[nflug] community GNU/Linux education - thank you

[Eric Benoit]

For more than what it is worth....

thank you for your factual information

But don't you think a company should be more straight forward, where we 
thought we were getting free computers, with the assumption that we 
would purchase no other OS but Microsoft, but again maybe you were just 
being informative, right...?

Ken Smith wrote:
> 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.
> 
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