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Microsoft, Massachusetts, and IT
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jun 19, 2006 08:42 AM
from the big-business-and-politics-go-together-so-well dept.
from the big-business-and-politics-go-together-so-well dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "A big story in Massachusetts last week was the announcement by Microsoft that it would give $30 million in software to Bay State high schools and universities. Less noticed was the fact that an important economic stimulus bill adopted by the legislature lacked the amendment that sought to gut the power of the State CIO to set any new IT policies that might require compliance with certain standards (like ODF) or favor open source software. Should these two dots be connected, and if so, how? After all, why would Microsoft reward Massachusetts for taking no action to curtail an IT policy that favored ODF and rejected Microsoft's own XML format, especially after Microsoft has by all accounts lobbied so aggressively to bring about a change? As it happens, the fact is that the game isn't over yet: I've learned that the IT policy language hasn't been permanently defeated — its just been shifted out of sight to an 'outside section' of the current budget bill."
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What Does the Microsoft ODF Converter Mean? 177 comments
Andy Updegrove writes "It's been a week now since Microsoft announced its ODF/Office open source converter project - time enough for 183 on-line stories to be written, as well as hundreds of blog entries (one expects) and untold numbers of appended comments. Lest all that virtual ink fade silently into obscurity, it seems like a good time to look back and try to figure out what it all means. In this entry, I report on a long chat with Microsoft's Director of Standards Affairs Jason Matusow, and match up his responses with the official messaging in the converter press release. The result is a picture of a continuing, if slow and jerky, evolution within Microsoft as those that recognize market demands for more openness debate those that want to follow the old way. This internal divide means that the proponents of change need to point to real market threats in order to justify incremental changes. This adaptation by reaction process leaves Microsoft still lagging the market, but has allowed those that favor a more open approach to gradually turn the battle ship a few degrees at a time."
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Large Companies & Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on the complexity/use of your software, you put it either in the primary schools (K-12) or secondary schools (colleges). And you make it free and secure. Use license pools/server or anything to get your product into the learning process. That's where the money is. That's where you ensure your future.
Back in my undergrad days, I had access to Matlab, Pro Engineer, Mathematica, MSDN licenses, Windows XP, Rational Rose, the list goes on. I think it was Macintosh that originally discovered that putting your technology into the hands of your youth ensures your future. Why? Because Americans are predominantly lazy and we hate to climb learning curves. Macs especially build a sort of security sense that the user is safe and the machine is super friendly.
You might call this the "bottom up" approach to seeding the public with your product. Because the students aren't customers but one day they will be raised to be customers and they will decide what will be used. If you don't believe this model works, you're a fool. Time and time again I've caught myself saying, I wish I could just script this in Matlab and let it dump it to an Excel sheet. It's not that it would be easier, it's just that I know precisely how to do computations in Matlab due to my undergrad years of using it.
Now you have Microsoft trying to stop a "top down" effect in Massachusetts. Whereby they try their "MSDN Academic Alliance" strategy targeting a state's public schools. But why are they only targeting Massachusetts? Probably because of the ODF movement in the state government. If the government mandates that everyone (schools included) use ODF files and ODF software, where does that leave Microsoft? No longer the primary tool of the children, that's where.
What's the lesson to learn from this article? The squeaky wheel gets the oil!
Not enough funding for computers and software at your school? Well then, simply alert your local media and just try to enforce the ODF standard. I think you'll find that Microsoft will suddenly come (with the national media) to meet all your software needs!
Re:Large Companies & Education (Score:5, Interesting)
So if you establish Microsoft XML as the "standard" for politically powerful public schools, you've basically done an end-run around the state CIO. And when it comes time to ditch ODF, the teachers unions and school board associations will push hard to adopt whatever Microsoft is pushing.
Parent
The kids are the winners here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:4, Insightful)
And having kids with the knowledge that nothing exists in this world except M$ products, it's this way all over the world, here in Egypt M$ subsidizes school software to the extent that it offers windows+office packages in the equivalent of less than $3 to students, and in the end we get students who don't know what's a spreadsheet or word processor, they only know Excel and Word etc..
Yet even in the US I recently read on a republican blogger's page someone comparing emacs (she called it emac) with M$ Word and dubbing emacs of being a word processor of lesser quality.
