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   Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 12:16:13 JST Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿

   Ugh, on the rare occasion when my boys' school contacts me to do something, like consent to them taking part in a field trip, I'm usually presented with some hokey proprietary webservice from a 'plucky' NZ company. It's invariably hosted in the US, behind CloudFlare, with endless Google, Facebook, and other iffy offshore dependencies (looking at my uMatrix extension). Why can't they just be local, libre solutions funded by the Ministry of Ed, hosted by some NZ company here?

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 12:16:12 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @lightweight Why does it need to be hosted by some NZ company instead of hosted by the school?
     
     Just because a company is local doesn't necessarily mean it's not malicious.
     
     I'm sure the school has an internet connection and has enough space to put a single server in, which would have no problem hosting a perl CGI script that shows the consent HTML page with a tickbox and a submit button (sure you can use some other CGI language if you want a worse and less reliable experience).
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 12:49:07 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @lightweight >because individual schools can't afford people who could keep such services running,
     If millions or billions can be blown on proprietary licenses, I'm sure schools can afford a single person who has basic competence at using a computer to keep such services running (sure they're hard to find, but you will be able to find them as long as you don't go looking for them via proprietary software).
     
     Provided you don't go and use JavaScript or other memelang to implement such services, you'll find that such services will keep going along fine for years, needing only minimal maintenance.
     
     Although perl is sometimes a write only language, you can be confident a perl CGI script is going to keep working even 20 years later with a minimal change at most.
     
     >there're economies of scale to be had
     Then the NZ government should directly hire a few people to host servers for all the schools, rather than adding 20-1000% markup to the cost to pay some business to do so.
     
     >Doing nasty things would rapidly result in reputational damage here
     The vast majority of businesses don't care about in slightest about reputational damage, as long as it doesn't impact the bottom line.
     
     >openschools
     Unfortunately, teaching alternatives, Linux and "open source", only teaches effective ways to bootlick corporates and become their slaves (except in a efficient way), eventually leading to the exact same problems.
     
     If a school uses computer, schools should be permitted to only teach free software (or call it libre software or call it real software), as anything else is training slaves for multinational corporations, but of course not.
     
     
     This may seem radical and too extreme, but would be in fact a minimal response that does the bare minimum to avoid digital slavery, that may not be successful.
     
     If someone is taught how to use a computer properly, they will also be able to work out proprietary systems (the usual technique is to think of the worst possible way to do something and then try it) without any further training, although they will realize how bad proprietary systems are and not want to use them.
     
     >Open school house document under a proprietary license
     Yikes.
     
     >proprietary youtube JavaScript
     Yikes.
   • Embed this notice
     Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 12:49:09 JST Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki eventually, I'd love to see this sort of situation in NZ: https://davelane.nz/openschools - which would make what you suggest both possible and probably desirable... but one step at a time.

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     Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 12:49:11 JST Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki because individual schools can't afford people who could keep such services running, and there're economies of scale to be had. NZ is *so* small, that a local NZ company would be run by people known, personally, to those at the various schools. Doing nasty things would rapidly result in reputational damage here (much moreso than in the US due to the difference in scale).

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 13:42:25 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • LisPi
     @lispi314 @lightweight The also do a tax write off on the price of the software "generously donated" (less than the retail price, but not that much less), meaning they make money in the first year as well.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 13:42:26 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • LisPi
     @lispi314 @lightweight >Disturbingly often they get gratis packages
     Only for the first 6 months or year for the handcuffs to take hold and then they charging millions.
   • Embed this notice
     LisPi (lispi314@udongein.xyz)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 13:42:27 JST LisPi

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     @Suiseiseki @lightweight > If millions or billions can be blown on proprietary licenses, I'm sure schools can afford a single person who has basic competence at using a computer to keep such services running (sure they're hard to find, but you will be able to find them as long as you don't go looking for them via proprietary software).
     
     Disturbingly often they get gratis packages and (poisoned) gifts by corposcum of proprietary software and SaaSS. This is intended to lock them in and/or induce familiarity bias in the student population.
     
     It's only once lock-in is achieved that they ratchet up the prices ridiculously.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 14:04:05 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • LisPi
     @lightweight @lispi314 It's not generosity to go put shackles on people.
     
     > Microsoft have a 90%+ profit margin on the retail price of their monopoly software
     Via direct payment it's at least a 95.45% profit margin, as it's not like it costs more than a fraction of a cent to process the transaction and send a copy of the software (the credit card transaction fees eat 1.5-2% and also including the salaries of the programmers too (which probably shouldn't actually be added to the equation)).
     
     Via store sales it's ~90%, as the paper/plastic printout and the stores cut does have a cost.
     
     >NZ$1,400,000 (actual cost to Microsoft of perhaps as little as $140,000)
     For such kind of "offer", it'll cost them at most a few hundred to pay an already hired employee to write up an email and generate the "license keys" - I don't see how sending copies of software and maybe linking to already written guides would cost them that much.
   • Embed this notice
     Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 14:04:07 JST Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • LisPi

     @Suiseiseki @lispi314 yup - have you seen this? https://davelane.nz/self-serving-generosity MS do it at an industrial scale.