Radical Idea: Charge Vendors for Software Deployed in Schools

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]

“Rather than our public-sector education organisations
paying for software, they should in fact not only get the software
for free, they should actually be billing the software vendors for
the right to place their wares and branding in front of millions of
school students. Much like television and radio stations offer up a
bidding system to advertisers who want to capture the eyes and ears
of the ‘audience’, schools could operate a bidding process where
vendors bid for accessing student’s attention for their software.

“I couldn’t get one single cogent answer from my audience as to
why this wasn’t a viable idea. The idea would not only reduce the
software costs to our schools by hundreds of millions, but perhaps,
with the right kind of negotiation, wipe out the costs to schools
for much of their IT needs, as the vendors’ payments might just
cover the costs involved for hardware acquisitions, networking and
support.”

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