[plug] Microsoft's insidious domination in Australian schools

[Patrick Coleman]

On 5/6/06, Gavin Chester <sales at ecosolutions.com.au> wrote:
<snip>
>    >Teachers were also apparently offered laptops by the education
>    >department a few years ago, and she mentioned that they were given the
>    >choice of Acers or Macs. She went for the Acer, because at that point
>    >she'd never heard much about macs, but I heard she was intending to
>    >switch to the mac at the next upgrade cycle after she saw one of her
>    >collegues using one.
>
> Forgive me if I'm missing something here :-/ ...  I seen a couple of
> replying posts that make the same reference to some schools/teachers using
> Macs.  Mac may use its own OS (until OSX, that is) but that still means that
> _every_ other piece of software on that machine is probably Microsoft.  So,
> I don't get the point of making this distinction because MS have nearly
> always written a Mac version of anything they code, surely?  Anyway, the
> point of the campaign (and that's what my original intention it seems to
> have become now) is that it's a case of proprietary software versus FOSS in
> WA schools.  Mac (hardware and software) is still _very_ proprietary, even
> if not as insidious or all-pervasive as MS.

I agree, proprietary software vs FOSS is the issue here. AFAIK
however, the only main (paying) product MS develops for Mac is Office
- and the cost of Windows is a large component of any
PC+Windows+Office purchase cost. Microsoft would therefore be trying
to dictate a 'no Macs at all' environment, but the fact that Macs are
there and being officially handed out to teachers suggests that the
education department is already using and supporting both platforms.

Teachers using Macs also contradicts what you were told - that only
Microsoft products are allowed on the network for 'administration and
support' reasons. Both these points help you build a case for allowing
FOSS ("If you're already allowing and supporting Macs, which are based
on BSD, then why not Linux?").

As an aside, from what I've heard Microsoft give schools -huge-
discounts on software (think giant binders full of every piece of MS
software available), probably with the reasoning that if the kids are
used to using it, they'll grow up happy little microsoft users. Apple
do too, for that matter. Indeed, Microsoft (via the school of computer
science & software engineering at UWA) provides free copies of Visual
Studio, Access, XP, and Server 2003 to each and every CSSE student
there. I might even take advantage of the offer - when and if my
internet dies and every single linux cd within a 100km radius
spontaneously combusts :)

Cheers,
Patrick

--
http://www.labyrinthdata.net.au