Re: [Fsfe-uk] [ALUG] Microsoft and schools (fwd)

[ian]

On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 18:36, Philip Hunt wrote:
> On Friday 05 December 2003  5:51 pm, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 17:36, ian wrote:
> > > It will not cover all things. I should think the reality is that OEM
> > > Windows and MS Office are by far the biggest revenue generators.
> >
> > That's absolutely correct.
> >
> > > Its in all the presenters interests to show
> > > massive savings. MS (aren't we generous) BECTA (aren't we wonderful for
> > > saving all this taxpayers money) I bet the reality in savings are
> > > nowhere near the hype in practise but we shall see.
> >
> > Indeed. Wasn't this kerfuffle all about MS price rises? (As in, their
> > new licensing schemes?). It would not surprise me if most, if not all,
> > of the saving was basically an offset against the increased licensing
> > costs. Or that UK Schools have agreed to licence more software, but at a
> > better discount - i.e., spending 60M instead of 50M, but getting 70M
> > worth of software: there's a 10M saving right there!
> 
> The Becta page <http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/press_out.cfm?id=3099>
> says it's up to individual schools to buy what they want, so no such
> deal has been made.
> 
> The savings are 20%-37% of previous prices and should amount to GBP 50 
> million over 3 years, according to the BBC. Taking a middle figure of 28.5% 
> discount implies:
> 
> - MS licenses at old costs were 175 million
> - at new costs, MS licenses will be 125 million
> 
> Almost all of these license will be for MS office, I imagine. Therefore,
> by switching to Open Office, schools would presumably save another 125 
> million over three years.

Good point. They would also save £100m a year by putting some effort
into FLOSS instead of E-learning credits. Maybe it needs pointing out to
BECTA. Why not E-mail them? At OpenOffice.org we have a project to get
OO.o into school libraries. I have some very nicely packaged discs for
the purpose but we really need about 30,000 for all the schools in
England. If I could persuade the DfES to spend say 50k for the discs
postage etc we could get this package to every school and kids who could
not afford MS Office could borrow the disc and install OO.o at home.
Most of the least well off do not have broadband connections to download
OO.o from the Internet.

I think student prices for MS Office is around £120 so if 500
individuals used OO.o as a result of this it more than pays for itself.

This fits Government social inclusion policy and its a relatively small
amount of money. The issue with the schools themselves is somewhat more
complicated because if the school is on MSSA, they pay annually for many
MS titles and upgrades including MS Office. Then using OO.o saves them
absolutely nothing. Getting out of MSSA is expensive so there is not
much incentive to change. This is one reason why I'm trying to stop MSSA
through use of the OFT but its going to take a while longer. It would be
a help if everyone wrote to their MP politely and suggested that in the
interests of social inclusion that the Government pay for the media to
put OO.o in school libraries. You can refer them to me as Education Lead
for the OpenOffice.org project. I'll provide my snail address too if
anyone E-mails me to say they will take this up, I will also be using my
political contacts but coming at it from different angles gives better
chance of success.
-- 
ian <address@hidden>