How Microsoft Beats GNU/Linux In Schools 476
twitter writes "Ever wonder why schools still use Windows? Boycott Novell has extracted the details from 2002 Microsoft email presented in the Comes vrs Microsoft case and other leaks. What emerges is Microsoft's desperate battle to 'never lose to Linux.' At stake for Microsoft is more than a billion dollars of annual revenue, vital user conditioning and governmental lock in that excludes competition, and software freedom for the rest of us. Education and Government Incentives [EDGI] and "Microsoft Unlimited Potential" are programs that allows vendors to sell Windows at zero cost. Microsoft's nightmare scenario has already been realized in Indiana and other places. Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars. Because software is about as expensive as the hardware in these deals, the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to see what Microsoft can do other than what they did to Peter Quinn."
Or (Score:4, Insightful)
Schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, it's what the vast majority of their software runs on, and it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world.
Teachers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, mark me as troll, but it's F'in true.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Teachers (Score:2, Insightful)
The sad part is... as a former teacher myself, I cannot help but agree, but with one caveat:
...because the vast majority of teachers are clueless as to how to use it.
Can anyone explain the link? (Score:3, Insightful)
What information are we supposed to glean from that link?
Re:Or (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Product dumping (Score:1, Insightful)
Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Being a monopoly is neither illegal nor I would argue immoral. It's what you do with your monopolistic power that makes that determination. In this context it is also important to mention that MS is the original 'give it away for free or close to free' people. This was true even way before Windows had a lock on PCs.
I would agree with the comments above about Windows being what the student will encounter and add further that this reasoning extends to the OLPC and similar products, which is why we are seeing Windows on those platforms instead of a free OS.
Re:Apps! (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally agree, people are interested in applications not in operating systems.
Warning: Known sockpuppet/troll (Score:0, Insightful)
User [slashdot.org] maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts [slashdot.org] on Slashdot.
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the operating system that pays, it's the sum of platform applications and infrastructure where Microsoft makes money, coupled to the students that know nothing else but Windows. The tip of the iceberg is Windows. The cash cows are Office, SQL Server, Exchange, and the add-ons, upgrades, and other platform products.
You don't 'lose' to Linux, you lose revenue that represents lots of infrastructure, server licenses, CALs, and so on.
There are few professional organizations that can do an end-to-end Linux infrastructure for educational needs (including school administration software costs) but the list is growing, if by populism alone.
Part of Microsoft's loss is the horrible security problems of 1998-2007, as they're less than before. That damage hurt Microsoft-- coupled to support costs for the products. Macs have always been a fractional part of the educational market, and Apple's done a lot to damage their own relationships with schools-- but students love them.
Microsoft has a lot to learn about love, rather than feigning leadership.
Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away! (Score:4, Insightful)
A couple or so years ago, I asked a university lecturer why they used so much MS software, when the obviously had knowledge of Linux and Unix -- the reply was something like "we get it free" (or perhaps "almost free").
So they were using it because it was better ? Because they certainly wouldn't have been paying more for Linux or UNIX...
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding the word objective to your argument does not make it any more objective.
You need to show WHY it is objectively more or less of a monopoly than the Law says and ALSO show why we should consider your definition of monopoly rather than the legal one.
Objectively strangling an infant or elderly person should be less of a crime than strangling a young adult because the young adult is harder to replace than the infant and has more to provide to society in terms of man-hours work.
While objectivity can help justice; justice is not necessarily objective
Re:Apps! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something of a chicken and egg problem isn't there? I don't recall Windows having any sort of natural advantage when I was in school. It was all Apple ][s, except in the business department where they had some PS/2s running MS-DOS. A couple people thought Windows was interesting, but nobody was in a hurry to switch.
All of this Windows software has developed through the traditional "network effect," and that was nurtured through programs such as Microsoft's that put Windows on many desktops throughout the 90s. That doesn't mean it can't be brought to Linux someday, though. There has to be some demand before it happens. Either that, or some open source efforts to replace the poorly-written software that you mention.
Re:Teachers (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachers are clueless on how to use windows too. Teachers shouldn't be administering the things, just using apps that they're probably going to need to be trained for anyway.
Re:Teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, I think one of the perhaps very good reasons they don't use Linux is because the teachers are clueless as to how to use it.
Um, I think that the teachers are pretty clueless as to how to use Windows, too. I'd almost go as far as saying they're pretty clueless on how to run any hardware more advanced than hamster cages, but they generally can get students to do that for them.
