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UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:51 AM
from the apple-for-the-teacher dept.
from the apple-for-the-teacher dept.
Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.
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UK Schools Warned Off Microsoft Deal 337 comments
rs232 sends in a BBC piece on the UK computer agency Becta advising schools against signing up for a Microsoft educational license because of alleged anti-competitive practices. "The problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licenses for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else." We have discussed Becta's role in British education here several times as they have acted as a watchdog warning of perceived Microsoft excesses.
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Microsoft is a monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
what! (Score:2, Informative)
Another Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Another problem is that the "dynamic network tuning" will not work with all routers and switches, causing a massive increase in cost to replace the network hardware.
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We're considering making the switch to Vista in summer 2008. Two very good reasons:
1) We need a way to pressure the school board into buying about 500 new PCs to replace a large portion of our inventory that dates to the late 1990's. Vista and its requirements are currently the best way we have to do it, since all other attempts have failed.
2) We tested a number of our aging and poorly-writ
Re:Another Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1) We need a way to pressure the school board into buying about 500 new PCs....
2) We tested a number of our aging and poorly-written edutainment titles on RC2, and most of them didn't work....
In technical circles, this approach is known as 'New Bugs For Old', wherein you trade a host of new (but unknown) problems for a heap of old and all-too-familiar problems. The beauty of this approach is that no one can fault the logic of the switch until after the deployment is under way and the new problems begin to emerge. It has been effective for as long as humanity has had a weakness for shiny new things.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I'm trying to pre-purchase my new iPhone. 8^)
Parent
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This coming from the guy heading out to buy a version 1.0 Apple product...
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I'm trying to pre-purchase my new iPhone."
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Of course a thin client GNU/Linux [ltsp.org] set-up would also help push you to web-based curriculum software, with the added benefit of all the flexibility that Free Software brings.
However that would save taxpayers' money, resulting in a reduced departm
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You can probably turn that off somehow. But what is more serious is that Vista has an all-new network stack, and it has been shown to be written by dumbfucks in that attacks like land work against it (or at least worked against beta releases, I don't know if land still works on the release version.) The prior network stack was believed to have
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NT4's network stack was copied from BSD. You could find the BSD licensing bits if you looked around for them, no fingerprinting needed. They rewrote most of it for 2k. The 2k stack was pretty vanilla compared to what they are trying to put in Vista. This one looks much different and worries me a lot
Re:Thank You England for putting US interests firs (Score:2)
-eleventyone, Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this even news? What's next, if you spend a dollar today, you don't have a dollar tomorrow?
What is news... (Score:2)
Re:-eleventyone, Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
ALL schools, or in fact anyone who signs an über-licensing agreement with MS are at risk for "lock in", especially if you define "lock in" as being "we spent all our money on products from company X, so we have none left to buy products from company Y".
That's not "lock-in." That is "limited resources to allocate," something entirely different. Anyone spending money pretty much assumes they have limited resources and are not surprised by that fact. What does surprise people is that when a purchasing decision they make today results in purchasing decisions they make in 5 years being made for them because the product they bought is intentionally designed to not work with open standards or components from anyone else.
How is this even news?
This is news because people are still making decisions on behalf of constituents and children that result in long term risks for short term gains.
Parent
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This isn't the issue. The issue is:
"We can't use a product which company Y supplies for free because our products from company X don't play well with it. Thus we are stuck with purchasing further products from company X."
KFG
Funding (Score:2)
why not to use them in schools (Score:4, Informative)
More a problem with the UK than US? (Score:5, Interesting)
-b.
Re:More a problem with the UK than US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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What are you running?! Even Exchange can do SIMAP/SPOP. Not to mention that there are native Exchange clients (Entourage) for OS X - not sure about other Unices. Groupwise is the same way.
-b.
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A good start (Score:5, Insightful)
Common sense arrives at last. It's only taken more than a decade! Now, could we possibly do something about the actual REAL problem, being the Research Machines monopoly over just about every government contract to do with schools and the majority of the school market in the UK despite their poor support, substandard hardware, astronomical pricing and hard-sales tactics and MS-only policies that thus reinforce the MS monopoly?
(If you didn't already guess, I work in schools within the UK).
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RM are now buying up companies that do "related" software that's better than the RM equivalent and absorbing their products - e.g. the Ranger suite, including their Remote Control program. Also, they are either behind or somehow involved in EVERY large initiatives like Tesco Computers For Schools, the London Grid For Learning etc.
Speaking for Essex and a London Borough, most schools are RM-exclusive and those that are not have to use them for things like webmail, internet filtering etc. s
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Research Machines has an absolutely monopoly on UK schools hardware and software supplies. They charge schools over £1000 for PCs still in an era where you can buy them for £300. The amount of backhander deals that occur in so many authorities relating to RM equipment and software is disgusting, I've seen the most appalling deals go through and what really irks me about it the most is the fact that we're talking about tax payers money going to waste
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I'm a sysadmin at a school in the UK... (Score:5, Informative)
Props to Becta for doing such a study. They're a good thing and I like what they do for educational IT. However, we're already locked into Microsoft on the client side.
