[Technical] Interestingcomputers-in-education

[Con Zymaris]

On Sat, Aug 06, 2005 at 09:40:31PM +1000, Stephen Digby DEET wrote:
> Agree that such large purchases should definitely go to tender. Amazed 
> that it didn't.  Just thought that microsoft won !

Most people think very much along these lines. 

Most people think that Microsoft just won the tender. There was no tender
in the first place. The only tender was in deciding which Microsoft
reseller would get the nod to distribute the software.

In fact, none of the major government purchases of Microsoft software, in
every state, and not just in Education, are done this way. We're talking
hundreds of millions of dollars for every software refresh cycle, merely
handed to Microsoft, with no opportunity for competition.

Now you know why we are taking this to the ACCC. The fact that no other
firm has done this yet, not even any of the huge players, is an indication
of how much Microsoft is feared in the industry.

You will find that Microsoft is feared just as much by the Department of
Education. Which is why they are too scared to push out copies of
OpenOffice.org and many other Windows-based open source applications to 
the public schools - "As it might annoy Microsoft..."

It's also probably one of the reasons why Microsoft's student programming
competition, looking to push VB.Net down as many students' throats as
possible, is supported by the Department of Education. Meanwhile OSV's
Wide Open Code open source competition, was not. Even after valiant
efforts by some DE&T staffers, and many months effort on our part.

One more thing. Several years ago, at one of the national MCEETYA
(http://www.mceetya.edu.au/) meetings, there was a directive adopted that
the states' education minsitries would go forth and prepare plans and
consider options for deploying future environemts on both Microsoft and
open source platforms by the next years' meeting. Come next year, all the
states' Departments of Education came back to their Ministers with
Microsoft options only.

_This_ is the environment and culture we're working to change. Luckily we 
like a challenge ;-)

___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477