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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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, obviously!......
These features aren't compelling?!
I appreciate the 'choice' argument, but really - how is 'locking in' a program that exposes students to the software they will use in the real world an issue?
The following replies are posted by unwashed nerds.
Another problem is that the "dynamic network tuning" will not work with all routers and switches, causing a massive increase in cost to replace the network hardware.
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".
How is this even news? What's next, if you spend a dollar today, you don't have a dollar tomorrow?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A lot of schools cant afford to 'upgrade' anyway. Thats why they still have apple ]['s.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...is that large government agencies that analyze and drive policies are recognizing this as a risk with substantial potential costs.
Remember what Apple did with giving away free macs to schools so that kids used that at an early age and were familiar with them instead and thus wanted them at home? I bet Microsoft will do the same for Vista in schools everywhere but this time, instead kids won't say "aww that's cool!" they'd probably say things more like "why the hell is this taking 10 minutes to boot" (we say that at my college already) and "oh look, the IT people let us be able to do this!" since nobody's extremely familiar with all the things you have to do to Vista to make them middle school kids with technicial skills proof lol. So yeah, there's compelling reasons for Microsoft to get schools to upgrade to Vista and lock em in with a license but there's definitely tons of reasons for schools to not upgrade. And of course it's a massive waste of money that could be better spent anywhere else in the school
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Another reason all these legal settlements have which are supposed to punish Microsoft by making them provide schools with free software actually only help the company's profits in the end. It's essentially saying, "In response to your anti-competitive practices, please be to sole provider of software to our nation's schools."
-b.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All the school systems in my area use Macs. Even though there's less flexability in software, they are safer. I would say as a rule not to make deals with MS, as Apple is not ruthless to my knowledge. It's good that they're not switching to all the new products, but they should open their horizons. Microsoft is money-hungry in general, so shame to the people who didn't know that. Do the math and Microsoft just sucks out money. DON'T MAKE ANOTHER DEAL! Macs come with helpful software, so that's a plus that they should've considered. Free>corrupt contracts with tricky math.
HAHAHA
Thanks, I needed a noon laugh attack.
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Now you are talking about locking in your HARDWARE, which costs more than your software...
Did someone say monopoly? I heard the lawyer for Hans Resier recently tried handing the Oakland D.A. one particular community chest card.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
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).
Thank you for posting the most amazingly stupid completely irrevelant thing i've read today.
Granted it's only noon. But i think you won.
It's okay dude. Telling the truth will often get you modded as a troll here.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...And I fail to see how this hasn't already happened.
:p)
Props to Becta for doing such a study. They're a good thing and I like what they do for educational IT. However, we're already locked into Microsoft on the client side.
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, which is just over £12k/year for licensing. While that is a nasty chunk of money, it means we're entitled to the latest and greatest on release - as such, I've got Office 2007 and Vista on my work laptop giving them a whirl.
Wine! I hear you say Wine! Sorry, no go. We cannot risk apps not working because Wine doesn't support them fully. The teachers would eat my testicles for dinner - it's bad enough dealing with the poorly written educational software as it is, nevermind dealing with Wine on top of that.
There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering). It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type).
As for the upgrade thing - don't we know it. Office 2007 rollout isn't going to happen before September, if not 2008 (getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!). Vista probably 2009 at the earliest - depending on what incompatibilites we'll come across during testing.
All in all, unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative], and until people start moving to Linux application developers won't develop applications for it! Chicken and egg problem.*
(* - I know this was solved!
It sure is nice how you guys stand by the US economy. I may not use Microsoft products myself; but having mutual funds that invested in Microsoft and Cisco (as the parent pointed out) it sure is nice to see someone paying them enormous prices for products where better alternatives are free.
If only the rest of the EU and China and Latin America would be as generous as you our economy would be in great shape forever.
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.
Give me a break. If the shoe were on the other foot it would be "UK Schools embrace Linux as desktop standard."
In my last years of my old school they'd just finished throwing out around 300 perfectly functional 512K Macs and 2 rooms of Acorn computers, for a few hundred Pentium 2s running Win2k.
On a good day the Windows machines "only" took 10 minutes to thrash their way to a login screen, 5 to get past the login screen and another 5 to go quiet. Until you tried to move the mouse. And the right mouse button was permanently disabled in explorer.exe, apparently for "security".
When I'd left they were already halfway through replacing all the hardware because of constant complaints that apps like MS Office took 10 minutes (not kidding) to open. And close. Most people didn't bother logging out because of that, and you can imagine the fun that resulted.
