School Software Licenses Under Review 157
Tony writes "ZDNet asks the question: 'Does Microsoft Campus give good value for money?' Its good to see a review of the dominant software, but the review is likely to lead to no or little changes, so the real question would be 'Is the review worth the money being spent on it?'."
As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:5, Informative)
...I can answer that question.
No.
Most of the Local Educational Authorities are in bed with Microsoft. Schools are free to do their own thing if they require, but doing so means you lose out on perks from the LEA such as other free software and support.
It is much easier for them if all the schools are running the same kit and software because it means they can all support things much easier (think IT helpdesks who are knowledgable in JUST the disciplines they need) and it helps them secure bulk deals. And even then, the savings aren't that great.
You Godless Commie Pinko Bastard! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would agree that it is much easier to support if all schools are running the same, but if they have to neglect other software concerns such as security, they should consider switching.
In some colleges and universities in the US (which are also mostly in bed with Microsoft), IT managaers are switching pre installed web browsers on college ownewd computers to Firefox.
In a few instances like Pennsylvania State Univ. telling Students to chuck IE [informationweek.com], the school can even influence which software the students use.
If the IT owners at these schools see a tangible benefit to switching from a Microsoft Product to a non-Microsoft Product they will do so.
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:1, Flamebait)
But by switching they neglect great deals like a free porche bundled with purchase of a million licenses.
As long as OSS can't give out free porches as bonus to government-funded purchases, we're on a lost position.
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:4, Interesting)
So... take the money you didn't spend on a million software licenses, and buy a couple thousand Porches? I fail to see how buying proprietary software works out for the better here.
Maybe if I sell you a copy of RHEL 4 for $200,000 and throw in a free Porche, would that make it better?
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:1)
YOU get the free porsche, if you get YOUR EMPLOYER to buy software.
But if YOUR EMPLOYER doesn't spend to money, you don't get the money for the porsche. You just get a pat on the head.
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
You missed the point... You sell a copy of RHEL 4 for $200,000 to the *government*, and give the free porsche to the purchasing manager that signed the purchase order.
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
When I worked for Yuba College in Marysville, CA (over a year ago) I led the charge to replace IE and OE with Firefox and Thunderbird, which is the standard now.
I also used putty to implement encryption on a formerly-unsecured system (aside from plaintext password protection - the app is a screen scraper that used telne
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:4, Insightful)
The OS is fairly clear cut. A school in the US simply has to be able to run MSDOS and Windows software. There are 20 years plus of legacy 'stuff' out there that are important to the school -- attendance, grades, stupid bureacratic reports, standardized test scoring, Mario Teaches Typing, etc. They often run only on MS operating systems (and it is often a struggle to get them to run there). There may come a time in the not too distant future when Macs and Linux will run this stuff routinely via emulation or WINE. Great -- but that's not today. In addition, in many countries a copy of Windows must purchased with the machine notwithstanding that is a clear violation of the most basic antitrust principles.
Office Suite products are a different issue. Power Point a pretty good product. Schools need it or something like it. Count it as a plus for Microsoft. Word and Excel OTOH are far too damn complicated for most educational uses. (If you ask me, they are far too damn complicated for most non-educational uses also). Can I use them? Sure. Do I use them? Hardly ever. I Don't do chainsaws either for much the same reason. Should a school have a couple of copies of MSOFFICE or a decent clone around? Absolutely. Should every student and staff member have a copy? That's nuts -- but in more school districts than not, they probably do.
A third issue is the unending reports demanded by the educational bureacracy. Attendance information. Number of reduced price lunches served -- by day. Number of playground swine and wild animal attacks broken down by grade. You name it, there's a report. Most of these come in the form of computer programs that attempt to make life easier for the reporter. Their distinguishing characteristics -- be they Excel Spreadsheets, Access, Web forms or whatever -- are that they all demand the latest technologies, they never (I repeat, never) actually work right without tweaking, and their support people are often quite clueless. For whatever reason, school IT people (who are pretty smart, but are often terrible at strategic decisionmaking) are unwilling to tackle this mess although it could probably be resolved without all that much difficulty. Until it is, schools need at least a few up to date Microsoft systems to accomodate the lunatics who think -- against all evidence to the contrary -- that Access or Excel -- are satisfactory tools for data collection.
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft's University EULA (Score:2)
For something like ~$50, students can "license" Microsoft Windows/Office under the EULA until one of the following occur:
1) They quit the university (they can't use the software anymore)
2) They graduate (Then they get to keep it)
3) The school-spec
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
The biggest thing Microsoft has done; lowered expectations of computers and software being considered reliable.
