My experience is that the Microsoft licensing for operating systems in particular is a complete minefield. Even the distributors don't seem to understand the codes etc. If dealers and distributors find this complex I should think the majority of end-users have many unintentional infringements of the licensing rules. Its fairly straightforward with a lot of the curriculum applications that simply say you have a site licence for this programme at £x. Its the operating systems that cause the problems. The real snags are all the different prices of OEM, multiple license packs, the range of operating systems and a range of rules for upgrades, for servers concurrent users, client access licences, multiple server licences etc etc. In fact I should also think that quite a lot of people end up paying more than they need for a whole host of reasons. From a reseller point of view, the sooner we have one open source operating system to deal with the better. Microsoft's reply will be that schools should go for schools' agreement which costs something like £40 per machine per year but a) some eligible machines won't run the latest software so schools end up paying for upgrades they will never do and agreement doesn't cover the basic operating system because M$ assume every machine bought has one of their operating systems on it so the SA only covers upgrades. Mind, I can't see that M$ would be stupid enough to take all schools to task. The backlash in terms of bad publicity would be the fastest accelerator to Open Source I can imagine. Most schools don't deliberately pirate software and most seem to be becoming increasingly fed up with the cost of Microsoft. Take a largish secondary school with 400 machines. They probably pay around £60 per OEM Windows on buying each machine - more like £100 if its Windows2000 and let's say they have School's agreement at £40 per machine. That's £24,000 and then £16,000 per year just for what they can have free using Linux and StarOffice and a few odds and ends. If they want thin clients using Citrix its another £80-£130 per machine. If Government targets for pupil computer ratios are to be met, this has to be replicated all over the country. 4000 secondary schools and that's £50-60m on M$ agreement alone. Double it for primary and its of the order of £100m a year in schools alone and that ignores any thin client costs. This doesn't take into account the savings that would also be made by using thin clients and the reduction in maintenance and technician support required so I would say we could at least double the savings on that basis alone. Tell your local MP that you have a way of saving £100-200m of taxpayers money per year in schools alone and I should think at least £1 billion nationally in the public sector if the Government will make a bit of effort to promote Open Source. Most of this money will be re-used and a lot of it will go on better support and training locally thus boosting the small business sector, improving the technological literacy of the nation and strengthening the economy as a whole rather than increasing our imports bill from the USA. Write to your MP now and copy it to Estelle Morris at the Department for Education and Skills! -- IanL ----- Original Message ----- From: Frank Shute To: Schools List Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 8:50 PM Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] software in schools/piracy

There's quite an interesting article at Salon about how US schools are being hunted down and fined for using pirated commercial software & how they are reacting:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/microsoft_school/index.html

Are UK schools going to be next in the line of fire? I've heard that controlling licences and the paperwork involved is a major time consumer and administrative nightmare for schools. Anybody got any personal experience?

The real shocker was getting fined $50000 for 100 odd illegal copies of MSDOS. I'm sure there are plenty of schools in this country who have many illegal copies of DOS running under Windows without realising it.

Anybody been investigated/fined yet?

--

Frank

*-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/

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Government won't do it - they are already in the M$ pocket - look at the M$ gateway (oops - sorry about that, i meant he government gateway!). Yes we, in schools, could save money but teachers won't go for open source without training. believe me, they'll say that the pupils can't cope but the problem is not with the pupils. if we want this to work, and we want schools to go opensource, then we, the open source community, are going to have to provide training materials, faq's and example lessons which lead to defined National Curriculum Levels. When we can do this THEN we can provide a total solution to the Microshaft problem.... alan Ian Lynch wrote:

