Re: Jeffrey Young: Microsoft campus licensing

[rd@cottonwood.com (Rick Dahlgren)]

It is most interesting to me that college students would take the time to
stage a protest where pictures of Bill Gates are burned.  After living
through the Viet Nam era and knowing some guys who were at Wounded Knee, I
see the anti-Microsoft student protest as either a really good way to meet
hot chicks or that the "market" that Microsoft wishes to have determine its
fate....is beginning to do so.

Rick Dahlgren

>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)