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."

Comments

I don't understand

[rumith]

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)?

Re:I don't understand

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Are you new?
Companies have been doing that a lot and for quite some time.
Its not just Microsoft, other example include SCO, MPAA, RIAA, News Corp, ... the list goes on.
They simply do it as long as they can get away with it.

Re:I don't understand

[rolfwind]

They're aren't licensing Linux or OS X to you, they just want money for every computer, which is two different things.... (yes, I agree it's pretty greedy and underhanded)...

Re:I don't understand

[ozmanjusri]

almost nobody has actually gone to the store and bought a copy of Windows.

It's not about individuals buying Windows off the shelf. It's about keeping the big boxshifters (Dell et al) on the Windows treadmill.

A local grey-box assembler in Australia pays about AU$210 wholesale for an OEM copy of Vista Business. Dell pays about AU$40 for the same thing. When a basic business-capable computer can be put together for about AU$800, that difference in the MS tax between the two businesses is what's keeping Dell alive.

Dell's selling Linux boxes now, because most of the grey-box builders offer cheap computers with Ubuntu installed, and they don't want to be left behind. But you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be shitting bricks at the thought of having to compete without that MS built buffer.

Re:I don't understand

[IdleTime]

As a Norwegian who has lived and worked in USA for a decade, it's still a mystery to me why American laws are protecting the companies and not the people. This is just a result of the consumer protection laws and laws regulating what a company can or can not do.

To the government of Norway, people are the important ones.

Here in the USA the companies can do almost anything they want and you as a consumer is getting bent over and raped over and over again and all you do, is to say "Thank you! One more time please!" What the fuck is wrong with you?

Re:I don't understand

[IdleTime]

And yest, the average American thumps themselves on the chest and proclaim with great bravado "We are #1!'. And when you try to tell them, no, not really, you are more like 23-27 on all rankings and your citizens are treated like shit. Seeing the disaster that ensued after Katrina made me think what would have happened if such a thing had happened back home. The government would have put in any form ogf help possible including the military, It would have been a huge lift of help and the people cared for and a huge rebuilding project would have followed with one single goal, to get people back into better homes and built levies that could have withstand the strongest possible hurricane.

The worst part about the US society is that people are apathetic. As long as they get their Tv shows and celebrity news along with a healthy dose of bullshit about USA #1, they are happy. And they don't even have the imagination to think that people in other countries are better off.

The real funny part is that many Americans I have discussed with consider the Scandinavian countries to be socialistic but fail to realize that we have as many billionaires per capita as USA does, I even think Sweden has more per capita. Not to mention that even we have a national health care system, most of the players are private and not government run. And they make good money too. My experience is that Americans are socially dumber than Europeans and have been so brainwashed that they can not believe how bad the US society is.

Re:Buyer beware

[gnud]

Norway should have read the contract before they signed it.

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.

They did so only because they are a reasonable company

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:

- We made it clear to Microsoft that we were preparing sanctions, as the school agreements excluxded competitors from this market. Now that they have met our demands, we dismiss the case, says NCA(norwegian competition authority, my note) department director Jostein Skaar to Norwegian daily Dagbladet.

Schools

[pe1chl]

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.

Same old crap M$ has been pulling for years

[rwyoder]

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.

Re:Why does this not surprise me...

[rvw]

Thanks for reminding me!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 456801,00.html The American Service-members' Protection Act, otherwise known as "The Hague Invasion Act". You can read the legalled-up version, as passed a fortnight ago, at www.nrc.nl/Doc/ASPA.pdf. The long and short of it is that America will use military force against the Netherlands to free any of its nationals held by the international criminal court (ICC) at the Hague.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire Enercon is prohibited from importing their wind turbines into the US until 2010 [1] due to infringement of U.S. Patent 5,083,039 [2]. Enercon claims their intellectual property was stolen by Kenetech (US Windpower, Inc.) and patented in the US before they could do so. Kenetech made similar claims against Enercon. According to the European Parliament; Kenetech seeking evidence for legal action against Enercon for breach of patent rights on the grounds that Enercon had obtained commercial secrets illegally, According to an NSA employee, detailed information concerning Enercon was passed on to Kenetech via ECHELON [1][3]

Old as Standard Oil - the drawback

[turing_m]

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.

Ironic

[CptPicard]

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... :-)

Isn't it amazing

[JustNiz]

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.