Open up UK Schools
October 29th, 2007BECTA, the UK government’s education technology agency, has today made a complaint to the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for alleged anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. BECTA has two bones to pick with Microsoft:
- Microsoft offers cut-price software licences for UK schools, but insists that schools must buy Microsoft licences for every PC in the school (even if the PCs are running competitors’ alternatives to Microsoft products!)
- Microsoft are refusing to support OpenDocument Format (ODF) – the ISO approved international standard for office documents – in its MS-Office 2007 product. BECTA believes schools should not buy software which restricts choice.
BECTA has been waiting for a response all year from Microsoft, and it’s hoping that an OFT referral will bring pressure on Microsoft to respond. In the light of the EU’s recent climbdown in its struggle with Microsoft, it’s to be hoped that this more local and focussed attack on the company’s monopolistic practices will prove more successful.
The timing in interesting, with a new Linux based laptop featuring OpenOffice.org about to be released into the UK schools market. It would be completely iniquitous if schools had to turn down these neat devices because they were forced to buy Microsoft licences for them!