[ Thanks to Doug Loss
for this link. ]
“Ian Lynch told us about a serious European complaint against
Microsoft. Because of the nature of the complaint, we’re printing
it here in total:“In December I filed a complaint to the UK Office of Fair
Trading with regard to Microsoft Schools Agreement being
anti-competitive because it requires the payment of licences to MS
for machines that do not run any of their software. I think most
people would agree that an effect of this, intentional or not, is
to block competition by ensuring revenue for MS from rival
installations. There was an article in the Register and the Times
on this and I am talking to Computer Weekly about it tomorrow. The
OFT have now decided there are reasonable grounds for a full
investigation so collecting evidence is important.“This is an important issue for free software in general and in
fact any free software distribution that wants to get onto the
desktop in schools. If MS succeed in a strategy of getting most
schools onto the MSSA it will virtually kill any chance of getting
free software at the desktop in schools because why use even free
software if all your machines are block licensed to MS anyway? The
OFT, has specific bureaucratic requirements in investigating these
issues and it could take up to 2 years to come to a judgement and
even then it might not be the one we would like. So this is only a
beginning but an important one if free software is to thrive in
schools…”