[plug] Schools [taken] out today?

[Mark Nold]

Far out, $30mil... bit far from free huh?

Thats like taking 100 peoples taxes for their whole life time and flushing
it down the toilet.

Imagine spending $30mil on a Free Software Support center... you could have
a budget of $2M for the next 15 years to provide Linux software, training
and support for the whole WA Ed Dept... (not a huge budget but considering
it could be just set aside for migration issues, since they have budgets
already for the other stuff.. its pretty huge.)



Brian, you said "MS Technology of the time" so this doesnt include XP, newer
versions of Office etc?



Anyone interested in putting some evidence for this together and presenting
it to the Premier? If  not, the West Australian?

Brian etc, do you have any references to the $30 mil expediture and what it
involved?

mn


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Tombleson [mailto:brian at paradigmit.com.au]
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 11:18 AM
To: plug at plug.linux.org.au
Subject: Re: [plug] Schools [taken] out today?



> > All this is errelovant as Microsoft has done something even more
> > dispicable. Its provided a copy of all its office products, from Word to
> > Frontpage to Win XP, to Department of Education Schools at no charge to
> > the school.

> Are you sure that WA Ed Dept was given free licenses for all M$ Products?
Is
> this free for everything forever?

No, they have *not* given it free.

A couple of years ago (2? 3?) the WA EdDept paid something like $30mil for a
"blanket" license for MS the technology of the time.

Last year, the Qld EdDept paid $80mil for similar.

It means that every computer used i the EdDept can install anything from the
available suite as many times as they like providing it is within the
Education Department .. this also includes teacher's home machines.

Microsoft are not the despicable ones .. the EdDept decision makers are.

- Brian.