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How Microsoft Inadvertently Helps To Fund FOSS
christian.einfeldt writes "The State of California sued Microsoft for anti-trust violations, and now the proceeds of the settlement of that case are being used to fund the acquisition of computers for any school district in California. The terms of the settlement allow every school district in California to be reimbursed a set dollar amount for the purchase of computers with the software of their choice. Microsoft probably anticipated that school districts would mainly use the settlement to buy more Microsoft products, with a few Apple purchases sprinkled in here and there. But now that Free Open Source Software is being commercialized by hardware vendors such as Dell, System76, EmperorLinux, Zareason.com, and TechCollective.com, acquiring computers powered by FOSS is straightforward. I'm a volunteer sysadmin at a northern California public charter school and in my Slashdot journal I detail the step-by-step process for using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice." And then there's the Ubuntu team in Belgium that is raising funds by auctioning off a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate that a Microsoft rep gave them at a trade show. So far the bidding is up to 101.76 Euros, about $144.
For my Linux purchase? How does not paying MS fund FOSS?
...Linux funds Microsoft!
If they knowing sell on something with known defects (that copy of MS Vista) and it screws up someone's machine -- would they not be liable for any loss that they endured ?
Inadvertently. That hurt, and English isn't even my first language!
Do you think there are people at Microsoft who go home and secretly work Linux by night?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
...now that Free Open Source Software is being commercialized by hardware vendors such as Dell, System76, EmperorLinux, Zareason.com, and TechCollective.com, acquiring computers powered by FOSS is straightforward...Isn't that conflicting with the definition of "FOSS?"
> using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice.
This isnt Microsofts money. This is the money Microsoft extorted from you and is now being forced to give back a tiny amount of this. Any cent that is not going to Microsoft (or even worse, to Apple), but to someone distributing Free Software is great, though.
I've seen (at least in Utah when I lived there) schools transitioning from NetWare servers to Linux-based ones, but the classroom pretty much was all Windows, all the time.
Now when will we see OpenOffice being taught in the High School and collegiate business courses, instead of you-know-who?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
But Microsoft owns all of the copyrights for Linux anyway, according to Ballmer, remember?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Don't forget the teaching-mental-patients-to-install-Ubuntu-on-old-computers-and-that's-much-more-important-than-saving-the-gorillas guy!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why would anyone be trying to promote Linux here at Slashdot? Everyone is either converted or never will be.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
with the Gates Foundation grants. Unless the process has changed since the last time my organization went through it, it's possible to spec out alternate equipment and software instead of accepting the "recommended" equipment. That, and if you have funds remaining after your purchase, you can buy more equipment, so long as it's for public computing. I funded a LTSP-based thin client server that way...
Oh, come on... that's like not talking about God at Church. There's lots more insight for us all to gain, even if we are a bunch of calcified stuck-in-their-ways old farts :-)
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
This is money the state bullied out of Microsoft pocket, it most definitely stinks. Sure this money was bullied out of the consumer pocket in the first place through copyright law, but what the state of California has done is a whole other league of stinkiness. The best thing would be to install Linux and give back the money to Microsoft.
\u262D = \u5350
Not to sound like a dick but this sounds pretty anecdotal. I'd be willing to bet 90%+ will still be going right back to Microsoft.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
Makes MS per year.
Surely they can give $100M to various popular distributions to provide an os that is:
- dog slow bloated
- pushes forward MS codecs and respects patens
- very unstable (makes windows look stable)
- binary-only extremely insecure (makes windows look secure)
IOW, it makes linux seem like windows poor cousin.
From that $100M, $10M will end up in various programmers, which is a good thing.
-- Julie
Microsoft Subnet: the independent voice of Microsoft customers
Why is Apple "even worse"? Just curious -- Apple has various unappealing qualities but unlike Microsoft they don't have a monopoly which they've been found guilty of abusing to extort money from you. "Even worse" would seem to be a pretty high bar.
MS paid a fine. What the state chooses to use that money for is their own business, and has nothing to do with said fine. So I still don't see how that is funding FOSS.
It's like saying my employer bought me a car, because they paid me for working 40 hours a week, and I then used that money to buy a car.
Are you insane?
Do you know how many copies of Ubuntu that'd buy you?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
... they insisted on being exclusively Windows... I think Linux vendors just need to do a better job of marketing themselves
/. "If only GIMP had feature X...." Well bad news, even when GIMP gets feature X, they'll have a new reason for not switching.