The result, managers focusing on supporting software, rather than find software that will not break in the first place. That is the biggest hinderance to adaption of Linux and other Open Source programs...
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... (Score:2)
Don't usually complain but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't usually complain but... (Score:5, Funny)
You're no Slashdotter. Get back to Technocrat and leave us to our childish flamewars.
Re:Don't usually complain but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't usually complain but... (Score:1)
So many ways to measure value (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with anything. If you used a computer in school, how similar was it to the one you use for your job today? When I was at school we used Acorn Archimedes....
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:1)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:1)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Not really, especially when you read the whole comment, that schools don't have the resources to go out and test every possible alternative. The 'industry standard' becomes the default choice.
All of t
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
When I was at school we had Commodore PETs. I can't really say that I've utilized my skills at Artillery and Time Trek in my current job. If only the PET had a solitare game, that would have prepared me for working with Windows PCs.
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Schools universally use the software/hardware that is recommended - and *only* the software/hardware that is recommended.
This is why Research Machines still exist, and schools pay 2/3 times the price for them rather than get a dell.
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
I developed a theory - that there are two ways to run a lucrative business. The first is to produce a product which is in some wa
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Hey, don't steal ideas from the marketing department of Apple in the 80's, they might still have a patent on it :)
Nostalgia/Disclaimer: My parents were teachers, as a 10 year old I had access to the cool Apples with 20 MB external harddisks etc. etc. I still remember the fun I had with hyper
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Hate to tell you this, but if they do have a patent on it there are literally dozens of companies in breach. Ironically, it's harder to get state schools to part with the cash - not because they've got less cash (though that is a factor), but because a lot of their decisions are made at the education authority level.
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:1)
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, they are grossly misrepresenting and overcharging for what they do.
Colleges and Universities represent themselves as more than trade schools. Trade schools have a narrower focus on imparting specific technical skills. Colleges granting baccalaureate degree are supposedly giving a broader education in higher intellectual skills. If I get a certific
Re:So many ways to measure value (Score:2)
CS (Score:4, Interesting)
But the fact is, when I entered the consulting biz I had very little use for CS. Everything is done half-assed, if at all, and real science was nowhere to be found.
Now, I just switched job and have gone the Microsoft route, and stangely, the quality of work is much better. Simply because you can still to things "quick and dirty" and manage to produce some quite acceptable results.
Thus, if your goal is science (a PhD or similar) a Solaris/UNIX shop is the way to go, especially today with OpenSolaris. But if you're going to work in tha' biz, Microsoft is where it's at.
I still miss the good old days, but clients wont pay for quality unless its billions in cash at stake or a great possibility that people can die if something goes wrong (which is essentially the same thing to an enterprise).
I still run BSD at home, but I'm glad I can work with MS software as it stands.
Re:CS (Score:2)
Re:CS (Score:2)
You should count yourself lucky. Some of us still have nightmares of the Win9x days, despite them being long gone.
Re:CS (Score:2)
If anything in the world was like an elephant riding a bicycle, that was it.
Nowadays I'm lucky enough never to have to look at the boxes my software runs on. Woot!
Mein Gott (Score:5, Funny)
Certainly my heartfelt gratitude go out to the Slashdot crew - especially ScuttleMonkey, bless his heart - for linking to such an enthralling tome of uncompromising educational policy.
Re:Mein Gott (Score:2)
Apparently they've been planning on this for some time now. Check out the prequel [zdnet.co.uk] to this story from last January. It's about as equally informative as the "update."
Deceptive advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it really outrageous that (in the UK at least) a big chunk of many schools IT budget goes towards Windows and Office, which are completely rubbish peices of software for educating young children. But the administrators don't understand much about computers, and the nice man from Microsoft is always taking them out to lunch, being helpful and giving them "special deals" which just happen to take up most of the IT budget...
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:5, Funny)
I beg to differ [albinoblacksheep.com].
P.S. Some explanation on how that was made can be found here [newgrounds.com].
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:4, Funny)
You can imagine how overjoyed my father was to turn on the computer and also hear that, rather than the computer greeting him with the usual Windows chime, it was cursing at him.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:4, Interesting)
(Disclaimer: This is the situation in switzerland)
Schools can't afford to hire qualified personal. A qualified System Administrator costs something from 6-10k per Month (x13). This is A LOT of money for a school.
Also, professional IT doesn't come cheap, and you usually have several software requirements. It's next to impossible for a "normal" School to get professionally supported (NBD Replacement for 3-5 years, Beige Boxes are NOT ACCEPTABLE) Machines without Windows licenses, so it would be a waste not to use them.
