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Colleges Signing Secret MS License Agreements
David Gerard writes "As seen on Yale LawMeme: Microsoft is requiring colleges wanting cheap licenses to keep their license terms secret (e.g. Ohio State, University of Michigan) ... in direct contravention of state public records and Freedom of Information laws." Many FOI laws have loopholes permitting state agencies not to disclose information when it would harm business interests, so what the colleges and Microsoft are doing may not actually be illegal (or could be argued not to be, anyway), but it certainly is shady.
Probably a troll, but on the off chance that anyone thinks he's making sense, I'll respond. If MS wants to give the school a good deal, fine. Why do they need to keep it a secret from the taxpayers that are paying the bills? How is it good for me as a taxpayer to not know what kind of terms the schools I'm helping to pay for are agreeing to? How will I know if they've agreed to some horrible terms? If MS wants to deal with publicly funded schools, then it needs to be above the board and not try to hide anything from the public.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
And if Microsoft did the same that would be fine. However, Microsoft is tying the price of their operating system and office suite to the acceptance of their development tools as part of the curriculum. Sun gave away their development tools and class materials, to pretty much anyone that wanted them, with no strings attached.
That's a fairly substantial difference.
If Microsoft were to give their development tools away to all takers then I wouldn't be surprised if some Universities used the language. However, that's not what this is about. This is about giving the entire University access to cheap Windows and MS Office licenses if the University will make sure that their CS students learn only MS technologies. That's pretty much exactly the reason that MS got into all of that trouble with the DOJ.