Re: [Fsfe-uk] OFT visit

[MJ Ray]

Andrew Atkinson <address@hidden> wrote:
> [...] All the result can be is that M$ removes
> the school agreement making schools pay the corporate rate.

No, the right result could be that the licence fees are calculated
based on machines using the licensed code, rather than just on number
of machines.  Then free software sellers can get equivalent access to
the schools and schools can save money by not paying for things they
don't use.

If MS use this case as a reason to get rid of the Schools Agreement,
I will be wondering whether they were already planning to do that and
just found a handy scapegoat.

I'm a little confused by your later claim.  How has MS requiring you to
pay for machines not running their software had any effect on their
competitors' pricing?  Surely whatever the competitor does will have no
effect because the school has already bought MS?

> As a teacher I feel that it is my job to show what is out there and try to
> give an unbiased view of the advantages and disadvantages (at times this is
> very hard)

Bias always exists.  We can only hope to compensate for it or reduce it
to insignificant error noise.  Anyone claiming otherwise can have a free
lecture about statistics when I get some more tuits.  ;-)

-- 
MJR/slef   My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
      http://mjr.towers.org.uk/   jabber://address@hidden
Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
       Thought: "Changeset algebra is really difficult."