My experience is that the Microsoft licensing for operating systems in particular is a complete minefield. Even the distributors don't seem to understand the codes etc. If dealers and distributors find this complex I should think the majority of end-users have many unintentional infringements of the licensing rules. Its fairly straightforward with a lot of the curriculum applications that simply say you have a site licence for this programme at £x. Its the operating systems that cause the problems. The real snags are all the different prices of OEM, multiple license packs, the range of operating systems and a range of rules for upgrades, for servers concurrent users, client access licences, multiple server licences etc etc. In fact I should also think that quite a lot of people end up paying more than they need for a whole host of reasons. From a reseller point of view, the sooner we have one open source operating system to deal with the better. Microsoft's reply will be that schools should go for schools' agreement which costs something like £40 per machine per year but a) some eligible machines won't run the latest software so schools end up paying for upgrades they will never do and agreement doesn't cover the basic operating system because M$ assume every machine bought has one of their operating systems on it so the SA only covers upgrades. Mind, I can't see that M$ would be stupid enough to take all schools to task. The backlash in terms of bad publicity would be the fastest accelerator to Open Source I can imagine. Most schools don't deliberately pirate software and most seem to be becoming increasingly fed up with the cost of Microsoft. Take a largish secondary school with 400 machines. They probably pay around £60 per OEM Windows on buying each machine - more like £100 if its Windows2000 and let's say they have School's agreement at £40 per machine. That's £24,000 and then £16,000 per year just for what they can have free using Linux and StarOffice and a few odds and ends. If they want thin clients using Citrix its another £80-£130 per machine. If Government targets for pupil computer ratios are to be met, this has to be replicated all over the country. 4000 secondary schools and that's £50-60m on M$ agreement alone. Double it for primary and its of the order of £100m a year in schools alone and that ignores any thin client costs. This doesn't take into account the savings that would also be made by using thin clients and the reduction in maintenance and technician support required so I would say we could at least double the savings on that basis alone. Tell your local MP that you have a way of saving £100-200m of taxpayers money per year in schools alone and I should think at least £1 billion nationally in the public sector if the Government will make a bit of effort to promote Open Source. Most of this money will be re-used and a lot of it will go on better support and training locally thus boosting the small business sector, improving the technological literacy of the nation and strengthening the economy as a whole rather than increasing our imports bill from the USA. Write to your MP now and copy it to Estelle Morris at the Department for Education and Skills!

-- IanL

----- Original Message ----- From: Frank Shute To: Schools List Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 8:50 PM Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] software in schools/piracy

...

There's quite an interesting article at Salon about how US schools are being hunted down and fined for using pirated commercial software & how they are reacting:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/microsoft_school/index.html

Are UK schools going to be next in the line of fire? I've heard that controlling licences and the paperwork involved is a major time consumer and administrative nightmare for schools. Anybody got any personal experience?

The real shocker was getting fined $50000 for 100 odd illegal copies of MSDOS. I'm sure there are plenty of schools in this country who have many illegal copies of DOS running under Windows without realising it.

Anybody been investigated/fined yet?

--

Frank

*-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com

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-- ----------------------------------------------------- Alan Harris Network Manager Bryngwyn School Tel : 01554 750661 Fax : 01554 758255 E-mail: alanh@bryngwyn.carmarthen.sch ----------------------------------------------------- Notes: 1. The contents of this email may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown purposes! Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000. 2. The opinions expressed in this email are personal and may not be shared by Bryngwyn School. -----------------------------------------------------

There's quite an interesting article at Salon about how US schools are being hunted down and fined for using pirated commercial software & how they are reacting:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/microsoft_school/index.html

Are UK schools going to be next in the line of fire? I've heard that controlling licences and the paperwork involved is a major time consumer and administrative nightmare for schools. Anybody got any personal experience?