Parent
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Break out the tinfoil hats everyone!
Parent
All Republicans are NOOBZ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be fair here; being uninformed about what emacs is, and writing a poor comparison in her blog has NOTHING to do with being a Republican.
Parent
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:4, Interesting)
If it isn't done to the exclusion of learning anything else. More important to say, learn to read and write without the dubious aid of MS Word's squiggly lines first. I'd rate touch typing a much better skill to than knowing the vagaries of a particular word processor. The interface is constantly changing, but the important features are trivial to learn if you've used any alternative tool (since most mimic MS products now, as MS used to mimic Lotus and WordPerfect).
Parent
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember in my undergrad years, I had a module called "Computing Fundaments 3" or somthing similar (but in spanish) where the teacher was supposed to teach how to use Excel. He gave us "Computing Fundamets 2" where we programmed in Visual Basic 6 (nothing fancy) and after finishing the module I told him it would be better for the students to learn the "guts" of a spreadsheet instead of learning just how to use the spreadsheet, we had a small discussion about it.
At the beginning of the "C.F.3" module, he told the grups that instead of learning something he was sure everybody knew (excel formulas etc etc) we were going to learn how to *make* a spreadsheet, so there we were programming a spreadsheet in C/C++. It was a really cool experience, it was de 3 semester of the undergrad and none of us had any idea about function parsing mechanisms and the like, the teacher gave us some photocopies of a very easy (albeit not efficient) algorithm. At the end of the course the different teams had different spreadsheets with differnt capabilities, it was really cool.
All this blah blah means that it is up to the teacher what students learn, and after all it is up to the students, I do not know how is in USA but at least from my one time undergrad experience in Mexico, almost all the students just go to the school for the score and the paper, and they do not care what the teacher will give, the other half do not have a clue of what the teacher will teach, so, it is up to YOU (the student[s] that know) to convince the teacher to focus on certain specific areas. It worked for me in a lot of courses during undergrad (granted, not for EVERY course) thus usually the "end of year projects" requeriments where fulfilled with my own home projects.
Parent
Wrong.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The schools can keep their $30 Million in the pocket when they use Open Source software just as well. The difference being that in a year from now they can get the next version for free too...
Parent
Hmm, (Score:5, Insightful)
If that were the case, then perhaps educated students would be able to rapidly adapt to new interfaces rather than being stuck when a different product (or a new version of the product they were schooled on) is put in front of them?
IMO, kids that memorize button positions rather than learning principles are always going to be less productive, as even the same exact product will go through version changes, menus are replaced with ribbons, the UI flavor of the day (say docking windows or floating animated helpers) is tried out, etc.
IME, the real world in IT is one of constant change, and the folks best positioned to thrive there are the ones who are able to easily cope with multiple interfaces to the same basic task or principle.
Parent
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, in the end, if they go with an open document specification, they may end up saving the equivalent in money that way. It's also $30 milllion in software that was donated, not cash. It's bribery, and in public infrastructure when the company making the "donation" is the topic of hot discussion, it's clearly corruption.
The entire process of getting ODF in Massachusetts stinks. Those arguing against it are using invalid arguments, and now it's being pushed in a bill that's unrelated (I don't care how much of a good cause something is... all these rider bills are a plague upon the public as well). Not to mention the amount of pressure a company from a different state is capbable of putting on a state government.
P.S., I'm running the State House in my own state becuase I am that fed up with seeing this kind of thing.
You should try it... it's a heck of a learning experience, even if you don't win. Still hoping to win, though.
Parent
Re:The kids are the winners here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know.... About three years ago I was living in Thailand and actively involved in the hot Linux uptake there. The government had a five year plan to move to Linux and was promoting it everywhere. The Thais in the gov't FLOSS program were even talking about "official government OS" for LinuxTLE (NECTEC's distro). People were talking about the empowerment of the local IT business and over half of the computers on display in Carrefour and Lotus were running locally produced Linux. Thailand even famously broke MS's "one price around the world" policy. It was like a revolution under colonial rule, I kid you not.
After a year of this, MS walked in and offered a "deal" which legitimized all the currently installed MS operating systems within the government and promised lots of software for schools. Since the schools were mostly without computers and the government had the same problem with copyright infringement that the rest of the country had / has. It cost MS nothing but the price of the plane ticket and maybe some money under the table -- I don't know about that.