Then I got dumped with more of the same in college... *sigh*
Is this because we finally paid off the lend/lease debt?
Create a mainstream branch of Linux for the home, small business and educational user. Drop names like Ubuntu and BSD in favor of something that sounds more common. Make the install process a no-brainer (downloading missing Linux drivers automatically off the internet for example). Give it a UI that is clean, easy to use and reasonably modern in its aesthetics. Bundle the install DVD with a printed how-to manual or "getting started" tutorial videos. Give the install packs reasonable version numbers (1.0, 1.5 and so forth).
The specious argument is that windows is what is used in the real world, conveniently ignoring the fact that if employees were trained on another system that would swiftly change for the better. Why is there no supported linux distro targeting the classroom?
I am inclined to say: it serves them right. They wanted to save a couple of $ and
nobody ever gets fired for buying microsoft. Well, suck it up and take it like
a man then. If problems come from it, well though luck, just had to thought of that
a bit earlier.
Personally i hope that they run in a shitload of problems and vendor lockin trouble.
Not to bash Microsoft, i always try to avoid doing that. But to make them aware that
there are other choices that can be made.
Being an opensource guy myself and the only way for some people to learn is to hit rock
bottem first, and then crawl back up again.
just 2 cts.
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
My daughter started [primary] school just last week and this is something I have been concerned about for a while. I think that IT skills are just as important as English and Maths skills in todays world. What worries me is that children are not getting real IT skills at school. They are getting Microsoft Office skills. Simple things such as files and folders and the difference between a floppy disc and a hard disc are unknown to a lot of children I know. This is akin to a child not learning about paints and brushes in an art class but simply painting by number and calling themselves and artist.
Ever since my daughter was born I have always involved her with the computer. Mainly simple things such as using the mouse to draw random lines on the screen however as she has learned this at such a young age she now has excellent co-ordination when using a mouse. As a side benefit this has made learning to write much easier for her.
Sometimes she uses Linux (gentoo), sometimes Windows (xp) and othertimes OS X. I know I am fortunate to have all of these systems available to me and that I have knowledge of them so that I can teach her however I have done this so that she understands the principles rather than a specific system. This is what I think it great about the OLPC having a different interface to the norm. A child is like a sponge, if they learn about something they can adapt that knowledge in ways that very few adults can. Change to a child is nothing, change to an adult is very difficult. This is partly why so many "normal people" find switching to another system, such as Linux, so difficult.
It would be a terrible thing if schools where nieve enough to think that all a child needs to know is how to use Microsoft Office.
Is this the same Becta who was criticised for excluding providers of Open Source software in November last year?
c urement_criticised/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/29/becta_pro
I think we should be told.
Give them a choice between using OSS software and getting a raise. You need a lot of cooperation from teachers to make any OS selection work an educational system and there's no better way of getting staff on your side than financial incentive.
Unfortunately MSFT will rig the game at every level. If the school opts for the change they'll pressure the school board. If the board balks they'll get state lawmakers to somehow tie school funding to their choice of OS or a particular piece of software that only runs on Windows. If that failed they'd go to Congress.
It's really amazing to me how much money MSFT spends protecting their market share. It's buying votes with their own money but it works.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows
It's an odd school that allows the pupils decide what applications to use.
"The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, "
I thought you said earlier that that it was about 350 machines total the last time.
"There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering)"
I thought you said earlier that you used Linux on three of your backend servers.
"It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type)"
Why don't you get a teacher to set up an Open Source club, you know, the one who showed the pupils the Knoppix bootable CD once. I don't know of any kid of school age who is not interested in novelty, in my experience you can't keep them out of the computer room. How difficult can Open Source be after all you mother can use it. She even does her own updates.
"getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!"
But you just said that there wasn't 'scope' in the curriculum teachers for learning new things and you didn't have the time or the inclination and weren't the teaching type.
"unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative]"
As the main article pointed out, it is a bad getting locked in to the one platform. How about teaching them computing instead of Windows.
was: I'm a sysadmin at a school in the UK... (Score:5, dis-Informative)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Just because the design of Unix is "very long in the tooth" doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it; that's just argumentum ad novitatem.
The fundamental design of the automobile hasn't changed much in over a hundred years. It still has an internal combustion engine (albeit sometimes augmented with electric), four wheels with pneumatic tires, a steering control based on a wheel that operates the front two wheels, a geared transmission from the engine to the wheels, a cabin in the middle with engine space and cargo space on front and back (albeit sometimes reversed). Sure, we've seen improvements--seatbelts, increasing automation, crumple zones--but the fundamental design hasn't changed. I don't seriously expect it to either. We're not suddenly going to be zooming around in South Park style "IT" wheels.
