Microsoft vs. open source in higher education...

[atrus123]

I found Microsoft's role in this article (http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/01/commission) really dispicable.

Basically, a government commission passed some recommendations with very positive language regarding open source in higher education, including some specific projects, and Microsoft's representive to the commission appeared after the recommendations had been passed and somehow managed to change the language to make it less open-source friendly. Is there anyone here that thinks Microsoft's actions here were actually legit?

If interested, my blog (http://www.animewine.com) offers a quicker look at the topic than the article above, though I am also quite biased.

[Polygon]

since when was microsoft able to have any say in that matter? seems rather stupid to me that one email could change what they were drafting up.

[terminatingzero]

Well to me it seems like a conflict of interest to even have Elliot involved at all considering his position at Microsoft.

[Slychilde]

Companies have no reason to be there in the first place, in any way, shape or form. What I got out of it is Microsoft's rep saying, "What, you want to suggest open source so you can save money for the school and potentially it's students and taxpayers as well? That would mean my company get's less money, so no."

Do companies actually care about people at all anymore?

[terminatingzero]

I truly believe Mark and Canonical do.:D

[Michael_aust]

All I can say is that at my Uni they are completely in the pocket of Microsoft. They are NOT even running firefox on any of the machines!

We do have Linux installed as duel boot on some, however it is Suse 9.3 and they have done absolutely no maintenance work on it. It has never had the bugfix/security fixes applied. They installed every single packages on the disks almost. In windows they had removed access to even the pinball game, yet on the Linux installs they have left Freeciv and SuperTux.

Further to this they never even set the sound cards etc up. They update he Java environment on the windows partitions, yet they are still running Java 1.4 on the Suse installs.

I sent an email to one of my lecturers where I called the IT Technicians Linux incompetent, and I get a reply back saying that saying such things was a disciplinary offence (nothing came of it though), since when as speaking my mind been an offence?

There are all these posters up for the Microsoft accedemic scheme, you know where you can get a single limited licence to Windows 200, or Microsoft Access etc, but they have loads of restrictions. I put some posters up advertising Firefox (you know the condom posters where they say use protection) and these were taken down within a day. I also put posters up asking fellow users of Linux etc to contact me to see if we can get some kind of mini LUG going, these were also taken down.

Most of this is irrelevant, but I am just pointing out that in my Uni here in The United Kingdom Microsoft has a strong presence, we have a number of talks a year from MS representiives, the last talk we had was from some dude from Rare(people who make xbox games, the companies is now part of the Microsoft Gaming part).

I am sure that across the United Kingdom that Microsoft has an extremely long Presence and must certain use there power to influence the IT section of education.

Michael.