The article mentioned Birmingham (the one in the West Midlands, not South USA). -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

My experience is that the Microsoft licensing for operating systems in particular is a complete minefield. Even the distributors don't seem to understand the codes etc. If dealers and distributors find this complex I should think the majority of end-users have many unintentional infringements of the licensing rules. Its fairly straightforward with a lot of the

Added to which a good portion of the terms and conditions are possibly void under UK and EU law anyway... But you'd need a specialist solicitor to even begin work this out.

curriculum applications that simply say you have a site licence for this programme at £x. Its the operating systems that cause the problems. The real

Anything with a per machine licence is a headache. Which includes just about all the Microsoft stuff.

snags are all the different prices of OEM, multiple license packs, the range of operating systems and a range of rules for upgrades, for servers concurrent users, client access licences, multiple server licences etc etc. In fact I should also think that quite a lot of people end up paying more than they need for a whole host of reasons. From a reseller point of view,

Microsoft will only draw attention to cases where people arn't paying "enough".

the sooner we have one open source operating system to deal with the better. Microsoft's reply will be that schools should go for schools' agreement which costs something like £40 per machine per year but a) some eligible machines won't run the latest software so schools end up paying for upgrades they will never do and agreement doesn't cover the basic operating system because M$ assume every machine bought has one of their operating systems on it so the SA only covers upgrades. Mind, I can't see that M$ would be stupid

It is also only cost effective if you are starting from scratch, otherwise you'd be paying for whatever you already had twice over...

enough to take all schools to task. The backlash in terms of bad publicity would be the fastest accelerator to Open Source I can imagine. Most schools don't deliberately pirate software and most seem to be becoming increasingly fed up with the cost of Microsoft. Take a largish secondary school with 400 machines. They probably pay around £60 per OEM Windows on buying each machine - more like £100 if its Windows2000 and let's say they have School's agreement at £40 per machine. That's £24,000 and then £16,000 per year just

Add to this all the labour associated with installing and configuring the software... Even with third party tools this is a major undertaking on any Windows network, let alone one with "hostile" users.

for what they can have free using Linux and StarOffice and a few odds and ends. If they want thin clients using Citrix its another £80-£130 per machine. If Government targets for pupil computer ratios are to be met, this has to be replicated all over the country. 4000 secondary schools and that's £50-60m on M$ agreement alone. Double it for primary and its of the order of £100m a year in schools alone and that ignores any thin client costs. This doesn't take into account the savings that would also be made by using thin clients and the reduction in maintenance and technician support required so I would say we could at least double the savings on that basis alone. Tell your local MP that you have a way of saving £100-200m of taxpayers money per

You could double it again, as a change in balance of payments...

year in schools alone and I should think at least £1 billion nationally in the public sector if the Government will make a bit of effort to promote Open Source. Most of this money will be re-used and a lot of it will go on better support and training locally thus boosting the small business sector, improving the technological literacy of the nation and strengthening the economy as a whole rather than increasing our imports bill from the USA. Write to your MP now and copy it to Estelle Morris at the Department for Education and Skills!

-- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 09:57:34AM +0100, Derek Harding wrote:

...

Here, here about school/educational software on opensource. I've just been told that my proposed terminal server setup won't get the go ahead unless I can prove the educational, not financial, viability!

Who on Earth told you that? I'd be tempted to throw it in their face and ask them to prove the educational *and* financial viability of your current software. I can't see that Netscape/StarOffice on a thin

You'd be hard pushed to find actual curriculum and exam board requirements which you couldn't do on stuff 10 years old. IMHO Windows is probably about the worst possible platform for an educational environment. The discless Acorns we have mostly thrown out, though the science department have been using for the last half term, are far better machines for letting school kids (and computer illiterate teaching staff) near. Windows stuff is just far too fragile and fussy. LTSP enables you to regain robustness of an A3000/A3020, as well as centralising application managment. You can even run Windows apps this way. (Better than Windows can manage in some cases...)

client has any less educational worth than IE/Office on a thick client, and I can see that a number of purely Unix apps have

You can run Netscape/StarOffice on a thick client, it is still more robust and easy to manage compared with the Windows option.

considerably more educational merit than either.

Let alone that a thin client terminal will either work or it won't work. Also the whole system will either work or it won't work. Teachers (especially for none "techie" subjects) tend to get upset when they end up wasting half a lesson discovering that X out of Y machines don't work correctly. (e.g. because some kid found the latest "cool" "click and install" website.)

