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Story: Microsoft rubbishes school open source report

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I really think most people are not really listening to Microsoft anymore. The educational market was dominated by Apple for many years before Microsoft decided to seriously target it. A lot of excellent educational software was never ported to microsoft.

The TCO arguments might hold up for school administration, but not for the students, because of several assumptions in the TCO argument.

1) TCO presumes that the uses is already compentent in windows and it applications and the cost of retraining is a considerable expense. Younger students are not proficient or accustomed to anything and have no problem adapting to the difference between Windows, linux and Macos. My 8-year-old does it all the time.

2) School budgets are usually tight and the hardware is seldom cutting edge. Every new version of Windows generally requires an investment in new hardware. Most school systems use a seven year deoreciation schedule, and many shcool systems use computers in thier labs that are over 10 years old. This is no problem for linux, as it can be tailored to lesser hardware requirements. The minimum hardware for a linux webserver is a 16 Mhz 386. The bare minimum to support a web browser is 50 Mhz 486. Most K-6 grade students will not benefit from an Office suite, but Microsoft will benefit in profits and in the long term from indoctrination of the students.

3) Quality is a subjective term. One argument I have heard against Open Source is the old 'you get what you pay for' adage. It costs less for a software publisher to make copies of software than for an individual to do the same.
Most of Microsoft's TCO arguments try to follow a similar reasoning.. "Our software is good because people pay lots of money for it" just doesn't ring true the people doing the paying are not given the choice. Most schools are paid for by taxpayers.

4) Administration costs assume that linux requires the same level of administration as Windows. Due to the simple and robust security model on linux, combined with built-in
capabilities that are expensive add-ons in the Windows worldview, less expensive hardware can be used as graphics terminals or even as web clients which translates into very low administration overhead, lower cost per station, allowing more access for the students to the computers.

Now for a clarification. Open Source does not mean no cost. While most open source software is free gratis, sone is not. When you buy a license from a software publisher, you do not own that copy. You do not have the freedom to alter it, even for your own use. Open software give you the freedom and the means to add you changes, corrections, and enhancements to the software as long as you honor the open source status of the original work and you make the source code for your changes available to those that you give copies to.

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