Re: Jeffrey Young: Microsoft campus licensing

["Lewis A. Mettler" <lmettler@lamlaw.com>]

Perhaps Universities and large corporation should take a more active
role in determining what kinds of license agreements they are willing to
sign.

Clearly a license agreement can force a dominant software application to
be a monopoly.  It should be the other way around.  Dominant
applications should always include provisions that reduce any license
fees as competitor's applications come into use.

Microsoft clearly will not put such terms into their agreements.  Large
comporations and University will have to insist upon it.  Microsoft
prefers to force corporations and universities to use its products
exclusively and is willing to use restrictive licensing to accomplish
that.

In the case of Microsoft Word, Universities should provide equal access
to all compariable word processing applications or provide access to
none of them.  And, any license fees should be adjusted based upon
actual use of the product not some arbitrary head count process.  Any
license agreement which only serves to preclude or limit the ability of
non-Microsoft products to be used should be and probably is illegal. 
Clearly the Universities should refuse to sign such agreements.

James Love wrote:
> 
> This is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education
> about Microsoft's educational licensing.  Apparently Microsoft is
> raising fees and introducing more restrictive licensing terms, and there
> is the debate over the Microsoft efforts to get site licenses covering
> every student and facility, which some student think with harm
> Microsoft's competitors.
> 
> http://www.chronicle.com/free/99/03/99032602t.htm
> Friday, March 26, 1999
> 
> Campus Fallout Continues from 1997 Change in
> Microsoft's Licensing Rules
> 
> By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
> 
> --
> James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
> I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
> by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org

-- 
Lewis A. Mettler, Esq.(Attorney and Software Developer)
lmettler@LAMLaw.com
http://www.lamlaw.com/ (web site reviews Microsoft antitrust transcripts
daily)