[H-GEN] QLD Education

[Robert Brockway]

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On 5 Jun 2002, Ben Fowler wrote:

> To be perfectly honest though, this sounds like a bit of a beatup.  I
> think this licensing arrangement is quite reasonable: a licensing
> agreement relieves Education of having to be so thorough with their
> software auditing and teachers can "borrow" the software they need to
> get their work done without getting their arses kicked by the copyright

I think we're looking at 2 different issues here.

The agreement with Microsoft seems to have 2 components, at least as 
mentioned here:

1. A single organisation wide licencing agreement.

No problem.  I agree with Ben that it frees Education Queensland from time 
consuming software audits (at least to some extent)..

2. A requirement that Education Queensland has to pay licencing fees to 
Microsoft even for PCs that do not contain Microsoft products.

I believe that this does not follow from point 1 and is unreasonable.  I 
believe it is foolish for any organsiation to sign an agreement with a 
requirement like this.

> In my not-so-humble opinion, I'm highly skeptical that Free software
> people can successfully argue that Linux/BSD/whatever is superior, or

In the last few months I'm hearing more & more people in everyday life
complaining about the same limitations of Microsoft products that many of 
us have been complaining about for years.  Reports of large Free s/w 
deployments are now happening every few weeks rather than once or twice a 
year.  Things are changing.

> can come anywhere near challenging Windows on the desktop.  The Mexican
> fiasco is an example where some (comunity-spirited, absent-minded,
> possibly irresponsible) activists sold the Mexican government on the
> benefits of Free software for the desktop (for schools, libraries, etc),
> but neglected to mention that such software would require a considerable
> amount of support.  If Free UNIX desktops can get polished and
> integrated with the OS to the degree of Max OS X, it might stand a
> chance, but I personally very much doubt any sooner.

I'm not familiar with this one.  Any organsation that uses software 
without fully addressing the implications is bound to be burnt eventually.  
In my experience Free software requires less maintenance that alot of 
commercial software.  Many boxes I've setup or seen setup don't need admin 
interaction for months at a time (security excepting of course, but that 
is true of any OS).

Cheers,
	-Rob

-- Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
   Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
   "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah


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