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, which is just over £12k/year for licensing. While that is a nasty chunk of money, it means we're entitled to the latest and greatest on release - as such, I've got Office 2007 and Vista on my work laptop giving them a whirl.
Wine! I hear you say Wine! Sorry, no go. We cannot risk apps not working because Wine doesn't support them fully. The teachers would eat my testicles for dinner - it's bad enough dealing with the poorly written educational software as it is, nevermind dealing with Wine on top of that.
There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering). It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type).
As for the upgrade thing - don't we know it. Office 2007 rollout isn't going to happen before September, if not 2008 (getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!). Vista probably 2009 at the earliest - depending on what incompatibilites we'll come across during testing.
All in all, unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative], and until people start moving to Linux application developers won't develop applications for it! Chicken and egg problem.*
(* - I know this was solved!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ahem. This UK school [schoolforge.org.uk] seems to be very satisfied with its all GNU/Linux set-up, which saved them enough money to take on a new ICT teacher.
I can confirm this (Score:5, Insightful)
As the parent of 3 children in the Scottish school system (which is substantially different from the system in England and Wales) I can confirm that M$ has a strangle hold on education in my country. A couple of years ago I sent a detailed letter expressing my concerns to the local director of education. After some time I received a considered response saying that M$ is the only game in town and that alternatives are irrelevant at best. Some of the phrasing in this letter I recognised from previous /. stories concerning M$ FUD, I suspect that the director of education contacted her IT dept. who in turn contacted their software vendor (M$) seeking reasons to justify the status quo.
Personally I blame the IT staff who tend to be very M$ centric and in the business for the perceived financial rewards rather than the love of IT itself. They will never recommend the use of something they don't understand as they will have to retrain and/or find themselves looking for another job. Windows as we know it is on the way out, in a decade or so it will no longer have a monopoly on the desktop or anywhere else.
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking. I run Linux exclusively at home (I've been Windows free since ME), my daughters both understand IT well and rarely have to come to me for help with their web pages or anything else. They have both avoided studying IT subjects at school as they view the IT syllabus as 'A joke', their words, not mine.
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Some of us bring in our own machines with other OS on them but most staff are not interested.
I teach biology, not computing, but I use Apple and Linux machines to do it.
Re:I can confirm this (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot of the "better the devil you know" element to it - if they opt to throw away Windows in favor of a new system that none of the staff know and it goes tits-up they will be for the high jump. Everyone knows Windows is a heap of crap and accepts it. If you put in a new system which turns out "worse", then you're in trouble from everyone who has to use it. (Where "worse" may simply be "doesn't run application X").
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking.
I'd agree with that. I've seen too many people take one look at a machine running Gnome and walk away without even trying to use it, even if they only wanted to browse the web or something, and even if there are plenty of people around to show them how to use it. These days, everyone is learning Windows by rote and as a result is never gaining the simple problem solving abilities needed to transfer their skills to another system, no matter how similar the systems are. And of course, these skill transferrance abilities are fairly important, not least because even the interfaces on Windows and common applications change drastically between versions.
Back when I was at school we used Acorns - originally BBC's and then RiscOS machines. At the time I really didn't see the point in learning a system that I would never need in the real world. However, many years on my view point has changed significantly and I can see that learning one system and then having to adapt to another helps you learn how to transfer skills to a different platform.
IMHO, the national curriculum should dictate that schools teach IT across several platforms - e.g. Windows, OS X, Linux, so that pupils learn how to deal with things that don't work _exactly_ as they had previously learnt, and broadens their awareness of more than one OS. Unfortunately, without an injection of cash there's no way the schools could afford the equipment, sysadmins and training for the teachers.
The really sad thing is that people look at the special educational pricing that MS provide and see it as nothing but a good thing because after all, it's helping the education of the kids. Very few people see the danger of letting a single company dictate what children are taught.
Parent
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It gets worse though. Tech support have no conception of anything other than Windows. I kid you not,
Forcing MS in schools should be illegal. (Score:4, Interesting)
On a good day the Windows machines "only" took 10 minutes to thrash their way to a login screen, 5 to get past the login screen and another 5 to go quiet. Until you tried to move the mouse. And the right mouse button was permanently disabled in explorer.exe, apparently for "security".
When I'd left they were already halfway through replacing all the hardware because of constant complaints that apps like MS Office took 10 minutes (not kidding) to open. And close. Most people didn't bother logging out because of that, and you can imagine the fun that resulted.
