Re: [school-discuss] MS Schools Agreement anti-competitive UK

[Harry McGregor <micros@osef.org>]

On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 13:22, Paul Tietjens wrote:
> If you don't want to license all of your machines, there are many options 
> available.  They aren't forcing you into the agreement, so...  I fail to see 
> how they 'force' you to license all machines.

Microsoft is not forcing you to use the new license agreement.

What Microsoft is doing is preying upon unsuspecting, and usually ill
informed school IT managers to further lock-in microsoft's illegal
monopoly.

While Microsoft is well within their rights to put into the EULA that
they have full rights to your first and third born kids, I doubt it's
enforceable.

In a normal situation Microsoft's licensing of "every computer" would
probably not trigger complaints, but in the current environment, it's
insanely stupid for microsoft to do it.  Both the US and the EU are
looking at microsoft's anti competitive use of it's monopolistic powers,
and this does factor into them.

			Harry


-- 
Harry McGregor, Computing Manager
Tucson Support Group - U.S. Geological Survey
University of Arizona - Environment and Natural Resource Building
520-670-5574 (office) - hmcgregor@espri.arizona.edu
520-661-7875 (Cell) - hmcgregor@usgs.gov

The opinions/statements expressed herein are my own and should
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University of Arizona or the U.S. Geological Survey.