SCN: Microsoft Puts the Squeeze on NW Schools

Tue Apr 23 12:37:52 PDT 2002

>From the Oregonian. The copy and paste trick didn't work so great, so the link to
the article is below:                                                   

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/all_wire_stories/101386428029222529.xml

  Microsoft puts the squeeze on NW schools 

  04/21/02

  Steve Duin 

  Predatory? Monopolistic? Customer-unfriendly? Microsoft? 

  Say it ain't, Joe . . . and Steve and John and Scott and the rest of the computer
tech supervisors at
  the 24 largest school districts in Oregon and Washington. 

  At the busiest time of the year for those districts, Microsoft is demanding that
they conduct an
  internal software audit to "certify licensing compliance." In a March letter, the
software giant gave
  Portland Public Schools 60 days to inventory its 25,000 computers. 

  "Which," said Scott Robinson, the district's chief technology officer, "is a
virtual impossibility." 

  Microsoft is well within its rights to call for an audit. Everyone says so.
Everyone has read the
  contract. But school officials in both states are calling the audits "untimely,"
"outrageous" and
  "typical of Microsoft: not very bright." 

  Many also consider the audit requirement a strong-arm tactic to push school
districts into
  Microsoft's costly system-wide licensing agreements. 

  "Given the fact that the letter came from their marketing department, and included
a brochure about
  their school licensing agreement, this didn't seem terribly subtle to any of us,"
said Steve Carlson,
  associate superintendent for information and technology for Beaverton schools. 

  "I have a more simplistic view," said John Rowlands, director of information
services for the Seattle
  School District: "They just want to squeeze every nickel out of us they can." 

  For sheer irony, it's hard to beat the fact that the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation is pouring
  millions of dollars into small, high-tech high schools even as Microsoft is
looking for loose change at
  schools such as Jefferson and Marshall. 

  The school districts are considered guilty of software piracy until they can prove
they're in licensing
  compliance. If the district can't drum up the staff to manage the inventory,
Microsoft is willing to
  show up with its own audit crew, but if a single computer is found with illegal or
undocumented
  software, the district must pay for the audit. 

  "This doesn't recognize any of the complexities of the educational environment,"
Robinson said.
  Many of the 25,000 computers in Portland schools were donated and arrive without
pedigree or
  papers. "We're bubblegum and baling wire in terms of what we're putting on the
desktops. For us to
  try to manage every donated desktop that comes in from a business or an individual
is ridiculous." 

  Ah, but wait. Microsoft has an offer it thinks you can't refuse, if only to avoid
the audit: the vaunted
  Microsoft School Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, a school or
district simply counts
  its computers and pays Microsoft somewhere in the neighborhood of $42 per machine
for one
  systemwide annual license. 

  As Rowlands noted, IBM rolled out this idea years ago. Schools liked it because
they could add
  hundreds of computers over the course of the school year and not pay for the
additional software
  licenses until the next computer count. 

  But Microsoft has put a new spin on the agreement, requiring an "institution-wide
commitment." That
  means the district must include in its count not only the PCs, but all the iMacs
and Power Macs
  that might conceivably use Windows software. 

  What would it cost Portland Public Schools, which is already facing a $36 million
shortfall, to sign
  that Microsoft School Agreement? 

  "A rough number? $500,000," Robinson said, "which translates, roughly, into 10
teaching positions."

  No one at Microsoft -- and I dialed three different offices -- returned phone
calls Friday to explain why
  the "random" audits targeted the nine largest school districts in Oregon and the
15 largest in
  Washington. Nor was anyone available to explain why Microsoft failed to notify the
two groups
  chartered to represent the schools in licensing negotiations, the Oregon
Educational Technology
  Consortium and the Washington School Information Processing Cooperative. 

  "Everyone has a bad taste about the way this came down," Carlson said. "The audit
is heavy
  handed; its non-participatory. Either they're starting out with the assumption
that we're all crooks or
  they feel they can bludgeon school districts into their marketing agreement. It's
clear they're not
  spending much time talking to the schools they're purporting to be supportive of."

  Thus, it's not surprising that several schools are asking, along with Robinson in
Portland, "whether
  we want to continue with the Microsoft platform." 

  One of the options is Linux, open-source software schools can run on their
desktops free of charge
  and without a license. Linux is particularly useful on donated computers that
aren't worth the $100
  Microsoft charges for a software license. 

  Paul Nelson, a teacher at Riverdale, and Eric Harrison with Multnomah ESD have
developed a
  thin-client software called K12LTSP that runs Linux. In the last nine months,
they've distributed the
  software to 5,000 schools. 

  "Schools and government agencies that are paying for Microsoft Office are wasting
money," Nelson
  said. "They should be using free software. A lot of this stuff has become generic.
It doesn't take a
  fancy program to make something bold." 

  R. Thor Prichard, the executive director at the Oregon Educational Technology
Consortium,
  observed, "Microsoft has made it known they're concerned about Linux invading
their territory.
  They're doing a lot of strategy building about eliminating Linux as a threat. Some
of the districts they
  targeted are some of the districts doing initiatives in Linux." 

  Subtle? Artful? Benevolent? Microsoft? That'll be the day. 

  Reach Steve Duin at 503-221-8597, Steveduin at aol.com or 1320 S.W. Broadway,
Portland OR
  97201. 

                    Copyright 2002 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.

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