Becta have responed very positively to the launch of a new 'Subscription Enrolment Schools Pilot' from Mircosoft, building on the previous School Agreement, which had required schools to buy licences for all their eligible computers, irrespective of whether they had Windows, MS Office etc installed or were running Linux or Open Office.

Becta see the pilot scheme as offering flexibility to schools, and also enabling considerable cost savings where schools choose to run Linux and/or Open Office on some of their computers.

Becta's chief executive, Stephen Crowne commented:

"The new flexibility will facilitate greater competition and choice in the marketplace... It will also make it easier for such schools to use a mix of proprietary and open source products as they see fit."

Becta's press release includes a couple of examples of how the pilot will allow Microsoft's proprietary code to run side by side with open source software:

"A school might find that it wants to introduce pupils to a range of office productivity software and thus convert (say) three computer labs from running Microsoft Office to running an alternative product such as the freely available OpenOffice.org. Under the existing subscription arrangements they would still pay Microsoft subscription licensing fees for the systems running OpenOffice.org. Under the SESP they can now exclude such systems from their Microsoft Office licence calculations thus potentially reducing costs.

A school may wish to introduce an internet café in a student research area based on say Linux and Firefox. Under the School Agreement they would still pay Microsoft subscription licensing fees for the systems running Linux. Under the SESP they can exclude such systems from their Microsoft licence calculations thus potentially reducing costs."