Re: MS in schools of Berlin

[Knut Yrvin <knuty@skolelinux.no>]

søndag 21. mars 2004, 23:19, skrev Hubertus Groepper:

> When I asked the local lab guys at my economics department at FU why
> it's all MS and why we are pretty much always up to date, they told
> me it was cheaper, because they even got free
> installation/deployment support.

The ICT-staff some places is the most reluctant in using free software. 

In Norway we don't "sell" Skolelinux on savings of license fees. We
sell it on the fact that you can get twice as much terminals for the
money, and you can operate twice or three times the amount of users
with the system. In the primary school it gives a huge advantage. 
This short and long reports in Norwegian from the schools document 
this: 

http://developer.skolelinux.no/rapporter/sv_eksamen_2004.pdf
http://developer.skolelinux.no/rapporter/rapport_trondheim.pdf
http://www.skolelinux.no/~ringe/SLX-iTet-rapport.pdf
http://www.statskonsult.no/publik/rapporter/2003/2003-24.pdf
http://developer.skolelinux.no/rapporter/teleplan_03112003.pdf

Often the local IT-staff has enough money to overlook or disregard
this facts because the have newer budgeted figures with the
alternatives.

They talk about upgrading software and maintaining it as if it's a
huge cost. In the universities of Norway it's not expensive to by
licenses. MS tells that locenses just cost 8% of the total ICT
cost. When MS gives "huge" discounts, the schools sells them selves to
that company in the belief that they really got a bargain. If you take
to account the real life savings with Skolelinux the schools Berlin
are selling out huge savings up to 50% with Skoleinux for an discount
of 8% with Microsoft.

The last thing. Discounts from MS in the way done in Berlin is
probably not legal acording to European Competition Laws.
http://www.iht.com/articles/96369.html

- Knut