Similarly, the fundamental design of the camera didn't change much for a long time. Lens at the front, rectangular body containing film on a spool which moves past the rear of the lens, rotary controls on the lens, shutter top right of the body, eyepiece or viewing screen on the back. Digital has been the biggest shakeup, but you'll notice digital SLRs are still the same basic shape as film SLRs, even though there's no reason at all why they need to be.
Analog wristwatches are another example. They haven't changed design in several hundred years. Same 12 hours arranged in a circle, long hand and short hand, adjustment control on the right edge of the case, strap attached at top and bottom of case. When they went digital, there was a brief change, but now we've mostly swung back to using hands that move in a circle again, just with a different mechanism inside. And again, a quick look at Tokyoflash's web site will prove that there's absolutely no reason why this basic design needs to be kept. But it is. And we still have mechanical watches made and sold that use the same hundred-plus year old mechanisms.
I'm not saying that Unix is perfect; I'm just saying that its organic community-led growth and continued robustness and adaptability make it seem likely to me that the basic design is sound, and not something that needs to be thrown away.
There are certainly interesting possibilities in alternative OS design. The Apple Newton was a good example. But most of the radical attempts to reinvent the OS have failed. It might be that the design we've arrived at with Unix is going to last for hundreds of years, much to some people's disgust.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
You reap what you sow.
Lock-in is the inevitable result of a monopoly. And I am not talking about Microsoft's monopoly either, although that is part of it.
When you have a vast, overwelming quasi-nationalized top-down educational beurocracy, with and almost total monopoly of education - the inevitable result is exploitive locked-in contracts with huge companies like Microsoft. Instead of Microsoft having to win over tens of thousands of individual schools, Microsoft only has to win over a few people at the top of the beurocracy. Bribing and misleading tens of thousands of IT people, all across the country would be prohibitivly difficult and expensive, where as bribing and misleading a few high officials costs virtually nothing when you are talking the huge potential profits.
Big government contracts, and big government policies, are naturally prone to extreme amounts of corruption and exploitation, because the stakes are so high and because authority are so centralized. You have to fight Microsoft on the level of the federal government, which is going to be impossible for your average parent. An average parent can walk over and talk to the head IT guy at the local school, or make an appoitment with the local municipal superintendant or mayor - But the average person can't fly off to meet with the head of the Ministry of Education, or the Prime Minister.
Don't blame Microsoft for this problem - they are simply exploiting the natural flaws in the educational leviatian. If they were gone, another company would simply find another way to exploit the system.
"Locked in" is a little bit strong. Yes, I understand that once you invest in Windows machines and OS licenses, an organization has a strong financial incentive to continue using Microsoft products, but I think this notion that customers are in some sort of Microsoft Jail a little too much to swallow. There are lots of products that have proprietary components and we don't make the jump to saying their customers have guns to their heads.
You always have the choice to scrap the heap and buy Apple. Yes, it's important to really carefully evaluate the pros and cons of the operating system you're going to choose when selecting computers for a school system. The decision you make today will have ramifications in the future.
But "Locked in" is just a bit much in this context. After all, they can wipe the hard disks and install Linux if they wanted to.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Anyone noticed that the schools also use Serif software for everything else?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
The problem with BECTA is that while they have in the past said "open source is a good thing" and today "MS lock-in is bad" etc., they are responsible for setting school's purchasing policies. And these purchasing policies are not F/OSS-friendly, since purchasing can only be made from "approved" suppliers. These suppliers need to apply for the (costly, I believe) approval process. This indirectly excludes many suppliers who would provide F/OSS options.
At least one UK MP (Member of Parliament) has raised an Early Day Motion drawing attention to the fact that this is a bad thing - this motion has been signed by more than 100 MPs following a reasonably active campaign by technical individuals in the UK. If you're in the UK, write to your MP asking them to sign it!
For some more background and also the letters I've written to my MP, see my blog: my opening letter and my followup.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
1) You should offer the class and open it up to pretty much anyone. Teachers, Students, Parents, you will find an audience.
2) Children shouldn't be learning how to use Office anyway... They aren't office workers, and learning the interface for one set of programs is the most useless thing you can learn about computers. If they're calling it a computer class, but they're teaching Office, they should be dragged out back and shot, and you along with them if you don't push for them to teach some ACTUAL computer knowledge. Like, I dunno, how the fucking magic box actually works.
