Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Office of Fair Trading - Microsoft School Agreement

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