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UK Schools Warned Off Microsoft Deal

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the do-not-sign-on-that-dotted-line dept.

rs232 sends in a BBC piece on the UK computer agency Becta advising schools against signing up for a Microsoft educational license because of alleged anti-competitive practices. "The problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licenses for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else." We have discussed Becta's role in British education here several times as they have acted as a watchdog warning of perceived Microsoft excesses.

3 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Educational License? by bazald · · Score: 5, Informative
    FTA:

    It reminds schools they are legally obliged to have licensed software, but suggests they use instead what is known as "perpetual licensing". Becta is just suggesting they continue to buy software rather than "moving to Microsoft's School Agreement subscription licensing model" even though it may be more expensive initially. This is because under the subscription licensing model, "Microsoft required schools to have licenses for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else."
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    Insert self-referential sig here.
  2. Hmm... again, the article is.... slashdotish by El+Lobo · · Score: 5, Informative
    MS has 2 kind of educational licenses. In sweden they are called Select and campus. Select is the normal license: you install a MS product and you pay for it. Easy and every part is happy.

    THE OTHER ONE IS: You pay for all your machines OR users (you can choose the license type). Say , you have 30 users. You pay some ammount of money. Then you have the right to install every MS product for those users in every machine in the university/college/scool, etc AND at home as well. Of course, if you dont use MS at home you are still paying, but this is the agreement. And the prices are MUCH lower than on Select. But nobody is forcing you to agree with this license. Use the old goos Select (pay by installed produts) and thatä's all and well. Of course, this being slashdot, we need our daily article odf env^z^z^z... hate.

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  3. Re:Linux by niiler · · Score: 5, Informative
    You've got to be kidding me. In addition to the touch typing options mentioned above, there are:

    For languages:

    For Physics:

    For Math:

    For geography:

    For music:

    For Mind-Mapping:

    Anyhow, you get the gist. As someone who has taught in both High School and College and whose wife tutors middle schoolers, I can't say that I've seen anything they are running that can't be replaced by linux based code (or in rare cases, by Windows code running on Wine).