Their required/supplied apps all run on windows-only. And for the most part, poorly.
I've got to say that the problem isn't Windows itself, it's the lack of curriculum software that causes us headaches.
On the plus side, OpenOffice is fine for use in schools and it's feature complete for the UK national curriculum. Even ooBase is up to the task or MySQL could fill in for database use. Linux is stable and secure enough and I can easily find scanners and printers that are compatible and have had no hardware incompatibility problems so far.
I have 4 servers running Mandriva 2007 Powerpack+, one as a PDC, LDAP DNS and DHCP server, a BDC with slave LDAP and DNS both of which share files. A third runs Postfix with egroupware and a fourth runs a seperate NT domain to segregate the kids from school admin staff. In fact as far as servers are concerned we haven't had any downtime in the last year apart from a fragged power supply that took out a motherboard. Clients on the other hand are a problem. We dual boot Ubuntu on some machines and I'm considering a terminal server for Windows to allow us to run the many and varied programs we have that are only available for Windows.
I must say though that I sometimes wonder why BECTA exists. Years back they were making statements regarding Open Source and cost savings but nothing seems to have happened. On the one hand Becta sing its praises and on the other the government are trying to farm out school ICT to Windows-centric third party companies. If BECTA really want to make a difference they'd have to force 3rd party software vendors to be platform neutral with their software and I can't see that actually happening with BSF on the horizon.
Personally, I'd love to have a 100% Linux network as the Linux boxes we run don't cause any problems and are solidly stable. We'd save a fortune in licencing and I'd be able to divert all the savings into hardware and infrastructure.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Shared libraries and the insanity of minute library changes that bork applications. This isn't the 80s anymore, we aren't stuck on single digit mgz speed computers with 256k RAM and 5 MB harddrives on 300 baud connections. Good idea then, time to move on now. Stand alone, complete apps. No more wondering which "style" of package or packaging technique. No more wars! Download, put them wherever you feel like it, run, no dependency hell from any direction. Run ten versions, who cares. I vote for INDEPENDENCE! And then-no more stuck on some **&%$%&&ing "distro"! Pick a kernel, pick your drivers, pick your apps, *virtualize them*, run anything you want, where you want, when you want, and how many as you want, the OS that is YOURS and not some committee's creation who knows better than you want you want! FREEDOM FROM THE PAST! Stand UP! *SMACK* Heal! Throw down those crutches,arise! The future is here and you can be FREE from forced computer crippling because "it has always done that way, it will always be done that way, so spaketh guruzustra!" Well, screw him! Multicore chips, speciality chips, speeds unheard of, gigs and gigs of RAM, connectivity speeds for real time live wireless streaming of video in two directions for anyone with a few hundred dollars, more storage in a desktop than whole nations had 20 years ago-the past is over! We won! Throw down those chains!
;)
and etc, rant, prophetizing, and so on. Not Unix, not Gnunix, but YOUnix! It can happen, right now, if we smash the cruft and clear the cobwebs!
I would be suprised to see ther majority of PCs use Vista especialy in a school setting anytime soon. Hell, when I graduated from highschool in 1995, a lot of Apple IIs were still in use there, and this was a well financed suburban school district!
I wrote a letter to my local MP before exactly about this problem. It went as follows: ----------------- Dear Laura Moffatt, I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software. - Financial Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up. - Education Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system. In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite. I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working. I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software. - Work Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades. I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks. I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares. Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal. Thank you for your attention. Yours sincerely [name] [address was included]
Under the current Labour government they don't care whether schools get locked-in, only whether Microsoft is willing to give them a large amount of money to fund their expected shortfalls in investment into IT for education.
Microsoft have always made it clear what there agenda is: complete market domination. However, governments are quite easily bought.
See if you've taught kids computers or just an application:
install on a dozen computers different OS's and different spreadsheets. Put a csv file there with some data in it. There is an icon to the spreadsheet and for the csv file on the desktop and nothing else (or as little else as possible).
The task:
Using the spreadsheet, import the csv file and produce a graph and some statistics on the variation of the data file included.
When complete on one system, go to another with a different OS and/or spreadhseet app on it. Redo the task.
Repeat at least one more time.
If the kids were quicker the second or third time on an unfamiliar OS then you've taught them use of a desktop paradigm. If they can't complete it without the normal OS, you've taught them Windows.
Same goes with the spreadsheets. Have you taught them excel or spreadsheets? Whether they were quicker on the second/third run of an unknow spreadsheet will tell you.