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Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Inside Higher Ed has a detailed story on the politics behind the creation of the American Council on Education's report on the future of higher education. "That agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she 'vigorously' objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education." Read the article for the relevant text before and after Microsoft's intervention.
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Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 2, 2006 15:30 UTC (Sat) by cpm (subscriber, #3554) [Link]

So much for free markets, eh?

Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 2, 2006 20:05 UTC (Sat) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

>[Gerri Elliott] called the original wording of the document “parochial” and a “commercial endorsement of specific products.” (In an interview Thursday, Elliott noted that she had never, during the panel’s year of deliberations, “expressed endorsement of one platform over another — that would have been inappropriate. I was not on the commission representing my company, I was there to represent the workforce.")

Can I get a "wow"?

Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 3, 2006 23:01 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

WOW! And I really mean it - it's not just a cheap joke.

Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 3, 2006 7:30 UTC (Sun) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link]

"it’s a method of coding software, and one of several available, period."

Is that going to be Microsoft's new line?

Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 3, 2006 23:11 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

She did sound really desperate, didn't she? :-)

I now remember a discussion I had with some bloke on one of the forums, where he claimed that there is no big educational benefit to programmers (current and future) in seeing and experimenting with a piece of seasoned, production quality source code. No amount of convincing on my behalf was sufficient to persuade him that seeing the "real" source is much better than just having short examples and API docs. Go figure...

Changing the Report, After the Vote (Inside Higher Ed)

Posted Sep 4, 2006 10:04 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

No amount of convincing on my behalf was sufficient to persuade him that seeing the "real" source is much better than just having short examples and API docs. Go figure...

But he was right! After all, we all know that automobile mechanics are never let to touch a real engine or gearbox during their training. Just looking at diagrams, photographs and plastic models is quite sufficient. Otherwise they might get their hands dirty, or accidentally cut a finger, or even steal a trade secret or two by handling a real part. Cannot have that happening...

( :-) :-), :-), just in case...)

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