Re: Major interview

[Jim Troutman <jlt@pivot.net>]

> I could suggest that the issue with schools is the cost of a SITE
> license.  When you pay upwards of $1000 per school for each of say 30
> software titles, that adds up rather quickly.  It is ENTIRELY possible
> that this model, with a REDUCED site license, would be useful in
> relationship with an OS that did not require a per seat cost.  If you

This is indeed a major issue for a lot of places.  Right now, K12
institutions usually buy Microsoft software under their "MOLP B" plan (MS
open license pack).  A NT server "per seat" license is about $5 to $6 each
(depends on reseller). You need one license per account (not per desktop,
per user account!).  A district with say, 3000 accounts, that is $15,000
right there.

MS has a new licensing plan, the name of which escapes me at the moment
(they unveiled it at NECC '99) which you must sign up all of the Pentium
and higher based PCs, and all PowerPC based Macs in your building or
district. They charge you about $50 a year (with some quantity discounts)
going down to the area of $42/year PER DESKTOP.  

This gives you the right to run any version of any MS desktop operating
system (even DOS or Windows 3.1, woo!), and a license for any version MS
Office, and a couple of other smaller programs thrown in.  The kicker is
that this is a 12 month right to use license -- it is an annual
subscription, you have to renew it each year.  So, if you had say, 500
desktops (and this has to include ALL desktops, even ones with other
operating systems on them), you are talking $25,000 a year to run M$
products. The plan does give you things like all of the new versions when
released at no charge, the right to eval up to something like 30 copies of
anything they make, and other things of that nature, but jeesh....

and the best part was when the Microsoft Rep. said "... and to top it all
off, we promise not to increase the price more than 10% a year!".
uh-huh. OK.

Right now this program is optional, but I can see the day when this will
be the only way that M$ will want to license software.  Which is fine by
me -- they are only speeding up their own downfall with that sort of
pricing.

Samba (even without solid PDC support yet) is very attractive compared to
the per seat cost for WinNT.

If more schools were using GPLed software and open source operating
systems, they would have more money to spend on real educational software
needs, such as software to support the curriculum taught in the school.  

I think the open source and free educational software out there is great
(and I want to see as much of it as possible) but there is also a need for
things like comprehensive GED skills packages, or nice multimedia rich
educational simulations that are bigger projects that require a lot more
effort to produce, and are harder to get people interested in coding,
because they aren't as sexy as Gnome or kernel hacking.