I guess while Dan is fighting the world on the Clinton thread the conversation here stops. Anyway here is an amusing article from techweb. techweb.com
Microsoft College Contracts Create Dependent Generation
(04/16/99, 4:54 p.m. ET)
By Mary Mosquera, TechWeb
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Microsoft's monopoly is creating a generation dependent upon its software, three college students told a congressional caucus Friday.
"Microsoft's monopoly has extended to the college campus," said Scott Knowles, a senior at the University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio, and president of the campus Economics Club.
Microsoft is in the midst of an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and 19 states, which charge that the software giant abused its operating system monopoly to extend its dominance to
Internet browsers. Company, state, and federal officials are in settlement talks while the trial is in recess until about May 10.
Students and consumer groups testified before the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is involved in economic, health, and social justice issues, on the monopoly's consumer impact. The students were from Ohio and Wisconsin, two of the states involved in the lawsuit.
As campuses get completely wired, Microsoft has negotiated exclusive contracts with colleges to supply software. They include the Universities of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Texas in addition to Dayton, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, an education publication.
"Microsoft is controlling the minds of the work force of tomorrow by ensuring they are trained on only Microsoft products," said Jason Fizell, a student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Although students benefit from a deep discount in Microsoft software, the exclusive contract rules out competitively priced choice for students, Knowles said. When a student enrolls in a college that has an exclusive contract, students must buy Microsoft software to be compatible with the school's format.
Microsoft's contract offer was not the lowest at Dayton, but the school felt compelled to choose it because the software is so pervasive, said Beth Paris, a junior at the southern Ohio university and vice president of the Economics Club. She found using the software convenient and the whole college could communicate, but as a result, students will probably never experience any other software.
There is no consumer harm now, but students see it over the long term. Microsoft's exclusivity may be discouraging innovation, Knowles said. Students majoring in management IS, for instance, are not being pushed to develop new programs, he said. The sentiment is, "There is no chance of designing software to compete with Microsoft," Knowles said. Students saw the lesson of Netscape, whose University of Illinois roots created the browser and could not prevail against Microsoft.
Fizell, a member of the student government, faults his college for not including student representatives in the negotiating process. These contracts involve the software decisions of hundreds of thousands of students. The Wisconsin university system has 175,000 students.
The present Microsoft $4 million contract is to expire April 30, but Microsoft has come back with a "bigger, badder contract" that is 25 percent to 50 percent more expensive, Fizell said. The university must now buy software licenses for the actual number of machines on campus instead of the previous provision for an estimated number in use at any one time.
Knowles said more Microsoft materials are being introduced into the classroom as the software becomes more complex. Microsoft also underwrites up to $10,000 annually each for 20 university computer scientists nationwide. Meanwhile, Microsoft's research lab lures away professors from universities at the rate of two per week, Fizell said.
Now, who ever said that Bill Gates isn't a patron of both the arts and education?
Thure |