This is the equivalent of the Photoshop/GIMP discussion that's endlessly recycled on
In both cases they are so single-minded they happily accept all of the limitations/expenses they bring upon themselves. Trying to convince them otherwise is a steep, nasty, uphill battle that probably can't be won.
Pick your battles very carefully and figure out what the school needs and is ready to pay for then provide it for free. An excellent start is the domain controller. An even simpler start is a dumb file server.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
How the money got into your hands, or why you thought you had a right to decide how to spend that money, is beyond the scope of this thread
Don't you realise that you are merely the temporary (very temporary) custodian of that money that rightly belongs to the corporation? That's how you're now a consumer and not a customer. Customers are consumers who have enough money to attempt to bid-out a corporation.
Looks like you need to report for reprogramming.
I switched to Linux!
...
1. No Licensing
2. Updates that work, and don't crash my OS.
3. Bundled software that works, without paying outragous costs, and more licenses.
Most of State of California website still has issues with browsers other than I.E.
So much for a technically progressive state......
It's You and I against the World... When do we attack?
The headline and Christian's summary are pretty misleading. They make it sound like the voucher money is being used for a massive adoption of FOSS in California. But all Christian really knows about is his own efforts to implement FOSS at his own charter school. I suspect that most of the money is actually getting spent as Microsoft thought it would: on Microsoft technology. This would be particularly likely at the non-charter schools that still make up the vast majority of the California system. The educational bureaucracy in these schools in particularly aversive to experimenting with alternative technologies.
Which is not to devalue Christian's hard work bringing FOSS to his charter school students. He's not only saving his school money, he's bringing the kids technology with a greater educational impact. But his story is really a How To item, not news item about Microsoft being hoisted by its own petard.
*** I'm a volunteer sysadmin at a northern California public charter school and in my Slashdot journal I detail the step-by-step process for using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice." ***
:)
Time for me to move to CA and get an admin position and start buying Windows products with MS money to counter you
At least it's schools - you don't have to worry about games. When people go home, and find that FOSS doesn't run the games they wanna use easily, they will end up with Windows systems anyways.
I imagine that there are a lot of companies out there who are unknowingly funding FOSS. For example, they pay someone to do some job for them during the day and at night, that person works on FOSS code for fun/whatever. That FOSS is basically being subsidized by the company that pays for the FOSS programmer to eat.
Also, by this measure, if you sell anything and then give the money to some FOSS project, whoever made the thing you sold is supporting FOSS.
While such measures may make kids think they're being uber-geek-cool being subvertive or something, it's just a bunch of dorks snickering about something they think is a cool inside joke that no one cares about.
Just where do you get the idea that FOSS software must not be charged for? Really - can you give us any reference that says "Thou Shalt NOT Charge Any Gratuities For Free/Open Source Software"?
We're waiting...
And I quote (from the GPL FAQ over at the FSF):
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Novell owns all the copyrights. Ballmer just wishes they owned the copyrights - just think how much money they could make on copyright infringement. Have you ever heard of companies having copyright cross licensing agreements? Didn't think so. MS could keep all the money for themselves!!!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
You wrote: In an article which recently appeared here on Slashdot, Pamela Jones posted to Groklaw a link to an MP3 (MP3 warning) of a panel discussion of the negotiators for the parties to the Novell - Microsoft deal. One really interesting quip from about three-fourths of the way through the 1.5 hour discussion is an off-hand remark by one of the Microsoft reps to the extent that Microsoft claims to have the largest server farm west of the Rockies.
I thought that was an odd statement to make. But maybe it's true. After all, Microsoft runs Hotmail on Linux. At least that is what a Microsoft employee told me during a cable car ride on the California cable car line in San Francisco, which runs from near the foot of Market Street (San Francisco's main street) up the hill toward Van Ness on California Street. Supposedly, he took that cable car line to and from work every day, because Microsoft apparently has an office near Spear and Market in San Francisco, according to this guy.
At any rate to answer your question, there are apparently lots of Microsoft sys admins who are paid to work on Linux during the day. Well, and I'm sure that there are also plenty who are paid to work on Linux during the night, too. After, Microsoft isn't going to trust its mission-critical operations to anything other than the best. snicker.
So, Selfbain, if you would like to help make sure that 90%+ do NOT go back to Microsoft-based products, please feel free to send them to send them to the California State Education website to find out how they might be able to get some free FOSS computers.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/et/st/etvfaq.asp
Equally important, send them to a FOSS vendor who has experience with the process of working under the Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement. I happen to know that Zareason.com has that experience, but System76 or TechCollective.com or EmperorLinux might also have serviced some California schools. Shop around.
