On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 17:57, MJ Ray wrote:
Matt Williams
wrote: BTW I would warn people that if you put your name forward to be contacted by OFT, this contact is NOT voluntary and failure to provide the information they require could result in fines/prison.
Can you give us a reference for this, please? It's the first I've heard of it.
When I first asked people to volunteer info, I assumed that they would
be just asked a few questions but the OFT has quite a lot of power and I
suppose they get into situations where those giving evidence might try
to stonewall. I believe they have asked a selection of people other than
from this list including those provided by MS for evidence. Hence the
demand for information they send out is rather intimidating. I don't
think this is anything to worry about. If someone in a school operating
MSSA believes that the fact that they have to pay MS license fees for
machines running just GNU/Linux makes it impossible/less likely/more
likely etc that the school will install GNU/Linux machines that's really
the issue. If the OFT contact anyone, they can demand evidence of this
if it exists and the person is legally bound to provide it whether they
volunteered or not. Snag is that a) most people don't understand the
implications of MSSA b) Those that do probably don't use it c) Since few
companies at present are trying to sell desktop Linux into schools the
issue might not yet have arisen. None of our current GNU/Linux customers
are MSSA users - perhaps this is evidence in itself!
I'm rather pleased they have teeth as its will take quite a bit of
courage to find MS guilty and fine them. I can't see how MSSA could be
viewed as fair trading - its the equivalent of BT charging people if
they install NTL cable and I'm sure OFTEL wouldn't allow that. Virtually
everyone I explain it to think its outrageous so seems to me that there
is a good chance the OFT will indeed find against MS but we'll have to
see.
--
ian