[PLUG] RE: Just a tiny bit of MS audit info from the schools

[Eric Harrison]

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Preston Crawford wrote:

>
>On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, sendai wrote:
>
>> Exactly.  No one should be fooled into thinking that MS is being nice here.
>> I guarantee you they have seen our responses, and a big reason for their
>> delays is to kill our urgency which removes some of our motivation.  We have
>> to stay on this and not back down.
>
>The key being to not back down from offering an alternative. I agree with 
>others, that you don't want to over-eagerly force something on the school. 
>There are legitimate reasons, though, to make the switch on MOST 
>computers. Not all, but most. And I think we should most definitely press 
>ahead as vigorously, but organized. Find out what the schools want, find 
>out what we can offer and present it to them in an organized professional 
>manner.

Preston has the right approach in mind.  Sendai, there is NO ONE being fooled.
Trust me on this one.

There was an emergency, now there is not. The basic problem remains, but
the timelines are more managable.

>From my perspective, the worse-case scenerio would have been that the
schools were forced into converting everything over to Linux overnight.
It would have been a huge, disruptive disaster. But they were WILLING AND
PREPARED to do it if they must.

Now the schools have some time to work all of this out. They now need to
reflect on what their needs are, how much risk they are willing to tolerate,
how they should best allocate their precious resources.

Our job, as a community, is no longer to bail the schools out of an 
emergency situation. Sure, it would have made great press and would have
been a facinating endever, but it would not have been in ANYONE's long-term
best interest.

Our job, as a community, is now to help the schools strech their budgets,
mitigate risks, and make sound, rational decisions on the use of technology.
This is not the stuff of national headlines, it is the stuff of long-term,
healthy education.

It's time to stop thinking about this particular battle, shift your 
thoughts to winning the war.

But let's discuss it at another time. It's been a LONG WEEK and I for
one need some sleep ;-)

-Eric