In March this year The MS School Agreement case was reported to Konkurransetilsynet, the Norwegian equivalent to The Office of Fair Trading. As with OFT, the Konkurransetilsynet has not yet reached any conclusion. We are still waiting for a verdict.
Norway is not a full member of EU, but we have an association agreement with EU, and I think that agreement links Norway to the the common EU legislation on all trade affairs. If MS School Agreement is illegal in EU, I think it will be just a question of time before School Agreement will be announced illegal also in Norway. If any in the discussion group could bring up some concrete information about the status in EU and other EU-countries, it will be very valuable for our case against MS School Agreement in Norway. As I wrote before, MS School Agreement seem to be very effective in preventing further spread of OpenOffice and Linux in Norwegian schools. But it belongs to the story that another 4-5 counties has refused to sign the School Agreement. In those areas I think OOo has a very good potential. We will try go mobilize companies like Sun and Novell to bring protests to Konkurransetilsynet. The problem is that none of those companies have a commercial Norwegian OOo-version yet. About one year ago, Norway got a new and more strict Law of Fair Competition (Konkurranseloven). I think the School Agreement clearly violate this new law. On 12/18/05, Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sat, 2005-12-17 at 22:37 +0100, Detlef Grittner wrote: > > Am Freitag, den 16.12.2005, 13:14 +0000 schrieb Ian Lynch: > > > On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 23:04 +0100, M. Fioretti wrote: > > [...] > > > In principle I beleive that Microsoft schools Agreement is illegal > under > > > uropean Law and certainly the OFT has not said otherwise. It might be > > > worth someone in Norway starting a similar action with the Norwegian > OFT > > > if there is such a thing. Microsoft submitted 30,000 pages of evidence > > > in the UK case so if nothing else it causes them some inconvenience. > > > > > > > You mean European Law as in the European Union? > > I'm convinced the European Union wouldn't tolerate Microsoft's behavior, > > but Norway is not a member of the European Union. > > Yes, but Norway might have its own fair trading law and any other person > reading this in a member state of the EU could initiate action. > > > -- > Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ZMS Ltd > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