Not to denigrate teachers - they are fine at what they're actually trained to do (i.e., teach), but most of them are the "typical computer user" (read clueless).
Re:Or (Score:2, Insightful)
They have a monopoly or they gained a monopoly?
Apple and Microsoft and Unix were all small time operating systems "back in the day," right? So ... what's the deal? Why didn't the ever-so-more-amazing Linux, Unix, or OS X become the monopoly? You can't argue that Apple doesn't do *cough* "weird" *cough* business practices. Many of the mainstream unix flavors (Solaris, AIX, HPUX) were never really consumer oriented but server oriented, and Linux is somewhat new as far as compatibility and consumer-usability goes, as far as I understand it (the earliest I started using it was around 2000).
So it came down, in the late 80s and 90s, to either Apple's OS or Microsoft's OS. Apparently, people liked Microsoft's.
Whether or not they have a monopoly now I guess is debatable, but even if they didn't do any of monopoly-ish business practices now, they STILL would have a large share of the market. It's not necessarily because "they are a monopoly" but because it is hard to break a large market share. Case in point: search engines and Google. Or for a while, search engines and Yahoo. A lot of search engines just plain died or never were popular. Usually only one or two survive and become the "giants," and the others get a few percentage of the fun.
The fact that Linux (and OS X) is growing is good, but I grow tired of the constant complaints that somehow, Microsoft is paying off all the old grandma's to stay with Windows... as if Dell could suddenly ship Linux on a desktop and not have TONS of technical support calls asking "Why can't I use iTunes?" or "Why doesn't [insert something] work?"
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, and consider how MUCH money on training Microsoft gets for free when public schools teach with Microsoft products.
It's not just the license. It's all the taxes you pay to train your own childs for the benefit of a private company.
Re:Or (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Be glad to have an OS (Score:2, Insightful)
Ideally, people should be learning how to use computers, not Microsoft software. That way, they would be more open minded toward, and technically capable of, using different software when they get the chance to chose. In government (and school) situations, this is important because it's a waste of money to pay for expensive software licences when free and competitive programs are readily available.
In a world where >85% of PCs are using some form of Windows, however, this doesn't put most users at a disadvantage, as they'll probably never be exposed to alternative software besides Firefox. Or, we get people like Mac converts, who treat a non-MS OS device as the relic of some sort of technological messiah, instead of just a computer with different ways of doing things.
Re:office suite (Score:2, Insightful)
HAHAHAHAHAHAhaahehheh*sniff*, good one.
Wait, were you serious? Even with all that "ribbon" crap they've been replacing the menus with?
and OLPC/Negroponte will still think MSFT is good (Score:5, Insightful)
it shows that nothing has changed at Microsoft in the past 20 years. There is no "new Microsoft", there is no "kinder, gentler Microsoft", and there is no "Microsoft is a friend to open source".
It's all a lie for the purpose of furthering their goal of making sure Windows is the only OS for the vast majority of the populations.
surprise!
LoB
Re:Product dumping (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.
I do not think that is true. Plenty of people and organizations use Linux on the desktop/laptop.
With Linux (or say FreeBSD) you can deliver a functional platform with *all* of the applications a typical (and not so typical user) needs for *no* acquisition cost.
Definitely an attractive value proposition which continues to attract attention.
Re:Apps! (Score:2, Insightful)
Many school applications are web applications. Or Java applications.
Also, many of those applications are easy to reproduce, take for example Carnegie Learning's cognitive tutor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Learning [wikipedia.org] ), not only it is easy to replicate, it also has many interesting challenges from the point of view of a computer scientist. Lot of room for improvement. It is a great job for an open source project.
The only problem is marketing. Most of this solutions are actually not that great, I have tried one Cognitive Tutor application and it has many flaws (wrong answers in some cases, enforces only one kind of solution to each program and doesn't consider alternative paths, very repetitive and boring, and so on). But if you have a sales team and good marketing, you have a hit.
Now, that's harder for an OS project.
Re:Or (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, UNIX used to be for anything "serious" along with VMS (Workstations, minicomputers and general server duties), not just "small time" or "server oriented".
A large part of what happened was that MS managed to gain market share by 1) Widespread piracy and 2) Being not nearly as good as the UNIX systems but also a lot cheaper. Point no. 2 is also why a lot of us who remember the days of MS-DOS, Win 2.x/3.x and other horrors may grudgingly admit that Microsoft's current operating system offerings are usable but still prefer *nix systems, because MS "won" by fighting dirty...
