[Linux-aus] [luv-talk] Should I feel sorry for Queenslanders?!

[Russell Coker]

On Sat, 23 Nov 2013, David Lyon <david.lyon at hackerpads.com> wrote:
> In all fairness, I'd say it's pretty easy to switch between Microsoft
> software and Open-Source in a typical commercial environment. And 
> knowing
> how hard it is to sell software these days, I don't blame Microsoft for
> doing everything they can legally to keep their business going.

In the modern corporatist environment doing everything legally means changing 
the legal system to get the result that they desire.  This is against the 
interests of the citizens and the country in general.

I'd like to see MS and other companies act in a capitalist manner and compete 
on the basis of features and price.  If they want to sell more products then 
they can make better products that people want to buy.

> Telling kids the advantages of their software, I can't see anything
> wrong with that.

Sure they can do that.  They can bid on TV advertising for the teen time-
slots, use Google advertising, put paid adverts on web sites that cater to 
teens and do lots of other things.

School isn't the place for advertising.  I believe that any school which does 
any form of advertising shouldn't be eligible for any government funding.

> If the open-source community want to do similar things
> then they can do that also. My point is that in the real world, there's
> a mix of hardware and software. As consumers, we can all choose what
> we wish to buy and what we don't. So I don't see a big problem.

I don't want schools promoting any agenda that isn't based on education.  If a 
school has a choice between two software products and one offers source so 
students can learn about it then that makes a compelling point in favor of 
that product.

Kickbacks should be unacceptable and a sufficient criteria for excluding the 
organisation in question.

If MS wanted to give Windows and MS-Office source licenses to schools along 
with a complete build environment to allow students to produce and use 
modified versions then that would be a good case for using MS software.  But 
such licenses must not have anti-competitive terms, no claiming that software 
students later wrote was derived from MS software.

-- 
My Main Blog         http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog    http://doc.coker.com.au/