[PLUG] RE: FW: Response to Microsoft Putting the Squeeze on NW Schools - Are they squeezing?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Ted Mittelstaedt                                       tedm at toybox.placo.com
Author of:                           The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide
Book website:                          http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Greg Long [mailto:freebsd at maneuveringspeed.com]
>Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 4:27 PM
>To: pdx-freebsd at toybox.placo.com
>Cc: PLUG; KLUG
>Subject: RE: FW: Response to Microsoft Putting the Squeeze on NW Schools
>- Are they squeezing?
>
>
>A long, long time ago, in the Alpha Quadrant Ted Mittelstaedt projected:
>
>> Microsoft will then cut a deal for probably about 20-50 thousand
>dollars for the whole shit-a-ree, with the stipulations that 1) the
>district will agree to a gag order on the pricing and 2) the district
>will not promote Linux in any way, shape or form.
>
>---
>
>'fore long it's likely KLUG will be going more "public" and trying to at
>least welcome the high school kids here in the area.  Is anyone aware of
>any evidence anywhere that MS is putting such a stupulation squelching
>Linux on the table to any schools?  I can only imagine that any sort of
>contract MS enters in with PUBLIC schools must be made public.
>

You don't know much about Microsoft's power of suppression of news
articles, do you? :-)

For example, read the following:

http://www.pcworldmalta.com/specials/MSPiracy/

The facts in this are true.  Now, tell me why it is that the US PC news never
ran this story.

Microsoft has also routinely put in illegal/unsupportable things into it's
contracts.  see:

http://www.advogato.org/article/453.html

and

http://www.gnu.org/press/2002-04-11-ms-patent.html

and

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-868413.html

Note in that last one that the dollar prices were gagged - and this is
court evidence!!

Anyway, to get more serious about the disclosure thing, read the following
and I hope it's not too arcane.  I've seen some really gnarly contracts.

In theory, any contract that a government agency like the school
district signs sould be available for any requestor.  But contracts
are documents that are interpreted.  It's perfectly possible for
Microsoft to write a contract that contains language that a Linux advocate
could interpret to mean that Linux is permitted, but a Microsoft
advocate could interpret to mean Linux wasn't permitted.  Then if
Microsoft's reps "explain" their interpretation to the school administrator
in a meeting, it's unlikely that such a meeting is going to be
recorded for your inspection.  Your left depending on the school
admin having some balls to reinterpret the contract favorable to
Linux and then just sign it anyway and go against was he was verbally
told.

And, of course, Microsoft could always insert a "donation" clause, in
short something to the effect that if the school runs more than 90%
Windows OS that they are elegible for "extra" money or software licenses -
for example they could say:

"in consideration for the difficulty encountered certifying an exact
number of computer systems running Microsoft OS at any given time,
Microsoft will permit a variance of 20% off the total OS count, if
the organization counts more than 80% of it's computers as running
Microsoft Windows"

In short, what they are saying there is that if the school has 2,000
PC's and claims that over 1600 of them are running Windows then
Microsoft will allow them to run an actual number of up to 1920 computers
with Windows even though they are only declaring and paying for 1600.
But if the school says that only 1599 computers are running Windows,
then they can only run an actual number of 1599.

Another trick is stepping settings - in short they
arrainge the discount curve so that the school declares, say 1-1000
Windows systems, that the per-unit cost is $100 and if they declare 1001-1800
Windows systems then the unit cost starts dropping on a curve until
at 1800 installs it hits $55.  In short:

1-1000   unit cost $100
1001-1100  unit cost $90
1101-1200  unit cost $83
.
.
1701-1800  unit cost $55

(obviously in actual practice the above is expressed in a formula,
this is the same trick the US Government does with deductions in
the tax laws, BTW)

Now get out your calculator and guess what - for any system counts
between 1000 and 1800, surprise, you pay THE SAME THING: ie: roughly around
$100,000! :-) The price doesen't start rising until after 1800 and if you
combine it with the slop trick, why then your really not forced to pay more
than that $100,000 until you get to 2160

As a result, if your a district with 2000 PC systems all running Windows, then
if you start switching over to Linux, you save NOTHING until you get
at least 1000 systems converted

Clauses like the above are not illegal and not obviously anti-Linux.
But they effectively serve to pressure network administrators to
deemphasize use of Linux - unless they are willing to go whole-hog
and switch the whole bloody site to Linux.  And this is my premise all
along - that no government school district has the balls to actually
switch over because to do it means sweeping out EVERYTHING that's
attached to Microsoft - trying to pussyfoot won't work.

You can say what you want about "controlled introduction" but that's
a cop-out.  Microsoft is going to set things up so that the schools
won't see a dime of savings until they are really honestly willing to
kiss 80% of their existing Windows installs goodbye.

Ted