Re: [Fsfe-uk] OFT visit

[ian]

On Fri, 2003-06-06 at 01:01, MJ Ray wrote:
> 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.

Not quite sure how it works, but the OFT could declare MSSA unlawful and
therefore it has to stop. But then MS could replace it with a lawful
agreement. If the OFT judged that bulk disounts in essence were a loss
leader to education to shut out competition they could regulate the
price up or down although I think that less likely. Making them charge
450 quid a station for office would certainly migrate a lot of achools
to OO.org!

> 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.

And then Campus agreement? Don't think so. Then there are enterprise
agreements. If that happened their would be a major rebellion by
customers and gov would have to foot the bill in the public sector. It
would migrate people to free software quicker than anything but it would
be painful for a while. Not likely to happen IMHO.

> 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?

I think he means there is an incentive to get low cost software into
schools as a loss leader to hook the kids. This isn't likely to be the
case except with the few big corporates such as MS Adobe et al. It also
block out free software and reduces the reason to develop alternatives
so I don't think the argument is that cut and dried. Could well be bad
in the long term. Drug dealers give their stuff away free so they can
charge a premium when the client is hooked. Seems to me a comparable
situation.

> 
> > 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.  ;-)

If free software thrives you will be able to demonstrate say several WPs
all legally in a library - in fact with all using XML open file
standards the pupils could choose to use the one they prefer and pass
documents to each other unhindered. This is an educational goal worth
going through some pain to achieve.
-- 
ian <address@hidden>