/Mikael
Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but my newspapers constantly have articles on how the schools have no budget and the teachers are poor and the buildings are falling apart and yadda yadda yadda.
You'd think they'd jump at a chance to save some cash, no matter how little.
I put Microsoft's continued dominance down to momentum ("everybody uses Microsoft products") and fear ("if I decide to save some cash by moving from Windows to Linux, but the migration fails, we'll be out a lot of time and money and I'll be out on the street").
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
The main competition to Windows Is Windows N-1.
Re:Apps! (Score:2, Insightful)
I know people might hate this idea, but Linux will never see the kinds of growth Apple and Microsoft experienced.
Why? Because most Linux types are using Linux to use Linux. Most consumers use computers to chat with text and video. They want to watch movies. They want to read email. They don't want to be computer experts and they don't use any particular OS in order to be using that OS.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that's not very apparent at all. Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time. It eventually became outdated, yet it had a lot going for it including some nice killer apps (desktop publishing for one). You can't simply shrug that off as 'people just liked Windows better' unless you know what you're talking about.
In actuality, Microsoft gained its monopoly using questionably dubious, but well documented, business tactics, and now they use that OS monopoly in yet more questionable and dubious ways. This is generally known and accepted, but maybe your "apparently people liked [Windows]" comment isn't so well supported.
Re:Dumping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says they Microsoft has the edge? Where I work we hire a number of kids out of college, *all* of them have higher degree of comfort implementing various solutions on a Linux/BSD platform then Windows. That tells me they are getting a tremendous amount of exposure to these platforms during their college years.
Quite frankly I manage to do my own job quite effectively without having to rely on Microsoft products at all, this includes technical aspects as well communicating, documenting, etc.
So by all means use the tools you are comfortable with, but do not imply that they are the only choice for the *real world* when that is not even close to being the case.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apps! (Score:3, Insightful)
But, there are other factors involved. A school might have more than one app that does the same thing. Why? They get grants, and state funding, and federal funding, and a volunteer donates a couple copies. None of those people talk to each other, and even if they did, you'd end up with a committee of 2 dozen people, nothing would ever get done.
You'd think that even on the administrative side, things would be similar. But no. There are only a few companies who make software to track attendance and grading. But there is a huge amount of customization which goes into this software, because each district tracks information differently, and reports to the State differently.
You also have to keep in mind how schools buy things. If a fantastic new learning package came out that schools all over were using, each school would have to justify that purchase. There would probably be a bond initiative. You'd have to explain to voters how product X is going to replace product Y you just had them vote on 5 years ago. In the software world, 5 years is a lifetime. In the voting on a tax increase world, not so much.
You also have to remember that teachers don't like change. They're being asked to do more and more with little compensation. The NCLB act is horrible. So much time is spent teaching to pass tests instead of teaching to learn and think. You're asking them to learn something new, again. You can send them to professional development, but chances are, their contract specifies they're only required to do x hours a year (probably 40). Why should they spend 1/4 of that time re-learning things they already knew how to do instead of learning better teaching which might directly impact education.
The thing that might work is the web. With google docs and all, we're already moving that way. A lot of schools use apps like Plato or e-chalk, which are entirely web based. Get everything on the web. Make it so the school can host the software itself on appliances (capitol cost vs ongoing, e-rate, etc...). Then the client doesn't matter. You can replace your windows desktops with a linux desktop, still running firefox, and there will be little difference.
Anyway, that's my piece. It'd be nice if the problem were simple, it isn't.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
"Schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, it's what the vast majority of their software runs on, and it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world."
I can accept points one and two but point three, "it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world" is and always has been total utter bullshit. Whatever the students are using now will have only minor correlation to whatever they'll found in "the real world" few years from now. When I were in school it were the days of Microsoft DOS. How much does it resembles Windows Vista to Microsoft DOS except that there's "Microsoft" in the name? Is it really so much similar Windows 98 to Windows Vista than it is to current versions of Gnome or KDE upon Linux?
In fact, the reverse is truer: whatever I learnt about DOS on my school days serves me nothing on current versions of Microsoft OS and apps. On the other hand, what I learnt on my university days about NFS, X Window, DNS, SMTP, Vi... is still serving me now almost word by word about fifteen years later. And this is not per chance: Microsoft, being the principal actor and living out of selling licenses is *forced* to add new features and change the way of doing things just "to stay the same" while others, specially if not competing on selling usage licenses, can maintain whatever is already working just the same for ages.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a meaningless and effectively incorrect point. Seeing as the schools are not going to run hackintosh's and OS X is really only sold with hardware (aside from upgrades) the hardware cost and OS cost is inseperable just the way they like it. That way whenever we complain there hardwear costs are bloated they can BS about how they are charging us for the OS itself.
