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

[Steve Leonard-Clarke <sTV@fractalsoup.org>]

i used the verb "enforce"  which means "to compel observance of" / "to
impose" or "to persist in"

i deliberately avoided the use of the verb "force" which means to
"constrain someone against their will".

perhaps i should have used the verb "reinforce" (derived from the verb
"enforce") as MS already have the monopoly in schools and via the MS
Schools agreement are indeed making life easy for schools to sit tight
and stick with what they already know.

the point i am trying to make in support of this discussion is that
schools in the U.K. are not actually given a "choice". my experience of
senior ict managers in national and local government are not informed
enough to understand that they have a choice.
from the top down Microsoft products "persist" because of their monopoly
of the desktop. this is down to their successful marketing.
of course schools have a choice but do they know they do?

steve leonard-clarke



On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 21:22, 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.
>