[TriLUG] Red Hat proposal to enhance Microsoft settlement...

[rpjday]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Geoffrey Douglas Purdy wrote:

> Microsoft had proposed that, in settlement of class-action claims of
> price-gouging, the company donate computer hardware, software and support
> to 14,000 poor school districts throughout the United States. Under the
> proposed settlement, a substantial part of the value provided to schools
> would be in the form of Microsoft software.

not surprisingly, i have a couple of thoughts on microsoft's generous
offer.  let's consider the hardware aspect first.  depending on the
software microsoft is willing to donate, that hardware might have to
be fairly new stuff, given that PCs older than 2 years have little
chance of even running XP.  but even if it's relatively nice stuff,
chances are microsoft will get a pretty decent tax writeoff for those
donations.  particularly since there is pending legislation (passed
already?) that increases the rate at which corporations can depreciate
hardware.

regarding the software, well, it's safe to say that that's not costing
microsoft squat.  if these are genuinely poor school districts, they're
not likely to have been big spenders on microsoft software anyway, so
it's not like microsoft is losing potential sales this way.  more
importantly, while the cost of burning CDs is virtually zero, chances
are microsoft is going to take full value of the tax donation value
of that software.

on top of all that, inundating 14000 school districts with microsoft
software is just giving that company more opportunity to entrench
their monopoly.  how this giveaway scheme can be considered punishment
is beyond me.  "sure," says the government, "we'll really hurt you
by allowing you to take over totally the software environment of 
thousands of school districts.  and if that's not painful enough,
we'll give you a horking, big tax deduction to do it."

some days, it's really hard not to be cynical.

rday