OS X is just as expensive as windows; and thats not the point of this article.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the first world is on Windows $LAST_VERSION (XP), and a non-trivial portion is still on $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF (2000).
Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away! (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone can get Linux for free. Most people have to pay for Windows, but Microsoft is giving it to you for free. Don't you feel special?
Re:Apps! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you missed my point. It isn't that some form of each of those are functional under some linux distro. It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.
And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it, as it's been called Ekiga since March of 2008. And you want to compare Ekiga with the simplicity of MSN messenger? And mplayer with iTunes or Windows Media Player? I'm fond of mplayer, and have contributed code, but get real.
bitter, much? (Score:3, Insightful)
n/t
Re:Dumping. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to point out the obvious, but you are hiring college-educated kids to work at a tech firm.
You must be aware that most people who use computers are not "implementing various solutions." Of course computer science majors know something about Unix. One would expect philosophy majors to know something about Kant. Most people don't spend much time evaluating the Categorical Imperative.
Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away! (Score:3, Insightful)
because "teachers" really do get it nearly free... or at least not under per-pupil costs. Of course Universities pay big money in the name of "piracy" for site licensing.. but that goes under the IT or legal funds, not "teachers" funds.... see the difference.
Like the Forrester survey below this article, people use Microsoft software out of habit, not even because they like it. For most people, using even MS Word is really hard, and re-learning it is even worse. MS knows Linux or Mac is better but as long as they keep the price of upgrades less than the price to go some place else, and the pain of upgrades less than the pain of learning Linux they will keep their customers from sheer bureaucratic inertia.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
Except in the non-first world countries, where they aren't.
Except in non American countries, where they aren't.
Re:Treat Microsoft like the Cable company then. (Score:3, Insightful)
but that's the catch. "Freebis" like Sharepoint tie Server, AD, SQL, and Exchange together in a way that simply can't be migrated to OSS. Sure it can be replicated, but you would have to rebuild everything done before to move off it. There are dozens of other MS products that tied in a similar manner. Not bad products, but the combine products can't be got away from easily.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.
That is only true with price competitors, which Linux and Windows are not. With quality competitors, dumping must be gauged by other criteria, which actually don't work too well here either.
The most "perfect" definition of dumping is selling below the marginal cost. Since the marginal cost for Windows is somewhere between a few bucks (packaging) and the marginal cost of support (moderate - a few tens of dollars at most), it is difficult to say what exact price constitutes dumping. It can, from this, be said to be greater than zero.
For companies that have high fixed and low marginal costs, one could theoretically calculate the effective per-unit cost. But with a company such as Microsoft which sells many goods in diverse markets which have shared fixed costs, this would be an exceedingly difficult calculation. You'd have to get into lots of guesses about incidence rates and it wouldn't be much better than throwing darts.
In a quality competitive market of imperfect competing monopolies (all copyrighted works are monopolies), another possible definition is selling below the market price. Simultaneously, though, it is difficult to gauge the market price of a low marginal cost good which uses monopoly pricing. The natural price is probably somewhere between the $60 or whatever OEMs pay and $320 for a full retail copy of Ultimate Edition.
As for competitor prices, in a quality competitive market the natural price of each good is different. Therefore it is possible for a competitor to be selling for less and not dumping, or to be selling for more and dumping. The competitors' prices are not relevant in quality competition, except inasmuch as they promote natural pricing.
Finally the question of harm - with some goods dumping is actually beneficial to the target market. If customer loyalty (lock-in being one example) is low, and barriers to competitor entry and exit are low, dumping is a good thing. It doesn't harm the competitor and it benefits the customer. In this case the reason it makes sense for MS is the customer loyalty angle - as long as they have most of the market they can continue to dictate things like de facto standards, and hence continue to inhibit competition.
In summary; the price of Linux is not directly relevant, and dumping harms this market. Whether they are in fact dumping is not definitively answered here, but it cannot be ruled out based on the price of Linux alone, and if they are regularly selling for $0 then they are almost certainly dumping (the only possible exception being $0 marginal price for per-seat licenses if MS's marginal cost is zero (no packaging, no support)).
