[nflug] community GNU/Linux education - thank you

Ken Smith kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU
Tue Jan 24 07:41:58 EST 2006


On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 15:51 -0500, Eric Benoit wrote:
> yes we received "free computers" from them but with a "agreement" that 
> we had to purchase Microsoft Licenses, I asked several times if we could 
> just get the free computers and I would put linux on them ...at the last 
> meeting our school had with them I was not invited and decisions were made.

Just a "For What It's Worth"...

This is a common business practice that *lots* of companies engage in,
not just Microsoft.  The end goal in most cases is to help the community
in a fashion that in some way also benefits the company.  We see all
sorts of companies doing this sort of thing.  The easiest pathway is
"Educational Discounts" but many companies have "Educational Grant"
programs, etc.  In Microsoft's case (as well as other software vendors)
it's a bit more challenging because in the cases of the schools that are
the neediest they can't just heavily discount their software.  The
schools most in need of help don't even have the computers needed to run
the software.  Hence this program.

Sun, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Apple (to name a few) all do exactly the
same thing (to a lesser degree because their budgets for this sort of
activity are smaller than Microsoft's) though those companies don't have
Microsoft's problem of the company itself not producing a "complete
solution".  They can all give away (or sell at way below cost) a fully
functional object while Microsoft needs to provide the computer itself
somehow.

-- 
                                                Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |


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