On Sun, 2005-03-06 at 21:31, p cooper wrote: > coming into this a bit late - sorry > its not very straightforward. The first TP will be when the opposition > cant ignore you. With MS this will be when they significantly drop their > business prices.
They have already done this in UK schools. > IMO they aren't bothered about piracy for home use - > keeps the workers tied to MS products and keeps the TCO argument in > their favour. > the main TP will be when business users don't give the money to MS. > Thats a much harder battle, particularly when the business price has > come down and the TCO/training issues is tilted towards MS because > business users take software home 'for free' . > Also Where I work MS have a home software initiative and I could buy a > licensed copy of MS office for �18 ( but it doenst run on gentoo linux ;-) And its �18 more expensive tha OO.o. The British Education Communications Technology Agency in the UK will be publishing a TCO research finding s from TCO in schools this month. It shows that their are big savings for schools using FLOSS and that software license costs are the least significant part of that saving. On that basis, even if MS make Windows and Office free to schools, schools would be better off using GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
