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Microsoft Bends To Norwegian Pressure
Martin writes "Microsoft has agreed to change the terms of its school agreement contract with Norwegian regional municipalities, following a complaint by Norwegian open-source software company Linpro to the Norwegian Competition Authority. Microsoft 'introduced two kinds of flexibility in the agreement, that were previously missing,' the head of the company's Norway operations said. One of these 'kinds of flexibility' involved Microsoft not getting paid a license fee for each Linux and Mac computer in schools."
How can one demand license fees for something they don't have the right to license in the first place (in case of Mac OS X, which AFAIK does not allow redistribution)?
Frankly, if they are getting paid for something that they have no legitimate right to, it would sure indicate how far reaching Microsoft is into our pocket books! If its true, does the FTC know about this??? Does the states governors know about it?? Hmmm... Does Apple even know about it???
Of course this is also so far fetched that I wonder if it's flame bait..
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Somebody actually made them change that part of the contract!
no big sig
As someone already pointed out, there is a per-machine fee charged by Microsoft, mainly due to the way licences are sold in volumes to OEMs (per machine, not per copy). :)
It would be very interesting to see the implications of forcing Microsoft to move away from this kind of licensing, and present numbers based on the actual Windows copy installations instead of OEM per-machine licensing numbers. While it won't change the market much and the actual number of copies installed, the updated numbers could very well indicate a market share lower than 85% for Windows.
Just my 2c. I might be horribly wrong
My Starcraft 2 Blog
No, if the country's authorities say "That kind of contract is not in the public interest, you may not do business in Norway on that basis" then the contract is voided on both sides.
Microsoft have to find a different basis of contract for Norway, or quit doing business in Norway.
Fairly simple and brutal.
I'm not sure about Norway. However, Swedish contract law states that part of contact that are unreasonable may be deemed invalid. And consumer law is even stricter on this.
If a contract's content is unlawful, that part can be ignored.
Thing is, it tends to void the whole contract. Then the school gets left with a bunch of Microsoft CDs they have no license to use; and Microsoft gets left with a bunch of the school's money they have no right to hold.
Now, that's fine by me; Linux and OpenOffice.org can do the job, as can pencil-and-paper. But is slightly chaotic for the school.
Why? When Microsoft choose to claim that the licenses held by the school are void and they need to buy new, they will first have to return the money.
Seeing the things the government in Poland does to cooperate with MS (like promoting and even selling MS soft via government websites) I'm quite prepared to believe the Norwegian deal was genuine. As far as I can understand MS in such deals, I would certainly vote for capital punishment for the government officers that agree to them.
http://www.oi.poznan.uw.gov.pl/ - the blinking link "Promocja oprogramowania" with the list of MS soft and prices as sold by the voivodship office.
This is not a contract that all schools in Norway, or the norwgian directorate for education entered into. This is Microsofts licensing option for schools, used by SOME schools and school districts. I dare say the schools who used this licensing scheme did abide by it. Parts of this licensing agreement has now been deemed unlawful.
Did you even read the slashdot summary? Some parts of the contract are illegal in norway. So I think Microsoft will have to change them, since our justice department is bought, like yours. FTA:
Heh. Even after two previews. Since our justice department is NOT bought, like yours.
"Thing is, it tends to void the whole contract."
I'm betting this one has a Severibility clause.
Severibility
A clause in a contract that allows for the terms of the contract to be independent of one another, so that if a term in the contract is deemed unenforceable by a court, the contract as a whole will not be deemed unenforceable. If there were no severability clause in a contract, a whole contract could be deemed unenforceable because of one unenforceable term.
Of course what makes this even more sensitive is that it is about schools.
Microsoft know very well that when they issue a contract with schools to use their software, and they can sneak in the clause that no other software than theirs can be (factually or economically) used by those schools, they can almost give away their software and still make huge profits.
After all, the pupils coming out of those schools are pre-programmed to accept only Microsoft software. They don't even know there are alternatives.
When they are employed somewhere, and they find Linux or OpenOffice, they claim "I have to be trained to work with this", and the employers are faces with training costs to use open software that they don't need to spend when Microsoft software is used.
This is put on the "cost of ownership" balance, and as training and other costs involving man-hours are often more expensive than software licenses, the balance quickly tips towards using Microsoft.
Because Dell's Ubuntu machines are slightly cheaper than their Window's equivalents, last I heard. I don't think they would do that if they still had to pay per machine.
