A open, critical sent letter to the technical institute I attended...

[diablo75]

I recently sent an e-mail to the technical institute I attended where I obtained my diploma for computer repair and networking. Omitting the name of who I sent it to, as I didn't send it to anyone who works in the administrative branch of Kaw Area Technical School, I leave the rest open for anyone to read and reply to.

Dear _____,

A friend of mine is married to someone who works at KATS. They recently contacted me because KATS sends her regular e-mails containing attachments of documents using the *.dotx file extension. I've learned that this extension is a proprietary Word 2007 format. In addition to this, the attachments can only be downloaded if you are using Internet Explorer, as her web-mail interface is powered by the Microsoft Outlook platform, packaging attachments in some sort of *.ashx container that Firefox can't open.

I was hoping you might be able to shed a little light on something for me, or perhaps pass my thoughts along to someone else in a better position to address my concerns. I remember just before leaving KATS that the administrator had a wild hair for upgrading to Vista and everything else Microsoft 2007 related. I can't help but wonder how much money this kind of "upgrade" is costing the school and taxpayers who subsidize the institution. How can such expenses be justified when contrasted against open-source alternatives that would cost far less to implement to achieve the same or very similar ends?

I'm sure Microsoft discounts the cost of their software in bulk sales made to schools and such, but there is another important issue here besides money spent on software. It kind of goes along the lines of schools getting handouts from companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi for allowing their vending machines to be placed in cafeterias at high schools, or Channel One TV's with their commercial breaks in the class room. What I'm talking about might be called something like "brand name indoctrination." Where an educational institution is coerced into promoting one platform or product over another, passively acting as a kind of proxy for some distant corporations marketing department.

After using Linux for less than a year, I can't think of a single common task carried out in either a classroom or an office that couldn't be done using free and open-source software. E-mail, word processing, presentation, database, spreadsheet, photo editing, audio/video editing, etc. And all of this stuff I've encountered in the world of open-source is high-quality; much more than you would expect for something you didn't have to pay anything for and is dramatically increasing in quality at an exponential rate with time. I believe the popularity of open-source in general is going to have a much larger footprint in the world of computers very soon. It's difficult to believe that at first, until you look at other countries around the world and the trends of computer use outside our borders. It's one thing to talk about a school district switching to open source. But in some places around the world, you'd find entire nations mandating such a switch in the name of saving money and promoting community values.

I'm writing this because I feel that when places like schools embrace proprietary software, more importantly, proprietary file formats, they're implicitly encouraging people to be prejudice towards alternative, less costly open platforms. Platforms that could just as well provide the utility and functionality required to be productive in the classroom or the office or wherever. There is a lot of money out there to be saved and put to better use by educational institutions such as KATS and other school in this state. I hope that someday they will be more proactive in finding ways to achieve such savings which could be put towards further development and advancement in the quality and diversity of the education they provide to our society as a whole.

David Steinlage

[-grubby]

I applaud. IT seems about time someone gave schools a message

[Tundro Walker]

I'm reminded of social darwinism. If it's bad, it will kill itself over time. But, even though we see it as bad, it won't change, and here's why.

You have to follow the food chain. The technical schools are only following the supply/demand curve for more Windows / Microsoft training and indoctrination. They're supplying it. Who's demanding it? Corporations are demanding it, because of their entrenched infrastructure. Partly because they got sucked into the whole Microsoft Windows thing early on in the late 80's / early 90's, when MS was the "cheap" solution short-term. Now, it's turning into a long-term expensive solution, because you have to upgrade software every 5 years, MS is trying to push folks to subscription plans now that their software is stabilizing (IE: they've used customers as QA testers who paid for a product, but now that the product has the bugs worked out, and MS can't think of more features, they want folks to give them a monthly subscription fee...this is where MS Office is going.) They have to maintain lots of IT folks to roll out updates, maintain servers, etc, etc, because Windows still locks up and crashes computers. (Heck, I reboot my MS Windows XP machine at work at least once a day...more so if I've been doing some heavy MS Access work, because MS Access slows down a machine for some time even after you've finished using it.)

In order to change the companies, they need folks like you to go in and show them alternate ways to do things. You can't do it all at once, because entrenched manangement is pro-Windows / Microsoft, even though it complains about MS under its. MS offers product support, which has been another reason folks have argued that Open Source has a hard time making in-roads to companies.

As an example, the company I work for, a Telecom re-saler, used to focus on making its own software systems. It was all MS / .net based. Seemed like 1/3 of our company was IS folks just supporting and making new stuff (which was buggy and only did half of what it was supposed to.). Well, new management came in and said "look, we're not a software company, we're a telecom...so we're gonna stop making our own software and buy stuff off the shelf." Well, they bought off the shelf from a company that had built the software in Windows, so it was compatible with our current infrastructure, but also the company was capable of supporting our needs, from tweaking our system to re-writing or adding parts to their main program as needed. The current MS / Windows infrastructure and support capability won out over open-source / inhouse solutions.

Not to say all companies are like that. But it seems more techie-oriented companies (EG: Google) are willing to toss their hat into the Open Source arena, because they have like nothing but IS & programmer types working for them...and they do it well. But other companies...non-techie companies, like banks, telecom, grocery stores, wal-mart, etc...they want another techie company to handle the computer stuff...and MS is that company, because MS has always been that company. And, without gradual change, MS will always be that company.

Now, this is where guys like you can come in. You show up to a job working for some non-techie company, and you figure out a way to use an open source product to solve a problem for little to no cost (compared to an MS solution for the problem). You can't change a ship's course over-night, but if you can get some folks over to using Firefox instead of IE, then move on to maybe a different email application, etc, etc. It'll be slow going, and people resist change, because even if they're not happy with what they have, they don't want to learn something new (we are creatures of habit, and are inherently lazy). Folks have to be majorly unhappy with what they have to incite change.