OTOH, microsoft offers significant discount for its software to schools. So it might be a lot cheaper to use a microsoft environment, because microsoft environments don't have compatibility problems which might necessitate the use of vmware, or sometimes even a windows terminal server.
Don't forget that a school usually consists of TWO different infrastructures. A smaller one for all the internal administration stuff, which most of the times REQUIRES windows, because of the ERP or Archival Software used, and a learning network. The latter COULD be setup using linux, but it would require additional infrastructure, which would in turn cost more money.
This is also the reason why most schools don't have a professional it at all. Setting up a windows environment is usually less complicated, but still, qualified windows personal is still rare and expensive.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
What is the point if the software is no good for education?!!
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:1)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2, Informative)
Surprisingly enough, most people are aware that Microsoft Office can't educate kids on it's own, just like guns can't kill people unless someone pulls the trigger.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:1)
Wrong. You can run both windows and Unixes unmaintened, but problems will arise. A bit later with unixes perhaps, but security updates are needed no matter what os you're running. They can be automated, but i prefer to approve patches (which is easy using WSUS, not-so-easy on most linux distributions i know).
> you have to worry about kids installing crud you don't want
They can't install jack shit if the admin is doing his job right.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
The other way, 12 calender months, plus 2 weeks vacation + 5 days sick + 5 paid holidays + a couple personal days = 13 months.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
The usual arguments against OpenOffice don't work in a school. It isn't a business and doesn't have to work 100% with MS Office, because schools are usually self-contained. Documents are internal and they don't have a ton of "clients" and what not where they would have to import documents in or out all day.
And if you start using OO, you might as well use Linux/BSD/Other free OS.
There may be a few objections:
1. Educational software isn't written for linux. Too true, but most educational software I have seen is crap anyway, seemingly bought just to have it rather than providing any tangible benefit to the students. Usually the areas are covered by good web applications anyway in the meantime so there are alternatives.
2. Teacher tools. True, I have seen some teacher tools in Windows but they have web application equivalents as well. The thing that can go wrong here is if the web apps use Windows, but as in many things, there are choices.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
And is the interface the same, so that when kids graduate and go to office jobs, they will know how to use the office suite which is most likely to be installed on their work machines? If not, then it's
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
For a start schools don't teach children how to use office packages (not in the UK at least). You go to night school as an adult for that.
Secondly those schools are on a budget and do *not* upgrade unless they absolutely have too.. I've never seen a school with anything newer than office 97.
Thirdly when these children start work the interface will have changed so much it won't be relevant anyway (have you taken a look at the clusterfuck that is the new office application? Try using
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
If you look at the difference between the Word 2.0 and Works interfaces, and the Office 2003 interface, you will see that there is about as much similarity between them as there is between OpenOffice.org and Office 2003.
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Are people like that really going to be any less productive if they're used to OpenOffice/Wordperfect?
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
if they were trained with another app from the start probabblly not, nor if you spend money to retrain them. However throw them at a new app without retraining and they may not be able to find anything.
and thats before you consider compatibility issues (yes theese happen between office versions too and its a pita there too), the last thing someone who doesn't really understand document structure is going to
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:1)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Telling them point blank that the only thing that should be used is Microsoft because anything else won't let them have a job is a MS marketing dream! Also known as brainwashing, indoctrination, whatever else you want to call it.
Anyone familiar with an office suite will take approximately a day or two to familiarise themself with a new one. At most a week (unless they're a programmer, using the finer details of macro languages).
Schools are NOT there to
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Have you ever used one of these "proprietary packages" (by which you seem to mean non-Microsoft, though there is hardly anything more proprietary than MSOffice)? They all look and feel exactly the same, down to the key
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
You know, I used to hear this argument when I was in high school (1992 or so), only then it was about WordPerfect. I should learn WordPerfect, there was a huge market for people with WordPerfect skills, knowing all WordPerfect's arcane keystrokes was the road to a good career. The smart school was the one that focused on teaching WordPerfect, not general computer-literacy.
Do you know anyone today who knows WordPerfect? Do you know any business today that uses WordPerfect? If I had bought that line of
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
I TA a computer lab at the university I am at. When people come in and want to learn about the tools
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
They licensed it in 2004, and it made it into the 2005 updates to school IT infrastructure.
You know how many times I've seen it used?
Once.
You know why?
Because as a TA for a Writer's Craft class, the final assignment I created necessitated using the PDF export features that StarOffice had and MS Word did not.