Re:Dumping. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I admit the GP is a troll you are just as offbase. Your anecdotal evidance does not disprove that Windows is still dominant. Does it suck? Heck yeah, but schools only have so much time and sadly windows skills are crucial many industries. I hope that changes, but until then your 10 person shop does little to change the trend.
So what are Windows skills? As opposed to basic computer use skills.
Re:Product dumping (Score:4, Insightful)
Teaching specific apps in schools is a poor idea, since by the time these kids venture into the workplace the apps they used in school will be horrendously obsolete and no longer used... I used wordperfect (for dos) in school, and before that we had acorn archimedes systems running riscos and some apps i forget the name of.
What the schools use isn't important, because whatever they use will be different from what people have to use after school. How they teach is what matters, teach general concepts rather than specific apps.
Central management a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is pretty bad when it comes to central management.
Its possible to roll a managed solution for a mixed Windows/Linux network with authentication based on LDAP and file sharing based on NFS and SAMBA, web apps authing back to LDAP, homedirs shared by NFS with a single client image installed from USB.
But its pretty ugly, insecure and requires a hell of a lot of application-specific configuration to get it to work seamlessly.
I know this, because I am responsible for administering a school network using Linux for servers and desktops (I inherited the system after a former disgruntled sysadmin left), and it is a hell of a lot more tricky than it could be.
Everything we have pretty much works, but i'm the only one associated with the organisation who can come remotely close to knowing how stuff works or what to do when stuff breaks. At least my business model is 'recession-proof', but frankly, the people running the school are powerless, and disenfranchised, and i find it pretty difficult to articulate any actual benefits of keeping the system on Linux beyond the expense involved in switching back to Windows - this is not the picture a lot of OSS advocates paint, or the way it should be.
It's been nothing but pain setting the system up - Its a good deal for me as they're kind of stuck paying me to admin the system, but does it really have to be this complex?
I'm a huge linux geek with a lot of real world programming and admin experiences, and the bottom line is if i had to do it again for another school, i'd pass and suggest they use Windows.
Thats why Windows wins in schools.
Re:Product dumping (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for your post. Though I strongly disagree with the following part:
[...] If you can use one operating system, it is (and should be) Windows. For younger students, the school's objective is to teach computer literacy, so they want to have Windows computers. For older students, the school's objective is to use them as a tool and not have to worry about showing the classroom idiot how to use GNOME, so they want to have Windows computers. [...]
Conditioning someone to click at certain screen elements to achieve a certain effect is software training, not an exercise in computer literacy. Computer literacy would be to teach students the concepts and paradigms behind modern software. Then they could find their way around Windows, OS X and Linux by themselves (with a little help from the respective manuals) - by understanding what the hell they are doing instead of mere repetitive training. Basic concepts are shared amongst all mayor desktops: Some kind of menu-based application launcher, a bar that collects open windows, a file manager...they have different names and look (more or less) different in each OS, but GNOME's application menu applies the same paradigms as Windows' Start menu.
Many companies who want to ditch the Windows eco-system or at least parts like MS Office face enormous obstacles in their employees' computer illiteracy. They may know the Office toolbars by heart, but they cannot transfer their knowledge to competing applications because they don't really understand what button X does. Microsoft rewards training over understanding. And that alone should be reason enough to make it unfit for educational use.
Re:Product dumping (Score:3, Insightful)
unless your into digital media, then its basically mandatory...
And if you are into making hand crafted woodcuts, it's entirely optional. If you narrow the specification enough, you can support just about any premise.
Re:Product dumping (Score:2, Insightful)
No offense, but this couldn't be further from the truth. I work in a public school. They don't really try that hard to save money on certain things, for whatever reason. These things include: technology, special ed, construction, and sports departments, to name a few.
Not sure if you're in this situation, but a lot of people know a teacher who isn't that well paid and have heard them complaining about lack of funding they get, and so they get the idea that schools are really hurting for money. From everything I've seen, this usually isn't true unless you're talking about inner city schools. But just because money isn't going to the right places doesn't mean that money isn't being thrown around left, right, and center. Trust me, it is.
Even if wine was perfect tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. "Who's going to give us our support contract?," they'll say. Red Who?
In short, it has relatively little to do with money, software quality, etc. This is especially true being that, at least here in the US, spending money on Microsoft licensing is not generally seen as wasteful. This perception matters. And yes, we live in a fucked up world.