If you're lucky enough to get stuck with a manager that lets you mess around, you could offer to run some test groups using Linux-oriented software. EG: if you're in a call-center environment, and the folks use a web-app that's stored on the server, and they just need a browser to hit it...ask if you can have a test group of 5 folks and toss Ubuntu on their machines (or on some old machines which folks had written off as "too old" for Vista)...you start salvaging "old" machines and breathing life into them again, then some folks might start to take notice. While you're doing it, it's imperative that you keep a cost/benefit analysis going, so you can show people the tangible improvement and/or cost-savings you're providing.

EG: It may cost $2000 to deploy a Windows machine (cost of computer, software, licenses, time to prep, run updates, etc, etc). But, if you can show that it takes only $1500 to deploy with Linux, and that it takes less people to maintain the Linux machines (EG: if you're maintaining 10 Linux boxes only 10 minutes a week, vs. a co-worker who's spending 10 minutes a day to maintain 10 Widows boxes...there's a big difference there, especially when you start scaling upwards.) You have to show tangible improvement.

It'll be tough, and you don't want to sound like a soap box preacher while doing so, because that will get on peoples' nerves. But a quick solution here and there, sometimes without telling anyone until they ask (hey, how come that server hasn't crashed in 6 months?...Linux, really?), folks will start to take notice.

[K.Mandla]

I recently sent an e-mail to the technical institute I attended where I obtained my diploma for computer repair and networking. ...
Nicely done. Congenial, nonconfrontational, but informative and well-presented. A gold star for diablo75: :KS

[RebounD11]

Can U send one to my school too :D I can't write one as good as this one.

[n3tfury]

very well done.

[diablo75]

Thanks for the compliments!

I had a little fun with some Microsoft fanboys on this issue, originally starting with asking what this file extension actually was and how to open it. Until just a few days ago, I had never seen it.

Be sure to check out my post on the second page. It's Rembrandt. :lolflag:

http://forums.techguy.org/business-applications/648094-how-do-i-open-dotx.html

[tehet]

Be sure to check out my post on the second page. It's Rembrandt. :lolflag:
Nah. It's trolling.

[bruce89]

dotx isn't proprietary, it is the OpenXML word processing part. OOo 2.3 can open it.

[diablo75]

I tried to open it with Open Office and it didn't work. I could try again...

[luca.b]

dotx isn't proprietary, it is the OpenXML word processing part. OOo 2.3 can open it.

Perhaps it's just a matter of semantics, but I'd suggest to call it OOXML and not OpenXML. There is nothing "open" in that format.

[isecore]

dotx isn't proprietary, it is the OpenXML word processing part. OOo 2.3 can open it.

OOXML (Office Open XML) is only Open in that it contains the word "open" somewhere in the description. In every other sense it's a heavily proprietary format with very poor documentation and like most everything out of Redmond a history of being incompatible with actual, real open formats.

I've received a few .docx files from clients. OO.o 2.3 does not open them. Every single time I send one of my pre-written emails back to the client explaining why OOXML and Microsoft is a bad choice in general due to vendor lock-in and generally sneaky tactics with their formats. I don't care if this offends my sensitive clients since they generally need me more than I need them anyway, and people need to be informed of this.

[bruce89]

At least OOXML has proper documentation (compared to the binary ones).

I don't like it either, but people have to realise that 90% of people will being using it wheter we like it or not.

My dislikes of it are the fact it reinvents everything (vector graphics in VML instead of SVG etc.).

I've given up with word processors anyway, LaTeX all the way.

[luca.b]

Seeing stuff like "in this part, let's do like Word does" in OOXML means it is not good documentation.

[kevdog]

This letter is kind of all over the map

The original purpose of your letter -- disagreeing with a document sent in .dotx format -- to a conclusion that
there is a lot of money out there to be saved and put to better use by educational institutions such as KATS and other school in this state.

** Note that it should be schools rather than school

Anyway not that I disagree with the point of your letter, however don't you think its quite a leap from going from an incompatible file format to savings thousands of dollars from schools across the state??

Seriously, if I received this letter, I would just resend the file in .doc format or something -- that's it -- and never give your conclusions a second thought -- just too much of a stretch for me.

[PartisanEntity]

Not bad, please let us know how they respond.

IMO it may have been better to mention that by using .dotx they are making it user unfriendly since not everyone uses MS proprietary format compliant software.

It would have been beneficial to mention that most often, open source software sticks to conventions which makes it user friendly.

[baxterdog]

I'm sorry diablo but I agree with kevdog. I would probably ignore this letter as well because it is not really compelling or succint enough to the uninitiated reader. i.e. the audience it was written to was 'the choir'.

There have been many folks railing against msoft's tactics for years but little has been accomplished except for the EU's anti-trust suit. Institutions that receive US federal monies have a mandate to continue using *******, ie, & outlook. This is sad, but alas, it is bigger than us.

There is a saying that goes; grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

By moving ourselves away from ******* and letting others get exposure to other OS's (yes, including the decent mac X) is all we can do.

Good luck though.

[fatality_uk]

Hello diablo75.
Can I ask that you keep an eye on this thread Linux For Schools Project (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=669553)
I am working with a number of people right now and will by the end of the month have some public documents to share.

The idea is to bring all of the thoughts and idea about Linux/FOSS in education together and make a "business case" for using it within schools. While I applaud this kind of measured, sensible approach, I feel that a large scale group bringing together as much information as possible will pay bigger dividends in the end. I would really like you/anyone to contribute to this.

[macogw]

Nicely done. Congenial, nonconfrontational, but informative and well-presented. A gold star for diablo75: :KS
Agreed!