Becta refers Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading

31st October 2007

See http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=34425

Becta, the government's education technology agency, has recently made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for alleged anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in the schools software marketplace and in relation to Microsoft's approach to document interoperability.

This complaint relates to the Microsoft Academic Licensing (Schools Agreement)

Microsoft offer schools a number of ways of licensing their software for use in schools, in particular:

• Microsoft Select Licensing: licenses obtained under the Select agreements (including the agreement operated by Broadband Sandwell) comprise a “perpetual” license, i.e. you can continue to use the license on a PC for the lifetime of the PC.
• Microsoft Academic Licensing agreement (Schools Agreement): This is a "subscription” licensing scheme that allows a school to use the software for 12 or 36 months only. At the end of the subscription period, a further payment will be required to allow software to continue to be licensed.

Most schools in the borough purchase their software using the first of these two schemes, Microsoft Select, either through Broadband Sandwell or from other sources.

The complaint that Becta is making relates to the second scheme, the Microsoft Academic Licensing agreement (Schools Agreement). Becta believe that they have identified problems with the Schools Agreement that make it anti-competitive, and advise schools not to move to Microsoft Schools Agreement, but instead to use other methods of licensing their software use, such as Microsoft Select.

The advice to schools is that they if they are considering using the second scheme, the Microsoft Schools Agreement that they should not do so until this matter is resolved.

Additionally:

• Schools that use the Schools Agreement may find that there are extra costs to “buy themselves out” of the Schools Agreement,
• Schools should be aware that the Schools Agreement includes operating system licenses (Windows XP or Vista), where these would have been already obtained when the PC was purchased, forcing the schools to license this element twice.
• Although the Schools Agreement allows schools to upgrade software to latest versions, this can cause problems for the classroom teacher if there are substantial changes between versions. This has been the case with Office 2007, which is substantially different from Office XP, and is another part of Becta’s complaint.
• The Schools Agreement may include software that the school is not in a position to deploy, thereby forcing them to purchase licenses for software that they do not need.

Schools should note that they have a legal responsibility to ensure that all software that is used in the school is correctly licensed. If you are in any doubt about this, please contact us.