I spent at least six hours that semester helping students fix formatti
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Having the internal stuff all using OpenOffice will satisfy everyone. Runs on most OSes that anyone uses (and if not they're free to port it), it's free and wi
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:2)
Re:Deceptive advertising (Score:1)
As opposed to what (seriously)? Is linux/osx/etc somehow better at educating y
Deceptive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Worst-case scenario: A parent sees the commercial and decides that instead of the new Macbook that their son asked for to assist with his music production, they could purchase a great Wintel notebook for 2/3 the price. So they head to Best Buy, pick it up, and perhaps after they give it to their son they find out that it doesn't have ANY MUSIC CREATION SOFTWARE! Oh No! So they search Google for
Re:Deceptive? (Score:2)
It doesn't matter that professional artists of all stripes use Macs. Your child doesn't need pro tools (or Pro Tools, even tho it's available on Windows). An average parent wouldn't purchase $4000 custom golf clubs or $500 tennis rackets, for example. They'd go to Dicks Sporting Goods and buy something that most pro
That's funny... (Score:3, Funny)
Usually when I wonder this, it's referring to PC Magazine.
Don't bet on this being a foregone conclusion (Score:3, Informative)
See also Open Source Software in Schools: A case study report [becta.org.uk], Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs [becta.org.uk], Open Source Software in Schools: Information sheet [becta.org.uk].
Re:Don't bet on this being a foregone conclusion (Score:2)
Of course they're probably still running on overpriced Research Machines hardware... sigh...
Re:Don't bet on this being a foregone conclusion (Score:2)
As an LEA Schools IT support guy... (Score:4, Informative)
It's true that maintained (ie non-private) schools do have huge autonomy in how they spend their budget and manage their IT, as long as they support the National Curriculum effectively.
However, most Primary schools are not large enough to employ anyone with any decent knowledge of IT, and overwhelmingly they surrender part of their budget to the Schools IT Service run by their Local Authority in order to sort these things out. More importantly, they don't have the time or expertise to even look into these things! Even Secondary (High) schools depend on the local IT Support service to some degree - for hardware and network support, if nothing else.
So, it's down to the LA - the Local Authority, your friendly county/district/borough/city council or Unitary Authority - to drive innovation and intelligent software choice in schools. And what do they do?
Well, yes, they're predominantly in bed with big corporations who have established enterprise sales, support and service structures in place to get the big council contracts. Now, generally the Schools IT Support teams are somewhat independent from the Corporate IT bods, but seldom are they entirely separate and there is usually a noticeable cross-over. My personal dilemma is that, while I support schools, I myself am supported by the Corporate IT team, and depend on them for my office workstation. The result? Thanks to Council IT Policy, I am forced to use MS for OS, Office and every other flavour of software and as a result, am only able to significantly support schools in the same software .
Oh, believe me, I would dearly love to get them using OpenOffice.org (which, irritatingly, Capita Education Services - the biggest UK supplier of Schools Management Information Software - do not support), Linux, Firefox, whatever, but because I'm part of this big horrible organisation, my hands are tied and so are the schools'.
The latest initiative from the government is to open up competition between various Council IT services so schools can go over the border and get their IT support & training from Bogcaster Council instead of Tadminster, but in effect this has virtually no impact since - as I mentioned before - most schools don't have the time or inclination to go hunting around. If it's not dropped in their laps, most schools won't actively seek change as it makes life busier and harder in the short-term.
In short: No, this report will not make any difference at all.
Campus Agreement can be reasonable (Score:1, Informative)
Does only learning Windows provide good value? (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally think that the whole standardisation on Windows is not about education quality but rather about making life easy for the teachers who often appear to only be a few pages ahead of the students when it comes to using software. Teachers are the limiting factor. Students are likely to adapt easily to all sorts of platforms without much trouble, but teachers (apart from a small number of bright individuals) have really only learned which button to mash so it isn't surprising that the pupils all learn what button to mash and when mashing that button doesn't work they don't know what to do.
Is this the future of computing? I really hope not. So no, standardising on a single software platform is not good as they do not learn how to adapt. Learning is not just about known how to do something, it is about why you did it.
Re:Does only learning Windows provide good value? (Score:2)
Why shouldn't Microsoft software be evaluated? (Score:1)
Worth the money? (Score:2)
That is, even if it changes nothing, it doesn't mean it wasn't worth the money. Anyone who doesn't review policies and processes regularly has no idea whether they're even relevant any more. "Carry on as you are" can be just as valid an answer as "change it like this".
College Didn't Find a Reason to (Score:1)
They went along to mention to us that the Microsoft products would still be available for "discount prices," although they failed to mention any such prices.