The FLOSS movement died right there. Nobody talked about it anymore, and I can't even find Linux in the stores anymore. The revolutionaries were quieted and the unrest was quelled. Everyone went back to being the good little MS users they were "supposed" to be.
There's something truly evil about a deal like this. The kids in Thailand certainly didn't profit by losing their empowerment to a foreign company. The IT industry is again dependent on one.
Now that I'm in Korea, I keep hearing the same kind of talk here, but I've never even SEEN an installed Linux system outside my own.
Too much talking on my part.
Parent
Wrong, the children LOST! (Score:5, Insightful)
The schools would have a lot more than $30 million if they didn't spend any money at all on commercial software, using free software instead. Free software in schools is interesting in that it's one thing that's both better and cheaper at the same time.
What constitutes a better education? Should children learn to push buttons, or should they learn the fundamentals? Using MS-Office in schools because that's what most of them will use professionally later is like having them read the National Enquirer instead of Moby Dick.
Parent
"Should" they be connected?! (Score:4, Funny)
Please tell me you're not from the US -- please!
Because if you're from the US the question is the height of naivete and clearly demonstrates you don't have a clue about how US politics work and the levels of bribery and corruption inherent in US politics.
Re:"Should" they be connected?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there some sort of filtering process during slashdot's account creation process that requires you make stupid, overzealous statements about the evils of government and politics? If you honestly believe the US is a bastion of corruption, you should try visiting a few other continents. My family is from Iran, and I've been back plenty of times, and I have to bribe the goddamned luggage handlers so I can get out of the airport in a timely fashion. And that's the tip of the freaking iceberg. I've been to Japan, Turkey, Hungary, Romania (where policemen are beaten for reporting police brutality), Bulgaria, the UK, France, and let me assure you, bribery and corruption are everywhere. I'm by no means a nationalist, but I know a good thing when I see it, and you have no idea how much better the US is when it comes to the rule of law.
P.S. Don't even get me started on Mexico.
Parent
Re:"Should" they be connected?! (Score:5, Insightful)
So the gist of your argument is that corruption here in the US is ok because it's not as bad as some other places? That's got to be the weakest argument I've ever heard. Corruption should be fought whenever it is found. Yes, maybe things are better here, but they could be better still if we'd fight this kind of thing whenever it rears its ugly head. That's how we keep things better here.
Parent
Why Assume Bribes When Extortion is a Possibility? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like Microsoft's monopoly or not (I don't), they ran into problems in the late 90s because they didn't give out much campaign contributions. They learned their lesson well.
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a software monopoly helps to hold the monopoly together. They're smart, so they seek to maintain their monopoly even when it causes them to lose money.
In short, this is just a good investment for Microsoft.
A two-headed chicken... (Score:4, Funny)
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Large Charity Tax Deduction for MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't forget about the anti-trust settlement which allowed them to print money in the form of free software [zdnet.com] on CDs. Now, that's a sweet deal any company would jump at. Apple's opposed [com.com] the deal since it hurt them.
I Think We Have Discovered Office's Value (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, I use office products all day every day, on one machine that has M$ office, and one that has OO.o and I can't say that I have noticed a significant difference in terms of my productivity, either.
Re: reward (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a reward: this is good marketing. It's marketing because it costs Microsoft next to nothing to give software away (they've already paid to create it, and MA wouldn't buy it from them -- hence, very little lost $$). However, by giving it to students, they can train future generations on their software, thus helping to lock them into Windows & Office. When these students go out into the Real World, their only software experiences will be on MS stuff -- and thus, their employers will have incentives to use MS stuff rather than retrain them for something else. It's good marketing because, as stated above, it doesn't cost MS much $$. And smart companies always jump at the chance for cheap marketing.
Monopoly is Its Own Reward (Score:5, Insightful)
With so many colleges, Massachusetts is very influential in forming "software habits", apart from its rank as the 4th most populous state.
If Microsoft can use those "free bags" of smack to lure the state into making Microsoft's brand of junk into law, that's a big bonus. But just getting the kids hooked is worth doing, even if they have to wait for the state to require addiction.
Re:speaking of self interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent