[PLUG] Linux, Portland Schools, and Costs

Michael Robinson michael at robinson-west.com
Mon Apr 21 19:16:02 UTC 2003


On Monday 21 April 2003 05:08 pm, you wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 14:49, Jon Jacob wrote:
> > Did you call someone in the district?  Who did you call?
>
> I called the main number, got transferred once and
> spoke to someone. I told her that I'd be happy to
> help organize volunteers from the 700+ people in
> Oregon on the mailing lists I help maintain for BizNix
> and PANUG. She sounded delighted and said she would
> pass it on. I never heard back. I assumed that they
> weren't really interested and the stories about how
> PPC was just trying to intimidate Microsoft were
> true.
>
> Ed
>

Sounds about right.  Portland Community College has or had
a deal with Microsoft that involved the donation of a lot of equipment
but of course this meant for PCC that officially it has to be a Windows
shop.  I told Heckman once that my interest is becoming a Linux
systems professional which I got criticized for roundly though it was
interesting that he claimed he has had some experience with Linux
before the conversation ended.

Some people are playing a foolish game with Microsoft.  Perhaps
they don't want to change or this is a manifestation of some company
can be held responsible and more importantly sued.  The latter is petty, 
but quite possible.  Another possibility is that funding has been so 
uncertain for so long for Oregon schools that behaviors and attitudes 
have adapted in unfortunate ways.  There may not be much concern 
about wasted money because schools are a sacred cow which have
wanted, and in some places sadly needed , more for a long 
time.  What's telling is that we haven't heard about any administrator 
cuts of any kind yet  even though we've seen school days and 
teachers, etc., hit the chopping block  Are we flooding our schools with 
reform programs resulting in more administrators and high overhead?  
Is the money distributed right throughout Oregon's public school system 
on a statewide and per district level?  No if too much is going to IT or 
other overhead.

The politics of Microsoft have clearly invaded the public sphere 
where Microsoft dominance is accepted perhaps because of the harsh 
methods it used to get where it is, using the work of others of course, 
still in evidence today.  Amazing considering Microsoft is classified as 
a monopoly and should arguably be taking action to improve it's 
own reputation and status.  This political interfence in my opinion 
is unacceptable for a general focus academic environment that needs 
to focus on computer science and the related fields within that which 
span far more than an operating system owned by one man.

Requiring public institutions to consider open source alternatives may be the
medicine that's needed.  Perhaps it will provide the political cover to choose
alternatives to Microsoft.  What I'd really like to see is new donation laws
regulating the strings that can be attached and I'd like to see Microsoft's
software licensing practices reviewed by the courts in light of how XP 
violates people's right to privacy with it's ability to collect any 
information from a system it is installed on.  Companies with tons of money
shouldn't influence the choice of software anymore more than the
brilliant individual with very little or no money.  The cost of buggy software
is quite high and individual discomfort with computers because of
privacy or other abuse will only have negative impacts on the high tech
sector as a whole.  I doubt many people are going to want to vote from
a Microsoft Windows workstation, so far it hasn't happened yet.

If the government would seperate the application and operating system
divisions of Microsoft and not allow these new companies to enter into 
exclusive secret agreements with each other it would go a long ways 
towards opening things up.  This should have been done already.  
Oh well.

I think the best approach to promoting open source in public places is
to develop an impressive presentation and gain an understanding of what
our officials expect, want, and need in their offices.  Windows compatibility
and integration is a lot of work, so flick Redmond.  There are a lot of ways
to deploy Linux to be affective in different venues and for varying needs.
IBM is helping with their Linux ads, perhaps it's only a matter of time before
the software culture will change.




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