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Minnis bows to lobbyists of Microsoft

Minnis bows to lobbyists of Microsoft: “Almost exactly one year ago, The Oregonian broke a story (”Microsoft puts the squeeze on NW schools,” April 21, 2002) about heavy-handed tactics by Microsoft Corporation that would have cost the Portland school district an additional half-million dollars per year — 10 teaching positions — in “protection money” to avoid a software audit. School districts across the state responded by converting their computers to a new, smarter breed of software called “open source software” that is faster, more reliable, more secure — and free. The savings, both in the cost of software licenses and the personnel costs of fixing systems that crash because of bugs and viruses, were phenomenal. The network administrator of tiny Riverdale School District, with two schools sandwiched between Portland and Lake Oswego, found himself with so little work to do after the conversion that he was able to return to teaching three-quarters time. If a school district as small as Riverdale can save three-fourths of a position by switching to open source software, how much could the government of the state of Oregon, which owns more than 50,000 computers, save? The answer: tens of millions of dollars, every year.” Wait, the story is even better: Microsoft lobbyists killed a state bill that would have let the State of Oregon also use open source to save money. From the Portland Oregonian by way of Open Mind, a Corante weblog about open source news.

URLs:

http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/editorial/1051876782142831.xml
http://www.oregonlive.com
http://www.corante.com/openmind/

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2003 at 8:12 am and is filed under Headlines, Legal Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.