Though I am sure a lot of OEMs get the per machine treatment.
Why are you lying? The contract was found to be illegal, the country threatened sanctions, MS gave in. They are not a reasonable company, they simply wanted to avoid losing money by fighting in court or paying sanctions.
evil is as evil does
A reasonable company wouldn't have put that illegal term in the contract in the first place. I won't get on to business ethics I'll just say that Micro$oft suxorz.
Microsoft og norske fylkeskommuner endrer samarbeidsavtalen
In many countries all contracts are severable, that is the illegal parts are void but the remainder of the contract is binding. Also in most countries a contract has to be fair. For example, you cannot contract yourself into slavery by signing a contract which says you must do something but get nothing in return. I am guessing that in countries where both of these things happen then unfair terms in a contract can be voided without negating the whole contract.
From 1991-1993 I worked for a large PC builder. While there, I learned we had signed a contract that paid M$ a fee for pre-installing a M$ OS on every machine we shipped...including the ones shipped with Novell, SCO Unix, Banyon Vines, and no OS at all. When I asked "Why the hell did we sign a contract like that???", the answer was: "Because they told us to take it or leave it." We couldn't have been competitive w/o being able to ship with M$ OS's pre-installed, and M$ knew it. So obviously, nothing has changed in M$'s behavior in the last 15 years.
Isn't that similar to the illegal per-processor licensing scheme that Microsoft was doing over a decade ago?
Standard clause in contracts.
/Used to do contracts for a computer oem (specializing in the US federal/state/muni gov), and a book publisher, and a book wholesaler
//Never been sued
///Have successfully defended company against GSA auditors
////YMMV
"Just because you, I, or someone else does not enforce a particular clause at a given time, or if a particular clause is voided for whatever reason... The rest of the contract still applies."
Of course, contracts don't say it in these words, but the intent is the same.
Once you have signed a contract, you are bound by that contract.
Not if the contract is unlawful you aren't. Most countries have limits on what can and can not be in a contract.
Microsoft didn't have to change the details after it was signed.
When a regulator finds you are violating the law (in this case competition law) then yes you do have to change your contract. That or go to jail one of the two.
They did so only because they are a reasonable company.
If they where a reasonable company that term wouldn't have been in the contract. Would you say that someone who was breaking into a car and stopped because a cop walked up and told him to stop was a "reasonable person"?
Its not the schools who have signed the contract. The contract in question is signed by Microsoft and 12 of the 19 "counties" of Norway. The twelve contain 59,4% of Norway's population, and about the same percentage of the students.
RE:["They did so only because they are a reasonable company."]
BullSh!t...
if microsoft was a reasonable company they would not have included such dirty tricks in their contracts in the first place, microsoft is just a mob of corrupt white collar criminals...
pull your head out of microsoft's ass so you can breath some fresh air, then maybe you can think clearly for once...
I understand what the contract means - regardless of the OS you run, your going to pay a windows license for the box (even if it is running mac osx).
What i dont understand is how that is legal ANYWHERE in the world. How many govt types must MS own in the USA in order to get away with that? Thats just criminal behavior - akin to a mafia protection racket.. ok, so im exaggerating but not by a long stretch.
Can you imagine bridgestone knocking on your door one day demanding a "car type license" for your dunlop-fitted motorbike? its absolutely insane.
On a side note though, one person said dell make alot their cash from the difference between what they pay for putting ms vista onto a machine and what grey-box retailers pay. Now thats definitely not true, quite a large chunk of dell's customers are enterprise class, and if your enterprise class you buy machines (including laptops) without the OS. In fact, you choose the OS as an option and the base is no-os or freedos or something, every other option is a +$ option (including windows). Add to that the fact enterprise guys pay less for boxes (even when only buying 1) and its certainly not where dell are making their cash.
UPWARDLY MOBILE PENIS MUZZLES
Bork bork bork?
Ever heard of the "South Improvement Company"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
"Smaller companies decried the deals as being unfair because they were not producing enough oil to qualify for discounts. In 1872, Rockefeller joined the South Improvement Company which would have allowed him to receive rebates for shipping oil but also to receive drawbacks on oil his competitors shipped. When word got out of this arrangement, competitors convinced the Pennsylvania Legislature to revoke South Improvement's charter. No oil was ever shipped under this arrangement."