The financial advantages are largely self evident in terms of licensing costs and reduced time costs in nursing the system.

-- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

Government won't do it - they are already in the M$ pocket - look at the M$ gateway (oops - sorry about that, i meant he government gateway!).

I think you are being overly pessimistic. I hink that politicians can easily be swayed. It needs selling to them in the right way. If they see saving loadsa money = loadsa votes they will change, particularly if we offer it to the opposition if the current lot aren't interested. I suspect most of the cockups are more to do with the civil service and maintenance of the status quo than with the politicians who simply don't understand it. If we just say it ain't worth bothering because its hard it definitely won't happen. These things are a war of attrition and we have to be prepared to keep persevering what ever the setbacks.

Yes we, in schools, could save money but teachers won't go for open source without training. believe me, they'll say that the pupils can't cope but the problem is not with the pupils.

I know quite a few schools who will go open source and will use the savings for training. That should be part of the strategy. Once we get a critical mass and show that the NC can be covered - that's what is statutory - at much lower cost more will follow. Ok some might take a long time, look how long RISC OS has persisted but all we need to stimulate the software market is a significant minority then there will be even less of an argument against.

if we want this to work, and we want schools to go opensource, then we, the open source community, are going to have to provide training materials, faq's and example lessons which lead to defined National Curriculum Levels. When we can do this THEN we can provide a total solution to the Microshaft problem....

alan

Ian Lynch wrote:

...

My experience is that the Microsoft licensing for operating systems in particular is a complete minefield. Even the distributors don't seem to understand the codes etc. If dealers and distributors find this complex

I

...

should think the majority of end-users have many unintentional infringements of the licensing rules. Its fairly straightforward with a lot of the curriculum applications that simply say you have a site licence for this programme at £x. Its the operating systems that cause the problems. The real snags are all the different prices of OEM, multiple license packs, the range of operating systems and a range of rules for upgrades, for servers concurrent users, client access licences, multiple server licences etc etc. In fact I should also think that quite a lot of people end up paying more than they need for a whole host of reasons. From a reseller point of view, the sooner we have one open source operating system to deal with the better. Microsoft's reply will be that schools should go for schools' agreement which costs something like £40 per machine per year but a) some eligible machines won't run the latest software so schools end up paying for upgrades they will never do and agreement doesn't cover the basic operating system because M$ assume every machine bought has one of their operating systems on it so the SA only covers upgrades. Mind, I can't see that M$ would be stupid enough to take all schools to task. The backlash in terms of bad

...

would be the fastest accelerator to Open Source I can imagine. Most schools don't deliberately pirate software and most seem to be becoming increasingly fed up with the cost of Microsoft. Take a largish secondary school with 400 machines. They probably pay around £60 per OEM Windows on buying each machine - more like £100 if its Windows2000 and let's say they have School's agreement at £40 per machine. That's £24,000 and then £16,000 per year just for what they can have free using Linux and StarOffice and a few odds and ends. If they want thin clients using Citrix its another £80-£130 per machine. If Government targets for pupil computer ratios are to be met,

...

has to be replicated all over the country. 4000 secondary schools and

...

£50-60m on M$ agreement alone. Double it for primary and its of the order of £100m a year in schools alone and that ignores any thin client costs. This doesn't take into account the savings that would also be made by using

...

clients and the reduction in maintenance and technician support required so I would say we could at least double the savings on that basis alone. Tell your local MP that you have a way of saving £100-200m of taxpayers money

Yes we have to do that but we have to do the other things as well. -- IanL publicity this that's thin per

...

year in schools alone and I should think at least £1 billion nationally in the public sector if the Government will make a bit of effort to promote Open Source. Most of this money will be re-used and a lot of it will go on better support and training locally thus boosting the small business sector, improving the technological literacy of the nation and strengthening the economy as a whole rather than increasing our imports bill from the USA. Write to your MP now and copy it to Estelle Morris at the Department for Education and Skills!

