[IP] more on Office Politics

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:08:34 -0500
From: John Parmater <jparmate@columbus.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Office Politics
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>

Dave,

The paragraph below (taken from within the Guardian article) is somewhere
between stunning and unbelievable!

Microsoft's dirty trick of levying a software charge for all computers owned
by a school is the same device they used in the beginning of their hegemony.
They refused to sell one copy of BASIC, then later, MSDOS to computer
manufacturer unless they bought one for every machine sold. That discouraged
computer makers from offering competing operating systems. Twenty-some years
later they're pulling the same trick with schools.

John Parmater



on 2/14/04 4:19 PM, Dave Farber at dave@farber.net wrote:

>
> Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
> Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 19:32:22 +0000
> From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk>
>
> Office politics
>
> Graham Stewart on one man's crusade to push open source software
>
> Thursday February 12, 2004
> The Guardian
>
Most UK schools have a licensing agreement, where they pay an annual fee of
around £28 per computer to use Microsoft Windows and Office. However,
Microsoft levies the charge on all computers owned by a school - even those
that might be running Linux. This gives some schools less of an incentive to
try open source.
>
>
> Full story at:
>
>  http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1145674,00.html


§«,¸¸,.·´`·.,¸¸,.·´`·.»§

John

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