This is a minor modification of Standard Oil's drawback, except it works on your customers as opposed to a company supplying you a service. The basic idea is to use your monopoly power to force another business entity to give you money every time they do business with one of your competitors.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
A Møøse once bit my sister...
BORK!
What if you have two companies: one that signs the MS OEM agreement and one that doesn't. Your company then "subcontracts" from these two arms as many products required.
You may actually get away with merely calling them different NAMES and not full companies...
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse
with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst
Nordfink"...
Microsoft signs patent deal with Linpro.
I am sorry... am I the ONLY one to see "Microsoft bends to Norwegian Pressure" and hear a British man wink "Know what I mean, know what I mean"?
O.O I hope Norway used protection.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
It can be disobeyed. But that doesn't make it safe or economical to do so. Proving, in court, that that provision is illegal is very difficult and can be hideously expensive: ask anyone who's gotten involved in a pyramid scheme and attempted to get their "guaranteed money-back" actually returned to them, without spending far more than the refund is worth.
... and make them pay back to the funds they collected for property they do not own.
0 9218
Hmm, Wouldn't this fall under Piracy - as mentioned http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/17/0
Certainly this is an act of consumer fraud and thieft.
There's no "sneaking" involved. It's clearly stated. EVERY machine you have MUST be counted when calculating the license fee.
No matter what runs on that machine.
Or how old it is.
Or what it does.
If you do not want to go with the Microsoft contract, you may purchase retail versions of Windows for each machine. And hope that you're fully compliant. Because the fines for piracy are far more than the cost of just paying Microsoft for every single box you have no matter what.
Hey, now wait one second, our justice department isn't... oh wait.
Well, its not quite a mop, and its not quite a puppet, but man.. So to answer your question I don't know.
This is one of the stories when I decide not to read Slashdot ever again. Everybody hates MS regardless what they do - and everybody praises Linux and co, regardless what they do. There are a few original ideas in the comments, but very few...
"You can just as well give your employees Wordpad."
Please do. Wordpad is a decent program, much better than MS Word, unless you need some of the feature bloat, in which case Worperfect is better.
Still I prefer Gedit for most things.
Got to love it when a country that supposedly has one of these competition-stifling, bureaucracy-laden welfare states actually has a government agency that cares for maintaining a genuine competitive environment for corporations, not only for wage-earning people... :-)
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
"All your computer are mine"
Rick B.
MS requires a "client access license" for each client accessing a Windows server. This has been done for decades, and has always cost far less than, say, a Netware server used to.
This is not "Microsoft charging a license fee for Lunix and OSX". This is a usage fee for the servers. It's because you aren't paying the same fee for a one-client SQL server as you are for a 1000-client email server.
Two things I can always count on: Ignorant Anti-MS FUD from Slashdot, and the sun rising in the east.
The deal was MS Windows licenses for all machines with cpu speeds above a low limit and memory sizes above another small limit. It had nothing whatsoever to do with CALS, and much to do with MS being incapable of understanding why anyone would not want to run Windows.
I saw similar shills on a blog claiming that Office 2003 and 2007 were perfectly compatible after a poster had shown his exact problem in going between the two versions. The replies from the fanbois were insulting, information-free and arrogant - much like normal MS output.
Full disclosure: I am a Norwegian, in a very small way involved privately in Skolelinux/Debian EDU and I do know about the deal.
They do post articles in English as well - give them a few days and you'll find their translation. Meanwhile, Linpro's announcement in ENglish in TFA is pretty good.
Stand by for a massage from the Swedish Prime Minister.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
From now on, schools will only be licensed for PCs actually using Microsoft software,
And people wonder why I set up my latest business venture on a non-Microsoft platform. It's bad enough trying to deal with quarterly taxes, reporting, regulators...why would I want to add another profit leech to that mix?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
how it falls to an opensource software company to spot that the government would be paying licences for every computer, windows or not?
It makes you wonder why the government and/or educational bodies themselves didn't say anything about such an obvious ploy.
That was my idea. You know far more than me here, so maybe you can say what happens to the rest of the contract if it hasn't got such a clause.
I was under the impression that (here where I live anyway) that applies to practically any contract, whether it says it in text or not.
In this case, the clause would be of advantage to the Norwegian schools. "You have to pay for a Microsoft licence for every computer" might be considered unlawful, and thus be invalidated. But the "You can get X copies of Windows for this and that price" part can still be considered a legally binding part of the document.
Maybe it's different in the US.
jkljkljkj