Summary: Microsoft prepares another plan for New Zealand while it steps into education in Thailand

MICROSOFT'S war against GNU/Linux adoption is a very vicious and anti-competitive one. Regarding New Zealand, 3 articles were already cited here at the earlier stages when the news came about. The pro-Microsoft 'reporter' Gavin Clarke wrote about it later and so did IDG (again). This time it speaks with Microsoft rather than with Free software advocates like Don Christie. It turns out that Christie was right because Microsoft gears up for potentially more profitable deals where they engage with each agency in isolation, probably behind closed doors (more on that in a second).

Government discounts remain on table, says Microsoft

[...]

Microsoft is approaching government agencies directly in the wake of the collapsed G2009 all-of-government software licensing negotiations.

Microsoft New Zealand managing director Kevin Ackhurst says the standard set of terms and conditions applying to government agencies regardless of size or IT spend has changed little since the 2006 licence deal was struck. These terms, he says, still offer significant discounts.

[...]

He adds that Microsoft is happy with the outcome of the negotiations. "We have developed a deeper relationship with all parties through this process which has allowed us to get to a mutually beneficial outcome."

Guess who else covers the story? Microsoft employees, disguised as reporters.

Tony Rahman

[...]

Currently residing in Seattle area, he’s been with Microsoft for over 12 years as an individual contributor to senior manager. Currently, he’s a Group Program Manager.

These are some of the people who are running the Seattle P-I after it became a skeleton site masquerading as "news". The Seattle P-I is done pretending that it is not biased and we saw Tony Rahman doing the same thing a week ago. Here is this Microsoft employee publishing 'news' that enters news feeds regarding New Zealand:

With successful deals with British government recently (see post here), it's not unreasonable to think that Microsoft had tried to be as flexible and creative with its licensing agreements lately.

That brings this debate back to the nature of behind-closed-doors deals, with notable examples like Newham and BECTA [1, 2, 3].

Another important new report comes from Thailand, where Microsoft has been trying to grab control of the education system. We wrote all about it just weeks ago and here we go again.

Microsoft MultiPoint Livens Thai Math Class

[...]

His classes were all "chalk and talk," he says, lectures and examples on the board. But one day, Thailand's Ministry of Education asked him to try out Microsoft MultiPoint, software in his class, which allows dozens of computer mice to be connected to the same PC, one per student, so they can all use it at once.

[...]

Others accuse companies of simply trying to grow markets for their products instead of actually helping. OLPC, for example, has been accused of using its laptop project to expand the use of the Linux OS, while others say Microsoft simply hopes to counter Linux and spread Windows. Where children are involved, there are rarely easy answers.

When will citizens expel those who are responsible for advancing foreign corporate interests, which totally exploit young children in order to elevate personal profit in the long term? How selfish and naive must teachers and principals be to allow this? Or is it being imposed from above by politicians who are easily wooed by money and power? ⬆