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

[ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>]

On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 22:54, Paul Tietjens wrote:
> Private industry seems to have no problem understanding that they have a 
> choice, and district I work for understands it.

In my experience much of private industry is less clued up than the
schools. Most people in private industry work for small and medium sized
businesses and in my experience most are absolutely clueless about
software licensing. The term private industry is too much of a catch all
to be really meaningful in this context.

> They have a choice, and it's real, and it's easily discovered, if they but 
> took the to time to look (like... pick up a newspaper or a trade magazine 
> once in a while). 

Hm, how many of these advertise anything but Windows based solutions?
Certainly not even 10% of the advertisements. In the UK a monopoly is
defined as 25% of the market so whatever the reasons, Windows is a
monopoly by definition. The utility companies that enjoy this level of
monopoly in this country at any rate are all subject to an independent
regulator who determines fair prices and profit levels to prevent
consumers being ripped off. BT would not get away with an optional
pricing structure that effectively paid them if the customer installed a
NTL phone line even if there were alternative plans.

>  I would suggest that the blame for what they understand 
> does not lay with the company they feel is the only choice.

Well blame isn't the issue, the law is and I think MSSA breaks UK law
and it seems the OFT think it is likely that it does too. Only way to
tell for sure is to take it to court. I'm sure the judge will take
previous offences into account as with any other prosecution ;-)

I'm sure MS can afford the legal bill but do they want to stand the
negative publicity when they are very likely to lose anyway?

-- 
ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>