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! 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). 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. 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!" About to be labelled sexist now as well as brown nosing our mate Bill. Does your wife know how the washing machine works, probably not. Providing the icons in the clothes match the icons on the front panel, who cares? Maybe we'll go back to teaching I.T. soon, as per the maths & calculator re-revolution. 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. 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. 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 :-). 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!) 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. 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" 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 Adrian Wells