more. Universities don't have much cash/don't pay well. Cheap admins don't understand/want unix. We get more Windows.
ALL schools, or in fact anyone who signs an über-licensing agreement with MS are at risk for "lock in", especially if you define "lock in" as being "we spent all our money on products from company X, so we have none left to buy products from company Y".
That's not "lock-in." That is "limited resources to allocate," something entirely different. Anyone spending money pretty much assumes they have limited resources and are not surprised by that fact. What does surprise people is that when a purchasing decision they make today results in purchasing decisions they make in 5 years being made for them because the product they bought is intentionally designed to not work with open standards or components from anyone else.
How is this even news?
This is news because people are still making decisions on behalf of constituents and children that result in long term risks for short term gains.
As the parent of 3 children in the Scottish school system (which is substantially different from the system in England and Wales) I can confirm that M$ has a strangle hold on education in my country. A couple of years ago I sent a detailed letter expressing my concerns to the local director of education. After some time I received a considered response saying that M$ is the only game in town and that alternatives are irrelevant at best. Some of the phrasing in this letter I recognised from previous /. stories concerning M$ FUD, I suspect that the director of education contacted her IT dept. who in turn contacted their software vendor (M$) seeking reasons to justify the status quo.
Personally I blame the IT staff who tend to be very M$ centric and in the business for the perceived financial rewards rather than the love of IT itself. They will never recommend the use of something they don't understand as they will have to retrain and/or find themselves looking for another job. Windows as we know it is on the way out, in a decade or so it will no longer have a monopoly on the desktop or anywhere else.
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking. I run Linux exclusively at home (I've been Windows free since ME), my daughters both understand IT well and rarely have to come to me for help with their web pages or anything else. They have both avoided studying IT subjects at school as they view the IT syllabus as 'A joke', their words, not mine.