[ale] [Fwd: Cost of Windows and Office in US vs Thailand]

[James P. Kinney III]

On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 09:09, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> One of the things that has always bothered me is that when vendors sell
> products to the Government on a General Services Administration contract
> (a pre-negotiated contract that any Government agency can buy off of
> without having to compete the requirement), the price is supposed to be
> no higher than that which they offer their best commercial customers.
> 
> When MS pulls stuff like this or when they try to equal or beat a
> Linux-based offering by basically nulling out the per-seat line item, it
> just makes the pricing arbitrary, i.e., it's Tuesday and the moon is
> full, so we'll charge $xxx.  It should make anyone who pays a
> significant amount for licenses feel like they're getting screwed over.
> 
> - Jeff

Absolutely! This is why we have to work to get the "rules" changed so
that the opensource software _is_ the preferred solution. It really
yanks my chain when I see a government office stuffed full of PC's with
people doing nothing more than word processing, web surfing and email.
That does not requires a $200 software package. Yet, the government
purchasing agents know they will not get in trouble for buying Microsoft
(it used to IBM). So how do we change this misconception?
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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