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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.
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 ?
Look at all the Linux users who buy pre-built machines with Windows, because until recently, they lacked many alternatives short of building their own.
That's not just Soviet Russia my meme spouting friend.
34486853790
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Do you think there are people at Microsoft who go home and secretly work Linux by night?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The fines Microsoft were given are being used to buy computers that have Linux installed on them. Rather simple to understand really.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
> 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
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...
-- 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.
In Slashdot form, here's a (bad) car analogy translation: Say your computer is like a car. Just like your car needs gas to do anything useful, your computer needs an operating system to do anything useful. What Microsoft did was pretty much muscling all the gas stations out of town so they could jack up the price, which is illegal. California made them give some of the money back. What this is is basically taking the money Microsoft is giving you as their fine, and using it to buy Linux gasoline.
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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
The lines on the finances can be drawn anywhere, but to stay in business a company has to earn a little profit. Are they marking up Linux, or their services, the hardware, or?
What is key here is that companies have noticed they can make a profit off of FOSS, rather than being forced to suckle at MS's teat. This isn't bad for FOSS.
The business (and educational) world wants computers and software that just work.
What they are supposed to be teaching is how to use a computer. The person who only learned the specific steps without understanding what those steps mean is not going to really understand the finer points and be able to adapt to different software. Teach someone how to use the help menu, and they can find out for themselves how to do things that were not covered in the class. And if the teachers can't do the same, they need to spend the money on better teachers instead of new hardware and software.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Your graduate studies and my own unschooled intuitions and prejudices seem to have led us both to the same place: an impatience with people who don't grasp the difference between "education" and "training". The one gives you general mental skills that serve you in a variety of situations; the other just teaches you how to perform various tasks. Education is always useful, even in situations you haven't specifically prepared for; training is just useful for the specific situation.
I know a lot of people are considered "computer literate" but are really completely out of their depth if they have to deal with something unusual. They have "training" in how to write a letter or print an envelope, but give them a word processor document with some weird formating and they have no idea what to do.
Serious computer education gets away from "how to do stuff" and gets you thinking about "how stuff works." It teaches you to think about the tech you're using, so you don't get lost the moment you wander off the beaten path. You could actually teach that stuff using a standard Microsoft config (one could learn a lot about how software works by fiddling with Word and Excel macros) but FOSS configurations are better because they're more "hackable".
Nowadays people associate "hacking" with penetrating computer security. (There are still a few linguistically ignorant folks who insist that the "correct" word for this activity is "cracker", but we can safely ignore them.) Hacking is actually a broader range of activities where you fiddle with technology in order to understand it better. Hackers like to say that they're making the tech "work better" (and sometimes they are), but that's just an excuse for intellectual curiosity.
Where Microsoft products expose a few macro engines and APIs, FOSS systems exposes everything. That's why FOSS is popular with technogeeks (who like to know how everything works) and unpopular with the "computer literate" who are afraid their brains will explode if they learn too much.
Kids aren't afraid their brains will explode. But they are terrified of boredom. So they're prime candidates for a computer education that requires thinking skills, as opposed to "job skills".