[wlug_org] [POL] Resellers understanding of 'free' licences.

[Wood Brent]

This is a response to a question regarding political & evangelising issues :-)
Please read no further if you find these topics offensive.


--- Ian Beardslee <geek@falcons.co.nz> wrote:
> I was helping one of our now ex-staff work out what she needed for her new 
> one person business.  In the end she went for a new laptop running Windows 
> XP Pro (trust me, it was the best choice).

I trust you, it may be infortunate, but Linux & OOS are a long way off being
suitable for the needs of many. Very few newbies are really ready for Linux.
Open Office however is pretty capable.

> I suggested that rather than cough up the money for MSOffice, I'd burn her 
> a CD with the latest OpenOffice on it and install it for her.  She was 
> telling me that when she went off to buy the laptop the salesperson (The 
> Laptop Co) didn't seem to understand that there are no licence fees or 
> number of PC restrictions on OpenOffice and was 'scaring' her with the 
> idea that it was illegal.

Partly coz resellers get a share of the licence in terms of their markup. Not
likely to be a big push there for something they can't make $$ out of. I guess
they could still charge for "installation & setup", depending on the licence.
Certainly a labour charge for time.

> 
> In spite of the discussion on Monday :-) should the wellylug do things (as 
> part of the installfest promotion) like promote things like OpenOffice 

I have 50 of DSE's Open Office CD's to give away at the 'fest. 

When I sell someone a box (with Windoze) who wants Word/Excel I usually suggest
they try OO, it doesn't cost anything & can be removed if they don't want it,
wherupon we'll revist installing MS Office. So far no one has fund OO
unsuitable :-)

For those who have whined about the DSE OO cdrom about being a silly
compilation & not a good example, please note the NZOSS list archive have a
record of the traffic discussing what should be there, & the OS community had
significant input. IMHO DSE consulted pretty well over the contents. 

> resellers as valid alternates - or do you think we'll just run into brick 
> walls where people are just interested in the markup they get from pawning 
> MSOffice onto the great unwashed, not for the greater good of the end user 
> and society as a whole :-)

Generally people are in business to pay the bills, ie - make $$. Margins are
pretty slim, so unless using OS software gives you some other alternative to
mainatain income, the retail channel is not gonna be overly supportive.

What has happened (& is happening) is that companies like DSE, & locally Quay,
are finding they can bundle a PC with OS software & sell cheaper than the
competition. The implication is that others will have to follow suit to remain
competitive. So they do have a realistic business model for supporting OS
software, growing slowly.

This approach does make sense, but it tends to be at the storefront retail
sales rather than corporate. When a corporate wants boxes, they generally put
out a spec, incl software, which interested companies tender for. To keep the
tendering process simple, they don't confuse things by adding OS software as an
option. Or the corporates have a MS select type of licence, so in one order of
20-100 boxes or whatever, the MS cost is already covered, so isn't even part of
the actual budget for the boxes.

The corporate IT helpdesk staff generally have MS experience & don't want to
become redundant, so don't support any push for changes either. 

The big change will come when corporates issue RFP's for OS bundles as an
option, so the resellers can legitimately offer such solutions. As tax payers,
our influence amongst corporate buyers is greatest in Govt. Ideally NZOSS is
active in this area, but I haven't seen much evidence of it.

Summat that interests me is the "free" computer training courses through
Warehouse Stationary (& others). These are universally for MS Office, & I'd
like to see some alternatives for "Word processing & spreadsheet" courses
instead. It is hand in hand with takeup of the software in the corporate world,
but is an area the Linux/OS community is able to contribute something. 


Brent Wood