-- IanL

----- Original Message ----- From: Frank Shute To: Schools List Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 8:50 PM Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] software in schools/piracy

...

There's quite an interesting article at Salon about how US schools are being hunted down and fined for using pirated commercial software & how they are reacting:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/microsoft_school/index.html

...

Are UK schools going to be next in the line of fire? I've heard that controlling licences and the paperwork involved is a major time consumer and administrative nightmare for schools. Anybody got any personal experience?

The real shocker was getting fined $50000 for 100 odd illegal copies of MSDOS. I'm sure there are plenty of schools in this country who have many illegal copies of DOS running under Windows without realising it.

Anybody been investigated/fined yet?

--

Frank

*-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com

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----------------------------------------------------- Alan Harris Network Manager Bryngwyn School

Tel : 01554 750661 Fax : 01554 758255 E-mail: alanh@bryngwyn.carmarthen.sch

-----------------------------------------------------

Notes:

1. The contents of this email may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown purposes! Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000.

2. The opinions expressed in this email are personal and may not be shared by Bryngwyn School.

-----------------------------------------------------

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Derek Harding wrote:

Here, here about school/educational software on opensource. I've just been told that my proposed terminal server setup won't get the go ahead unless I can prove the educational, not financial, viability!

As an aside, you might ask them to *prove* the educational viability of the alternative. Just because everyone else is doing it only shows there's been a marketing success. For *educational* purposes you should introduce them to systems they are *not* familiar with from home use. In RE we teach them other religions, against which they can measure their own. In Geography we teach them about other countries. In all subjects, we introduce them to new ideas, alternative ways of doing things, make them *think*. Just giving them more of the same is *not* education, it's training. If the educationally valuable things also save a lot of money, that's a bonus that can be redistributed as other educationally valuable things, such as more equipment of other sorts - or more teachers. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-820527 or 07798 636725 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk

SuSE is now at 7.2 - so that gets improved too!

It improves? I suppose our FreeBSD system has probably improved a bit in the last six years, though it's imperceptible, it seems very similar to how it was when we first installed it. Web, NFS, proxy, email, DNS, C, Samba, printserving, grep etc all very similar, just minor improvements, but there are now a nice set of workstation applications as well, KDE, StarOffice, Quanta, Gimp etc. In particular, we have seen precisely no increase (that's zero improvement) in reliability, unlike Windows where each issue is a lot more reliable than the previous one. Our servers five years ago just ran, and didn't crash. Our servers now do the same. No observable improvement at all. Should we not move to a system that *does* improve in this respect? -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-820527 or 07798 636725 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk

...

Its not just the powers that be, its resistance to change at all levels. I know some technicians who are terrified at losing their Windows power base. Personally, I am finding a lot more openness to open source these days so let's eat the elephant a bite at a time and go for the softer bits first.

Absolutly! I was activly kept out of meetings with RM when we were 'thinking' about bying a system from them. The truth was that the disision had already been made to purchase and I was putting flys in the ointment, having already specified linux. Every RM W/S costs about £200 extra in licencing. 1/2 to RM 1/2 to MS - nice work if you can get it.

No company that reports to shareholders should be backed and supported by the government to supply schools - there's too big a conflict of interest.

However...

...

Let's hope that M$ keep up their parenoia about licensing, it gives the best reason for people to change.

I sell software that I write, and woe betide anyone that breaks my licensing conditions - I get real nasty when people steal from me and my family!

That is perfectly reasonable but I suspect you don't have a monopoly that is based on ubiquity at least part of which is a complex contribution of piracy as well as paying customers. I wasn't advocating piracy just observing that making life difficult for customers is generally counter productive.

