A Victory for Becta? Microsoft Makes Concessions
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) appears to be heading toward a reconciliation with Microsoft. The agency, with its outspoken stance on interoperability in education, said it's been making "substantial progress" in its discussions with the company that it once chastised, progress that includes concessions on education licensing programs for schools and colleges.
Back in 2007, Becta caused a stir when it filed a complaint against Microsoft with Britain's Office of Fair Trading for perceived problems with Microsoft's interoperability practices. More recently, in May 2008, the group referred its complaint to the European Commission in support of an antitrust investigation. At issue for Becta has been both academic licensing constraints and Microsoft's past lackluster support for open standards, in particular Open Document Format (ODF), in its Office applications. These concerns were detailed in a separate report Becta issued in early 2008--a report that recommended against deploying Microsoft software in the British education sector.
Becta's tactics seem to have had the desired effect. Since that time, Microsoft has made concessions to Becta and to interoperability in general. In mid-May, Microsoft announced expanded support for ODF and other document formats in Office 2007. And the company also now says that it will introduce a new, alternative licensing program that will be available to British schools alongside its existing school licensing program.
What the new licensing program does is remove a requirement that British schools using subscription agreements pay Microsoft a licensing fee when using competing technologies when those technologies (such as Mac or Linux systems) are not running Microsoft software. It would also change other aspects of Microsoft academic licensing, such as paying per user rather than per system and removing a requirement to pay a licensing fee for Microsoft software on systems that can't run that software.