Then I got dumped with more of the same in college... *sigh*
Lock-In inevitable result of Monopoly... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have a vast, overwelming quasi-nationalized top-down educational beurocracy, with and almost total monopoly of education - the inevitable result is exploitive locked-in contracts with huge companies like Microsoft. Instead of Microsoft having to win over tens of thousands of individual schools, Microsoft only has to win over a few people at the top of the beurocracy. Bribing and misleading tens of thousands of IT people, all across the country would be prohibitivly difficult and expensive, where as bribing and misleading a few high officials costs virtually nothing when you are talking the huge potential profits.
Big government contracts, and big government policies, are naturally prone to extreme amounts of corruption and exploitation, because the stakes are so high and because authority are so centralized. You have to fight Microsoft on the level of the federal government, which is going to be impossible for your average parent. An average parent can walk over and talk to the head IT guy at the local school, or make an appoitment with the local municipal superintendant or mayor - But the average person can't fly off to meet with the head of the Ministry of Education, or the Prime Minister.
Don't blame Microsoft for this problem - they are simply exploiting the natural flaws in the educational leviatian. If they were gone, another company would simply find another way to exploit the system.
BECTA are part of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with BECTA is that while they have in the past said "open source is a good thing" and today "MS lock-in is bad" etc., they are responsible for setting school's purchasing policies. And these purchasing policies are not F/OSS-friendly, since purchasing can only be made from "approved" suppliers. These suppliers need to apply for the (costly, I believe) approval process. This indirectly excludes many suppliers who would provide F/OSS options.
At least one UK MP (Member of Parliament) has raised an Early Day Motion [parliament.uk] drawing attention to the fact that this is a bad thing - this motion has been signed by more than 100 MPs following a reasonably active campaign by technical individuals in the UK. If you're in the UK, write to your MP [writetothem.com] asking them to sign it!
For some more background and also the letters I've written to my MP, see my blog: my opening letter [sungate.co.uk] and my followup [sungate.co.uk].
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I doubt that Windows will be as popular in 10 years as it is now. That's just the way of things - new technologies come around and old empires decline. Windows is an overcomplicated, bloated, resource-hogging OS any way you look at it. Also, Windows isn't the best OS to teach programming on because of its complexity.
-b.
Re:Ummm, So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what I think. The time for the Windows era to come to an end is nigh [catb.org].
The only remaining question is will Windows' successor be Mac OS X or Linux, or will we (finally) evolve to the point that the choice of platform no longer matters.
I'm betting on the latter, myself.
Parent
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I vote for "none of the above - it hasn't been developed yet." All three popular systems are based on underlying structures that are getting to be very long in the tooth.
-b.
Long in the tooth OSs (Score:3, Insightful)
The fundamental design of the automobile hasn't changed much in over a hundred years. It still has an internal combustion engine (albeit sometimes augmented with electric), four wheels with pneumatic tires, a steering control based on a wheel that operates the front two wheels, a geared transmission from the engine to the wheels, a cabin in the middle with engine space
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People complain of how horrid Windows is, but it is still around, and Microsoft is still
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ICT teaching is more than learning how to
Re:Ummm, So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to add, though, that far too often, those who were given specific training in something like MS Office, are completely lost when they are introduced to anything else. For example, Lotus Notes vs. MS Outlook. On job postings for a lot of administrative type jobs, you see "Must be proficient in " An applicant who was tought specifically how to do Outlook, will not even apply to a job that asks for Lotus. The idea that they are both just basically the same thing doesn't really stick. The same goes for any other piece of software. Operating systems are a good example, because I have observed the use of all 3 by n00bs. It's mostly a fear factor than anything really. I use Linux, the girlfriend used Windows (not anymore
The bean counters only reinforce the fear factor. They reason that we must teach our kids on the same thing they will be using in the "real world." Unfortunately, you are only creating a robot, who is programmed to do one thing and cannot think and learn for itself.
Parent
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The real difference here is between a vocational/technical school for office workers or secretaries and a real liberal arts education. There's nothing inherently wrong with courses on how to use Office (or any other particular software application), but that's not what most education is supposed to be about, especially not before there's separate tracks kids can choose between vo/tec and "regular".
The same problem can be seen in higher education, at least in the US, particularly in realms like Com
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I sat one because my school didn't go computing. I was taught how to use Word, Excel, Access, VB and Publisher. Use of more flexible, powerful or simply different applications (For example trying to use a MySQL server to do the database work) was frowned upon.
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In actual fact, you would end up with better windows users if they were exposed to *nix first
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Thanks, I needed a noon laugh attack.
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Then again, the combination of tightly-controlled hardware with a stable OS (X) is much more reliable than Windows combined with hundreds of different hardware types. There'll be a significant administration cost saving there. You can also do what some universities do and run the back-end and technical department systems on a Unix.
-b.