[Linux-aus] Young Aussies say pirated software is OK

[David Newall]

Paul Wayper wrote:
> The problem with this is that Microsoft Australia (at least) has it's
> "Education Fund", which internally is acknowledged to be a slush fund for
> undercutting any open source implementation costs in competitive
> bidding.  So
> even if you do bid $10,000 to install Linux on a thousands computers,
> Microsoft can easily offer to install Windows on all of them for
> $2,000, and
> once again Open Source software is shown to be non-competitive in the
> education industry.

That's not obvious.  Microsoft could charge $2 per machine in license
fees, as compared $0 for Linux, but the cost of installing the software,
which amounts to hundreds to thousands of dollars in wages, is typically
met by the customer.  Installation costs should be similar for Linux and
Windows, so without giving their software away, it's hard for Microsoft
to be as cheap as Linux.