Microsoft vs. Northwest schools

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I ran across this story on Slashdot yesterday, and thought I’d post the link in case anybody is interested.

The Slashdot thread links to a column from the Oregonian, which says Microsoft has called a license audit on many school boards in Washington and Oregon, with 60 days (at the busiest time of the year!) to provide full documentation of all MS software in the system. The alternative MS mentions is to sign up for their school plan, $42 a license for every computer in the system, every year. According to the article, ‘every computer’ really means every computer, running Windows or not.

The Slashdot thread includes posts from a number of people suggesting a volunteer effort to install Linux in many of those schools. For Portland search the thread for ‘Steffan’ (his email address is there), for other places read the thread. For more appropriate reactions, take it to the Pit. (I might end up there myself.)

2

Wow. How hilarious. I hope Multnomah schools does go the Linux route just to make a point. I remember vague threats made at U of O and I assume other universities in the area a couple of years ago.
When I attended a different, nameless university it made a (expensive) deal with MS so that each student that year could have a copy of office on CD. Seemed very nice. 2 years later (after I had graduated) the CD EXPIRED! Of course the installation program looked for the desktop clock date to know if it had expired. . . not the most inviolable way to arrange things, but still it seemed gauche. I don’t remember noticing that in the agreement.

3

Well, this was obviously too critical to Bill’s plans for world domination to allow the schools to wait until the students’ summer vacation to come with the documentation. Sheez.