You wrote: This program is still early. There is still time for other schools to use this program. Many FOSS vendors and school administrators and FOSS advocates might not know that this program exists. That is why I submitted this story to Slashdot. We need to get the word out. Slashdot is good at that.
You wrote: This Microsoft Settlement Agreement is still in the early stages of disbursement. If Linux sys admins supporting schools don't know about the program, they can't take advantage of it. Of course, there is no budget in the settlement for advertising the settlement. So we, the FOSS community, need to do the public outreach ourselves. That's why I submitted this story to Slashdot.
I'm not criticizing you for publicizing your efforts (which deserve to be publicized). But please don't portray your work as part of a trend. You need more than one data point to draw a curve. And you're following in the FOSS tradition of claiming your success before it's actually happened — a tradition that is not good for your credibility.
You wrote: Thanks for the nice comment in that first sentence. With regard to portraying my work as a trend, I'm not sure that I did say anything that would say that such a trend existed. Please read the summary carefully. I said that getting a pre-installed FOSS box is now "straightforward." I said that I think that you made a good point there about protecting our credibility: Except that IMHO, I did not make any statement about a trend, other than the fact than, yes, there are now lots of vendors selling FOSS pre-installed. Since the number of FOSS vendors has increased, and the number of major vendors offering more than one product line with FOSS pre-installed, IMHO that *is* a trend.
So I appreciate the fact that you are trying to keep me honest. It is important that we in the FOSS community keep our standards of accuracy high. But IMHO, you are slightly off the mark here. I did not imply that the trend was in adoption per se, but I did state that there are more vendors. If you believe that where there is smoke there is fire, it might be reasonable to conclude either that 1) these FOSS vendors *are* selling more boxes, which is the cause for the proliferation of FOSS vendors and pre-installed product lines; or, 2) these FOSS vendors are *offering* FOSS boxes, but not *selling* them.
It is true that Dell has increased its offering of pre-installed Ubuntu. That was widely interpreted in the press as a sign that Dell was making sales on its initial product line offering. So, in this case, it seems as if there is sound empirical evidence to reasonably infer there were there is smoke (Dell's increased offerings) there must be fire (increased sales).
And yet your point is well-taken. We still have no publicly-available empirical evidence that sales are increasing.
In the final assessment, though, my point was that it is now possible for schools to use the California Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement (CMASA) to acquire free (as in beer) FOSS boxes. And I wanted to give people a few tips as to how to do that. And, most important, I wanted to gently urge people to spread the word about the availability of this program.
Is there FOSS software to help charter school in California calculate their actual effectiveness on a per-pupil basis, rather than by playing the averages game?
You see, for the uninitiated, California's education code allows for charter schools if they meet certain performance requirements. The thing is that all the charter schools have to do to claim an improvement is show a few points increase on their API scores. Well, guess what? Charter schools are also voluntary. That means those parents who are involved and engaged with their child's education tend to jump at the opportunity to enroll their kids in what they perceive to be a better school. Not only does this mean the charter school is essentially skimming the better kids from the area's public schools, but they are pushing down the average API scores of the surrounding public schools. Charter schools do not have to show that they actually improved the scores of the real, live kids attending those schools. They just have to show that their average is better than the surrounding public school average.
To make an oversimplified example, imagine a high school with an average API score of 700. Then a charter school opens its doors and Johnny transfers from the public school to the charter school to become the one and only student at the charter school. Johnny's API score is 710 on the next round of state tests. By California standards, the charter school is a gleaming success. Its average API score is higher than the high school. They didn't have to show that Johnny's API scores represent an improvement over what he scored in public school.
Not only that, but charter schools do not have to meet any of the facilities requirements that public schools have to meet. New public schools cannot be located within 500 feet of a freeway, highway, or runway, but charter schools can. Public schools have to provide minimum levels of playground space according to a Department of Education formula, but charter schools have no minimum playground space requirement. Public schools have to submit every substantial change of a building to the state for review before construction begins, but charter schools do not have to. Public schools have to have automatic fire sprinklers in all areas where kids are housed, but charter schools do not. In short, public schools are made to spend billions of dollars on land and safety systems that charter schools don't have to do.
Charter schools get to skim the better kids off the top, push the area's public school scores lower, avoid state health and safety regulations, and then claim they are better for your kids.