Gates is in it for the money - what's your problem? -

I don't have one except in that I don't believe there is any commercial advantage to me in selling his products for him on virtually no margin and then having to support them. I sell technology for a living and it is commercially better to give free stuff away than sell MS products but at the moment many of our other product lines are dependent on Windows so for the time being we are stuck with it. There is no margin in them for anyone except Microsoft and IBM, HP and some other big players realise that.

you can't hate the bloke for that.

No, but I want to protect the long term viability of my business and I see that far more likely to benefit from Open Source.

How many of you donate your time to the school that you work for? I thought so, not that many! Most of us need to earn a crust. (I'll grant that some have bigger crusts than others).

Well if you can tell me another company that can make a 30% profit on a 6 billion dollar turn over in a quarter I'll accept that the level of profit could be due to the wonderful products and efficiency of the company. Otherwise I'm inclined to believe its a ripping off monopoly and that seems to me to be as undesirable as theiving pirates. That's what makes it different from Ford, McDs and Bud.

It would seem that most companies across the world are (for the present) quite happy to keep buying from him, you have to ask yourself why.

I think that is changing. Rumour has it that the Ford Motor company is looking for an alternative, Sun, IBM, NEC, Hitachi all have Linux strategies. The Chinese Government have a Linux policy. The reason big companies went along with it was what was the alternative? Give the monopoly to someone else? IBM are putting £1billion dollars into Linux development for a reason. Sun put StarOffice into Open Source - why? Because they like doing business with MS? There is huge inertia in the system. I'm using a Windows machine now and we have Windows 2000 at work because we have to support them, we haven't the time in a busy day to change and I guess that is reflected by many people. We are Microsoft resellers because at the moment we have to be. I doubt very much that we will be in two or three years time. Maybe it will take 5 years if people don't make an effort maybe 2 if they do. <snip> I think all that other stuff is a red herring. Users of the Internet don't know they are using Linux so it really doesn't matter except for cost and who has control. There is going to be less and less dependency on any specific desktop operating system so MS sales will fall. They either put the price up which they are doing in real terms at the moment with Windows2000 or they find something else to sell - Xboxes? OfficeXP? Latter will be hit by free StarOffice and more stringent anti-piracy will encourage people away from XP. If you have to pay a few hundred quid for it the free one starts to look very attractive. Add to that that the functionality is not improving much and why bother upgrading? Sales slow, put price up sales slow etc.

It doesn't really matter too much what OS you use as a server (although I can think of loads of reasons for not using NT, and yes there are others, it's not just an NT/LINUX war) providing it delivers the files and is safe from attack.

It helps if its free.

Someone in this thread mentioned MS bringing out new versions all the time. So? it's a good way to boost sales, "give'em little and often". A bug fix here (plus some more bugs to fix later) the odd 'improvement' there. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT!

No need to shout, yes you do have to buy it as I explained above. You describe the way the company rips off customers and any company that does that will eventually lose customers. Its happening now.

There was a point to this, oh yeah - stop moaning and whining about Microsoft, it's so tedious and non productive - WE KNOW THE ARGUMENTS.

Actually I don't really give a monkeys about Microsoft as a company. If the Xbox takes off and they make a mint I could care less. You plainly don't understand the arguments as you have demonstrated and it is you who have brought the main emphasis of the discussion to MS. My business prospects will be far better if Open Source develops more rapidly sooner rather than later. That is the central issue to me, so the quicker we get people to realise the advantages the better. To have an advantage you have to compare one thing with another so Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are inevitably a part of the equation that can not be ignored.

Drive safely home in your ford

Lexus - I prefer quality.

(whatever the badge on the front), enjoy your McNasty burger and Bud tonight y'all as you watch the latest Hollywood release on DVD ("how many times can you change the country code?!") - Hypocrite? the word never passed my lips! ;-P

No, you just miss the point.

Adrian Wells

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On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 08:55:59PM +0100, Adrian Wells wrote:

...

Its not just the powers that be, its resistance to change at all levels. I know some technicians who are terrified at losing their Windows power base. Personally, I am finding a lot more openness to open source these days so let's eat the elephant a bite at a time and go for the softer bits first.

