[Linux-aus] linux-aus Digest, Vol 12, Issue 4

[James Collier]

Thanks for your advice everyone.
Immediately after sending my request to this mailing list I contacted Monash IT Services by email:

"
I've received emails regarding an offer by Microsoft of it's Office Suite
at a low price to students.
I wonder if you would mind also informing students of Free and Open
Source
office suites that are available for FREE and of an equal quality to the
Microsoft product but without it's terrible restrictions!
Free Office Suites such as Open Office.org have the added bonus of
supporting the Open Document Format, a standard format for electronic
office documents, ratified by the International Standards Organisation
(ISO/IEC 26300:2006). A standard which MS Office does not support.

For your reference:

ISO Standard
http://tinyurl.com/2wk6hs

Wikipedia Ref
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org/

KOffice
http://www.koffice.org/

Google Docs
http://www.docs.google.com

IBM Lotus Symphony
http://symphony.lotus.com

Thankyou for your time,
James Collier
"

This morning I received the following response:

"
Hi James,

We thank you for your concern however monash do not advertise such
products
on there own accord. It is companies such as Microsoft who approach
Monash
and though Monash are allowed to advertise there products.

We are closing this call for now, but if you have any further queries,
please reply to this e-mail quoting the Request Number listed above so
that we can reopen your call.
"

David Lloyd > May I suggest a reason why the free software community
dislike non-free licenses? Because they cheat users! They cheat us, we
provide each other with the 4 basic freedoms of the GNU GPL. Non-free
licenses remove freedoms.
So let me close with a question to you: Why shouldn't we fight for our
freedom? www.gnu.org

Once again, thanks to everyone else. I do intend to do something about
this. I'm certainly not happy with the reply I received.
I'll be printing some posters hopefully this weekend.

James Collier