[ubuntu-uk] ubunto in college, was Re: Women, LinuxWorld, Stuff

[Tony Arnold]

stude.list+ubuntuuk at googlemail.com wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On 16/09/06, ana <ana_m at onetel.com> wrote:
>> We had a college IT teacher in the
>> hacklab once, he explained that even if he wants to teach some free
>> software he can't, they are locked in a contract with microsoft by which
>> they can not install any other software on the machines.
> 
> Is that legal? I would have thought it was anti-competitive. Maybe
> there can be another European law suit, anyone know what happened with
> the last one btw?

I don't know if Microsoft impose these restrictions, they certainly 
don't at my University. In fact there is no way we would sign such a 
contract!

What I have seen in schools is that the school leases the PCs themselves 
from some company, and it may be this company that is imposing 
restrictions. The leasing companies tend to offer a service where they 
provide the machines and the software on them pre-loaded, so you can 
imagine them getting upset if the school wiped a disk and installed Ubuntu!

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold