UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In 162
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.
what! (Score:2, Informative)
why not to use them in schools (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A good start (Score:3, Informative)
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. somewhere along the way due to Borough/County rules which have been laid down.
I've even seen with my own eyes a BOROUGH support contract which says that they will ONLY recommend, upgrade, replace or support RM products. So you can't even get independent advice from the Borough's that are supposed to helping ALL schools.
It's a nightmare. I've actually helped several schools go pure-Microsoft (Server 2003/XP etc.) because it's just so much easier, better, cheaper etc. than the RM-offered solutions. Even down to the RM applications - they supply most Primary Schools with Talking First Word - Think Word 2000 + macros + lots of clippy-style talking wizards all wrapped up to look like a new program (with all the problems that brings).
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:Ummm, So what? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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].
Re:"Locked in"? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I can confirm this (Score:3, Informative)
It gets worse though. Tech support have no conception of anything other than Windows. I kid you not, one of said support staff thought linux was a mobile phone provider!!
Worse yet, being me a Mac zealot, on a computer animation course, which you think would be at least slightly mac friendly; not a bit. One of my lecturers, someone who does multimedia etc. spells it "MAC" and knows absolutely sod all about the most popular design/multimedia platform. The programming courses here are all totally C++/Windows Visual Studio pish. All documents etc are handed out in
They're a Microsoft Genuine Advantage Campus with god knows how much pish from microsoft scattered around, various propaganda stuff going down; most of the lecturers buy into it 100% (I've had lecturers in the School of Computing thinking that Mac's can't do networking!!). One refers to my "powder-case" (I have a MacBook). It's truly scary how many graduates the place will churn out with absolutely no knowledge of the rest of the worlds computers. I know Microsoft have a huge monopoly and all, but linux is pretty damned popular, particularly in the server world. Ditto Unix. And as for DTP/Design, they still run on Mac's (thank the Gods). There are about 25 macs for the music folks, who I think swung it based on the idea that the mac's aren't "computers' but 'mixing desks'. Stupid beancounters probably thought must be musical, since don't Apple make them iPod things. Truly scary.
That's without thinking about the amount of money they spend paying for microsofts pish, and the utterly dire machines that go with it.
That said, I don't know why I'm surprised. Their internet/web-page/virtual learning resource (called Blackboard) which is supposed to be 24/7 so students can always log in and check stuff, doubly so over the holidays when they can't physically talk to lecturers...it was down from around the 15th of Dec to the 5th of Jan. My guess is one of the (MCSE only) tech plebs knocked the server off without realising at their xmas piss-up.
Scary.