Microsoft licensing can be complex, and schools have two main options if they wish to license Microsoft products. They can acquire perpetual licences, giving the school the right to use the software permanently. Microsoft SELECT is the most common type of proprietary licence that most schools are familiar with and it is usually the most cost effective way for educational institutions who want to use Microsoft software to acquire the necessary perpetual licenses.

Microsoft also offers schools a subscription licensing option (the School Agreement Subscription) which gives them the right to “rent” Microsoft software for a fixed period of time (eg for 1 year or 3 years). At the end of the rental period, if the school still wishes to use the rented Microsoft software it has the ability to extend the rental period or convert to a perpetual licence via a buyout payment. The buyout payment can be substantial.

While subscription licensing usually has the lowest cost of entry of the various Microsoft licensing options, it is an “all or nothing” approach which can have the effect of requiring schools to pay Microsoft licences fees for computers that aren’t actually running any of Microsoft’s software. This is because the subscription licensing cost is based on the total number of computers in the school. This has meant that if a school is using Microsoft’s subscription licensing, fees need to be paid to Microsoft for Apple Mac or Linux computers, and indeed those computers running OpenOffice.org.

Becta believed that such licensing arrangements harmed the uptake of Open Source products such as OpenOffice.org and Becta also considered that Microsoft’s approach to interoperability in Office 2007 made it difficult to transfer documents easily and effectively between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007. Again this could potentially harm the uptake of OpenOffice.org.

Following extensive negotiations with Microsoft which failed to resolve these concerns, Becta made a complaint to the OFT regarding both issues:

1) the lack of interoperability in Microsoft Office 2007 making it difficult to use it in schools alongside alternative products;

2) the limitations that Microsoft places on schools using its subscription licensing arrangements.

Recent progress on effective ODF support in Microsoft Office 2007 is potentially great news for the growth of OSS use in schools. The ODF format is the document format used by OpenOffice.org and by an increasing number of Microsoft’s competitors.

“Microsoft announced recently its intention to provide built-in support in Office 2007 for the Open Document Format (ODF) file format.”

We think this is really important as OpenOffice.org is a great OSS alternative to Microsoft Office, but realistically, when creating documents for other people to read (or when moving your files from one machine you use to another), the hassle of changing file formats and the risk of losing formatting has been off-putting.

The inclusion of built-in ODF support within Office 2007 will make it much easier for users to transfer documents (and retain their rich content features) from Office 2007 to OpenOffice.org and vice versa.

As an example of the benefits, ODF support within MS Office allows students to use OpenOffice.org at home, removing the significant cost of a student MS Office licence (£40+) and enabling lower specification devices to be used without loss of interoperability with school systems. This should help reduce the cost of home provision for students.

Likewise the announcement on a new approach to subscription licensing in schools should help with the uptake of OSS.

“Microsoft will introduce a new licensing programme for schools, initially as a pilot available to all schools, in approximately six months alongside the current School Agreement arrangements.

“The UK will pilot a new Microsoft licensing scheme that removes the requirement for schools using subscription agreements to pay Microsoft to license systems that are using their competitors' technologies. So for the first time schools using Microsoft's subscription licensing agreements can decide for themselves how much of their ICT estate to licence.”

This new flexibility means for example that schools might decide to create a computer lab or a student resource area and use Open Source software (for example Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org and Firefox) and decide to exclude all those systems from their Microsoft licence count. Previously if the school used a Microsoft Subscription Agreement they would have had no such flexibility and would have been required to pay Microsoft licence fees for their OSS systems!

Additionally, even when many of the school’s computers could not run Microsoft Vista schools would still have been required to include those systems in their Microsoft licence count and pay the appropriate licence fees. Under the new arrangements schools can exclude such systems and put the money saved to other uses.

The change to these arrangements opens up the market for schools using Microsoft’s subscription licensing to try out alternative software (including OSS) without paying a direct price penalty. The changes in Office 2007 mean that all educational institutions should no longer face unnecessary interoperability hurdles when using products such as OpenOffice.org.

The pilot arrangements proposed by Microsoft mean that licensing costs per computer will be somewhat higher if not all computers are licensed, so schools will need to calculate carefully whether to switch from the “all or nothing” to the “flexible subscription” licence arrangements. However, the more schools target their subscription licensing agreement to what they actually need, the greater the potential for savings – and that should be good news for schools and for those who want to encourage the use of alternative approaches based on OSS.

On a related note, many readers will be aware that Becta had advised against upgrading to Vista and Office 2007. (The lack of ODF support in Office 2007 was only one reason for the Office 2007 advice). The advice remains unchanged until the ODF support is actually rolled out (we think this is due in the first half of 2009), at which time Becta will update its advice.

References

Becta Press release

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

Becta FAQ

http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=re&&catcode=ss_res_pro_bps_sof_04&rid=15696