Absolutly! I was activly kept out of meetings with RM when we were 'thinking' about bying a system from them. The truth was that the disision had already been made to purchase and I was putting flys in the ointment, having already specified linux. Every RM W/S costs about 200 extra in licencing. 1/2 to RM 1/2 to MS - nice work if you can get it.

No company that reports to shareholders should be backed and supported by the government to supply schools - there's too big a conflict of interest.

I don't particularly have a problem with the government doing deals with commercial software manufacturers if it's done openly and transparently and the alternatives and pros and cons are considered and aired publicly. This just isn't happening though.

However...

...

Let's hope that M$ keep up their parenoia about licensing, it gives the best reason for people to change.

I sell software that I write, and woe betide anyone that breaks my licensing conditions - I get real nasty when people steal from me and my family!

But do you sell software from the position of being a monopoly with arcane and confusing software licences? If you did and you found that schools were using your software in good faith but without a licence would you then pursue them for large fines, even though you're making money hand over fist from your commercial customers? I wouldn't. It's another demonstration of the feet of clay that MS has when it comes to PR and a demonstration of the fact that Bill Gates's `charitable giving' is a lot of worthless and hypocritical fluff.

Gates is in it for the money - what's your problem? - you can't hate the bloke for that. How many of you donate your time to the school that you work for? I thought so, not that many! Most of us need to earn a crust. (I'll grant that some have bigger crusts than others).

A lot of teachers spend their free time doing extra-curriculur activities because they firmly believe in a public service ethos. Because of that they will forego at the minimum a larger salary within industry. To say that `not that many' donate their time is IMO a gross mischaracterisation. Regarding Gates, Gates is in it *solely* for the money by whatever means. IMHO that makes him a contemptible a***hole. Despite your assertion, I can hate him for that and likewise I despise anybody else who is in it just for the money. Where does giving the customer a fair deal come into your scheme of things? Does the fact that you are in it just for the money mean that every bit of crookery is pardonable?

It would seem that most companies across the world are (for the present) quite happy to keep buying from him, you have to ask yourself why. We are talking 1 man bands to multi billion dollar companies. They will be employing the kids at your school who need to use this software. Wake up, we don't teach the kids IT (well not what you think of as IT), we (not I) teach them to use wizards 'cus thats all most of them will ever need.

Most kids when leaving school need little more than the mathematical ability to sum two integers but does this mean we should consign Euclid & Newton to the dustbin? If so, perhaps we could then spend more time at school teaching them how to flip burgers. The fact is that businesses are crying out for employees that can think for themselves and unfortunately all too often schools are producing children who can't except under instruction of a `wizard'. Whether you're on the side of learning for learnings sake or producing cannon fodder for industry, in respect to IT, schools are doing little of either at the moment and I contend that that is directly as a result of the brain-dead software they're forced to use.

Try showing them how to layout a document, apply styles, create tables of contents, indexes, references &etc. and they'll think your nuts. Try asking a kid how to use tabs efficiently (why use one when 10 will do it!). Why learn how to do it properly when a wizard will do it for you? "Learn more than one wizard when I can click and go? Dream on!"

A very good reason for not using software that comes with the damnable paper clip - force the kids to use their brains, they don't grow without exercise.

Maybe we'll go back to teaching I.T. soon, as per the maths & calculator re-revolution.

Not too sure what you mean here.

As for the excuse that LINUX is good because it's different and allows the Kids to delve in and learn how it works, Not on my system mate! let then mess about at home.

Keep them ignorant because it saves you work, is that what you really mean?!

It doesn't really matter too much what OS you use as a server (although I can think of loads of reasons for not using NT, and yes there are others, it's not just an NT/LINUX war) providing it delivers the files and is safe from attack.

