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MicrosoftCampusAgreement

The Microsoft Campus Agreement is a global licensing scheme that universities and colleges can purchase from Microsoft.

Some institutions are using this licensing scheme because they are afraid of costly penalties if a Microsoft audit discovers users with improperly licensed copies of certain software.

At Dartmouth, we have such an agreement. Anyone who puchases a computer from the computer store pays a $75 fee to help recoup the costs of the licensing, even if you purchase a Macintosh computer or a computer that comes with no software from Microsoft (e.g., a server preloaded with RH 7.3).

Unfortunately, some of the people I've tried to contact in ComputingServices don't seem willing to share information about how much we paid for the license. They keep telling me to look at the page on the ComputingSalesAndService website:

UPDATE

• The saga of me trying to get information about the MS Campus Agreement can be followed here: MicrosoftCampusAgreementSaga. We (students, faculty, etc..) have the right to know what the administration is doing!

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~store/sales/mscampus.html

Based on estimates for other colleges, the license costs us roughly $200,000 a year, although we really have no idea if that's an accurate guess.

Hopefully, we'll have more information soon.

RobinsonTryon - 03 Feb 2003