It was nice, for a while at least, for us college students to
Change afoot (Score:3, Interesting)
Babies and young children learn by rote {means-oriented}. Older children learn more in terms of abstract concepts {end-oriented}. This is an evolutionary necessity; a three-year-old probably hasn't worked out the likely consequences of tumbling over a cliff edge, so a harsh reprimand from an adult can literally be a lifesaver. Teenagers think they know it all and are continually experimenting with boundaries. Adults have a tendency to revert spontaneously to means-oriented learning if they think they cannot understand something.
Now, as things currently stand, Microsoft have achieved a monopoly through a combination of illegal and immoral practices. So schools are teaching Microsoft because "it's what they'll encounter in the real world", and meanwhile businesses are buying Microsoft because "it's what they learned in school".
Schools today are basically free Microsoft training centres. The kids don't learn word processing, they learn MS Word. They don't learn spreadsheets, they learn Excel. They don't learn to design web pages, they learn FrontPage. The teachers are just parrotting from the Microsoft textbook. All those unreliable Windows machines need resetting from time to time, so a full-time "IT technician" is required to go around rebooting them and never understanding what went wrong in the first place. This demeans the job title of technician {it used to mean "someone who knows just as much as an engineer, works just as hard as an engineer and gets paid half as much as an engineer"}. A monkey could be trained to do that, for crying out loud. Maybe somewhere in the world there is an organisation which has actually trained a monkey to reboot misbehaving Windows boxes. Actually, Microsoft are working on lowering the status of "engineer" as well {it used to mean "someone who did more mathematics at university than someone on a mathematics course"}.
Maybe if schools weren't indoctrinating impressionable minds into The Microsoft Way from an early age, then businesses wouldn't all be buying MS Office "because it's what they learned in school".
I was actually around in the 1980s, and I was forced to listen to all the music that doesn't get played at "80s nights" because it was shite. In order to survive around computers in those days, you had to pick up on abstract concepts because there was no consistency. BBCs, Commodore 64s, Orics, Spectrums, Dragon 32s, Amstrad CPCs, and the obsolete models they had replaced -- they were all different. Get yourself an emulator and some tape images, and have a play. Newsagents sold magazines with listings that the truly masochistic could spend hours typing in. Some people actually managed to hack a program written in one computer's dialect of BASIC to run on another {I accomplished this feat at least twice myself, modifying a PILOT [wikipedia.org] interpreter originally meant for the Apple ][, and a text adventure game meant for the Oric, to run on the BBC model B}. As the next-generation machines like the Amiga took over, type-in listings disappeared; due in no small measure to the lack of a useful bundled programming language. {AmigaBASIC was like a poor-quality "1970s crate" emulator; barely computationally-complete, and certainly couldn't be used for writing any sort of application programs.} When I left school and went to university, there was a curious mix of DOS, VAX/VMS; and, later, more or less heavily modified versions of Unix. The VT220-alikes in a room wouldn't even necessarily have the same keyboard layout.
I survived.
Re:Change afoot (Score:2)
Product or service? A bit off topic - sorry (Score:2)
For products it is not legal to charge two customers different prices without some approved mechanism (like coupons). Mr. White comes in and buys a loaf of bread for $1, then Mr. Black comes in and it's suddenly $2. Illegal. Now if Mr. French comes into a store in Paris, you can charge him $3 for a loaf, while charging Mr. Indian in New Delhi $0.10. Legal. Hell, if you're Amaz
Re:Product or service? A bit off topic - sorry (Score:2)
Airlines are the same; they need to offer 'first class' and 'economy' fares. A seat still available 30 seconds before the door closes is worth more than a seat that you promise to occupy 6 months
What happened to bidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good to see someone thinking (Score:2)
MS Office can not be avoided... (Score:2)
Re:TFA text (Score:2)
Re:Support Costs (Score:1)
It's tempting, but I think I'd choose the Linux job
Re:Do the ZDNet editors need to go back to school? (Score:2)
Second, just as in the 1920s (or even today, in newsprint) there are formatting concerns with your copy. That hook line (which is what you are referring to) ideally should be in one line and be in a slightly larger font than the article text. In addition, it needs to fit in the width of the rest of the article, for ease of reading, and to allow ads next to the article.
Third, brevity is important to online journalis
Re:Do the ZDNet editors need to go back to school? (Score:2)
and what that this prove? (Score:5, Interesting)
So who cares what the non-Geek users are using? Thats like trying to understand where a herd of horses is going without looking at the lead stallion. Of course most of us are not as physically imposing as a stallion, but the analogy has some validity: If the lead stallion is considering the needs of the herd, he can succeed. If the open source Geeks are looking our for the needs of the non-Geek office worker, they too can succeed and that success is good for all. There are many forms of leadership, Geeks provide the technical leadership of society.