The overwhelming case against using NT is vendor lock-in. Businesses can pass the associated costs on to their customers - schools on the other hand will indirectly pass the costs on to all of us as taxpayers. As a taxpayer, I'm not happy with that and I want them to use what's best on both a cost and performance basis.

As to using windows for workstations in a school, what donkey came up with that one? Policies & Profiles? yeah right! But think back to your first PCs, what could you afford? was it something from that nice man Mr Gates? So what did you stay with when you expanded? (Sorry to anyone out there still using BBC Bs and other weird stuff. - Doh! we still use some Beebs!)

Someone in this thread mentioned MS bringing out new versions all the time. So? it's a good way to boost sales, "give'em little and often". A bug fix here (plus some more bugs to fix later) the odd 'improvement' there. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT! Unless you're really fashion conscious :-).

It's not just a case of bug fixes (often & late, if at all) it's all too often changing file formats in order to force users to upgrade if they want to share their data - then it's a case of `you will buy it' or be digitally divided.

But wait, pause a mo. SuSE is now at 7.2 - so that gets improved too! Bet none of you bulk at upgrading that (yeah, I know it's sort of free! but then I know a lot of people that don't pay for any of their software, from the OS up!)

That's a very different case indeed. It's free as you indicate and SuSE don't change file formats solely in order to protect their revenue stream. Why should we baulk [sp] at an upgrade? We're not getting chiselled, we're getting an exceptionally good deal.

There was a point to this, oh yeah - stop moaning and whining about Microsoft, it's so tedious and non productive - WE KNOW THE ARGUMENTS.

Adrian, you've demonstrated that you either don't know a lot of the arguments or you haven't fully understood them. You have to know the nature of the beast in order to suggest a credible alternative - it may sound like whining and moaning but it's an honest attempt to find out why a lot of schools are unhappy with their lot at present & why so much is being spent on IT in schools with so little in the way of return (school leavers' facility with handholding, talking paper-clips excepted). Anyway, didn't you just have a moan about RM & MS after being frozen out of the decision making process yourself?

Write to your MP (http://www.faxyourmp.com/), badger you board of governors, explain to teachers who you've only just manages to understand and to use e-mail, that Bill is not the messiah, and you can use different tools to do the same job - As another exploiter of parents and children would say "Just do it"

You need to have the arguments clarified before you lobby otherwise they wont be interested.

Drive safely home in your ford (whatever the badge on the front), enjoy your McNasty burger and Bud tonight y'all as you watch the latest Hollywood release on DVD ("how many times can you change the country code?!") - Hypocrite? the word never passed my lips! ;-P

I've got the choice of not driving a Dagenham dustbin nor eating the rubbish that passes as food at McNastys. I don't drink beer and I certainly wouldn't drink that Imperialist p*ss if I did and I don't watch the tat that Hollywood pumps out (I don't fall into the 12yr old moron category). But in all cases the big difference is that I've got a choice when it comes to that decision. As you pointed out at the beginning of your post, and as others have pointed out too, you had NO choice when it came to what software you used at school. Hypocrite? I plead `Not guilty', how do you plead? -- Frank *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 02:39:47PM +0100, Gary Stainburn wrote:

Sorry, but as I work for a Ford Main Dealer, I really must take a stand here

Oh oh...I forgot that you lurked on this list Gary. I thus withdraw my intemperate remarks about dustbins and Dagenham unreservedly! [snip]

Hollywood produce some very fine quility highly intelectual material - they've got Arnold 'R'll be bach' Sqwarzennegggar for starters

I forgot about Arnie. Apparently he's got an MBA (amazing what you can buy if you've got the money).

[snip]

...

Hypocrite? I plead `Not guilty', how do you plead?

I plead 'quarter pounder (no cheese/pickle), large fries and an extra large bananna milk shake please

Go and see a psychiatrist immediately - I can diagnose with a good degree of certainty that you've got a deathwish. There's more toxic garbage in that lot than is buried at Sellafield ;-) -- Frank *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. -- C.B. Luce