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underdogs

Is it possible that our neglected school systems have the power to lever the roots out from under an omnivorous capitalist beast of a monopoly?

In February, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he considered the “Linux phenomenon” the top threat to Microsoft’s plans for world domination.

No wonder Doug Miller, Microsoft’s group product manager for competitive strategies, immediately trashed it. “There really isn’t much value in free,” Miller told Wired.com. “Free does not sustain a business. . . . We have yet to see a business model in the Linux world that has any chance of long-term success.”

Tell that to Amazon.com, which claimed in a recent SEC filing that it saved $17 million in technology expenses by switching to Linux.

Tell that to Randy Baker, tech coordinator for 16 school districts and 12,000 users in central Iowa, who said he “completely dumped Microsoft last summer and migrated everything to Linux.”

Tell that to Portland Public Schools.

B y September, Portland schools will have opened 16 new Linux-terminal computer labs at a cost of $240,000, half of what those labs would cost if outfitted with the usual Microsoft trappings.

“We’re very serious about Linux,” said Scott Robinson, the district’s chief tech officer. “We’re down to the last few dollars from the 1995 technology bond. For me to refresh the school’s computer system, we have to look at open-source software and a different server.”¹

Wouldn’t it be nice that the beleaguered school systems could fight back from their current K.O.’ed status and make the world a better place in yet another way? The power they wield lay not only in their spending of meager funds but also in the fertile minds/hands/hearts they train to do what is right with the right tools. We can simply hope for better days or we can get off our asses and do the right thing if we want to expect them.

1. Borg, “For all you Microsoft lovers,” Posted on Sunday, June 30 @ 04:32:49 BST, <http://ciagents.com/article.php?sid=336&mode=thread&order=0> (30 July 2002).

30 July 2002, 11:47 ::

Yeah, Linux is the shit. As a uber Mac head who’s world revolves around OS X (10.2 went GM today!), I still have a lot of envy for the Linux crowd. Yeah X is Unix, but Linux is By The People For THe PEOPLE which to me means so much. I mean I’m using the Mozilla browser to write this. Linux is king, I admit. Once all the perif. support and wider software development…. everyone else better. Just the opinion of a layman.

— SiSawat 2002-08-02 17:37 #

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