Microsoft dispute over college licensing practices

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Subject: Microsoft Investigation Information FYI
   Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:10:12 -0800
   From: TOM JOHNSON <tjohnson@whidbey.net>
     To: senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov,
Usdojatr.Website@justice.usdoj.gov, love@cptech.org


Subj: Microsoft Investigation Information FYI

From:  http://www.maccentral.com/news/mar05.shtml#microed

Monday, March 2, 1998

Microsoft Brings In College Officials to Discuss Complaints About Prices

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Summary:
Critics blasted the company last year, when it dropped a licensing
policy that was used by many colleges and universities. The old policy
allowed some customers to buy copies of software based on how many
people would be able to use it at a given time, rather than on the total
number of computers with access to the software.

For instance, a university might buy 100 copies of Microsoft Word, a
word-processing program, and place them on a central "server" computer
on the campus network. Students, professors, and staff members could use
the
program from any computer on the network. But the server would allow
only 100 users to open the program at any time.

Microsoft's new policy would require the same university to purchase
rights to use Word on all of the computers linked to the network,
meaning that many colleges would have to spend thousands of dollars more
just to offer the same amount of access to the company's products. End
summary.

THE CURRENT LICENSING POLICY FOR ALL SOFTWARE COMPANIES IS ONE LICENSE
FOR EACH PROGRAM BEING USED SIMULTANEOUSLY. THIS LEGALLY PERMITS THE
LOADING OF ONE PROGRAM ON MULTIPLE COMPUTERS SO LONG AS ONLY ONE OF
THESE COMPUTERS HAS THE PROGRAM OPEN.

IS MICROSOFT GOING TO USE THIS "NEW LICENSING POLICY" FOR THE GENERAL
PUBLIC ???

A SEPARATE ISSUE IS COLLEGES ATTEMPTING TO FORCE STUDENTS FROM USING
MACINTOSH COMPUTERS BECAUSE THEY WON'T BE COMPATIBLE WITH THE WINDOWS 98
SERVER NETWORK.

Microsoft and Higher Ed: Some educators don't like licensing policy

Posted: 08:00 ET
By Dennis Sellers Senior Editor

Even as Microsoft defends itself before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
some folks feel the company is trying to bully itself into the position
of being the only choice for education so that it can increase its
revenues at the expense of universities and students. There's no doubt
the Big M is certainly increasing its presence in the educational field
from kindergarten through college, but at what cost?

Microsoft paid the way for 28 education-technology administrators to
visit its headquarters last week to talk about a controversial change
the company made in its software pricing in 1997. Though most attendees
felt the
meeting went well, there's no immediate changes in the company's
policies.

Last year Microsoft altered a licensing policy used by many colleges and
universities. Formerly, the company let some customers buy copies of
software based on how many people could use it at one time, rather than
on
the total number of computers that could access the software.

"For instance, a university might buy 100 copies of Microsoft Word and
place them on a central server computer on the campus network," explains
Jeffrey Young in a March 2 Information Technology article. "Students,
professors, and staff members could use the program from any computer on
the network. But the server would allow only 100 users to open the
program at any time. Microsoft's new policy would require the same
university to purchase rights to use Word on all of the computers linked
to the network, meaning that many colleges would have to spend thousands
of dollars more just to offer the same amount of access to the company's
products."

Some in the academic world think the policy changes are a ploy to get
more money from customers. But according to Information Technology,
Aleisa Spain, Microsoft's director of higher-education marketing, says
the policy
is "not a way for us at Microsoft to gain more revenue." According to
IT, Spain says several business customers had complained that the old
"concurrency" option was difficult to administer because they had to
keep track of how many people were using software at a given time.

Meanwhile, Liz King, general manager of Microsoft's education-customer
unit, says the company will consider the administrators' comments in
drafting a new licensing option in the coming months.

Read the entire Information Technology article here.
http://chronicle.com/data/internet.dir/itdata/1998/03/t98030201.htm

********************
Regards,
Tom Johnson
RAVEN CONSULTANTS
tjohnson@whidbey.net
********************