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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."
Easy, offer a huge up-front discount to the schools and sneak it into the contract. People who think they're getting a deal of a lifetime tend not to look too closely at the fine print (gifthorses and all that).
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
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
The article is not very clear, but I think the schools paid for site licences and now they will have a discount based on the number of computers on site not using MS software
If a contract's content is unlawful, that part can be ignored.
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.
If an employee can't sit down at an office application and figure out the basics in 10 minutes, they're not computer literate.
CAD and 3d applications require training, word processors do not.
That is the perfect explanation of the "Microsoft Tax." Someone should quote this on a regular basis when someone needs to explain to others what they mean by that.
Unfortunately, this widepread opinion leads to very ineffective use of office applications. You can just as well give your employees Wordpad.
Furthermore, in many businesses employees are not selected on being computer literate. It is assumed that everyone can use a computer.
When Microsoft can twist the school system so that all young people are "Microsoft literate" instead of "computer literate", that has a very big effect on their future business and the viability of using alternative software.
Yeah, but it's a bit funny that they're also, according to TFA, charging for Macs. To me both cases seem absurd, but I guess this is what the world have come to, and hopefully now is moving away from.
...the same way that a company can demand royalties on a product it contributed NOTHING to. I thank Norway for taking a stand against this kind of stupidity, and hope for a day when the US will.
Palm trees and 8
I've been primarily using Linux for 9 years, but I personally have bought 2 copies of Windows at the store (one for my wife, one for me, in both cases because we had contract work that required it).
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
- You're buying more of the same item. Even if you're not using, you're still buying it.
- You're lowering their licensing audit costs, as all they need to do is count the machines instead of inspecting their contents.
The thing is, once you reject their per-machine licensing scheme, their audits will ve very pedantic and will cost you a lot of money if any employee/student messed up and installed illegal copies of anything. And government contracts usually allow routine audits and accept full responsibility over contract breaches such as installing illegal copies.Its not just Microsoft, other example include SCO, MPAA, RIAA, News Corp, ...
Search: Definition: "Low-hanging fruit"
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...
It is the result of the neoconservative movement. Anyone who speaks out for consumer rights or against ruthless business practices is labeled as some kind of extreme left communist, and here in America, that is considered to be a bad thing. In fact, under the current administration, being labeled a "liberal" is a bad thing. And unfortunately, not only do consumers wind up losing, but engineers and programmers also end up losing because of software patents and large monopolies like Microsoft (God forbid we should ever say that a business is too big).
Palm trees and 8
"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.
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