As I see it, there are two transactions to using an MS product.

1. Procurement: Buy the license directly from MS or some other retailer.  If
the law only applies to procurement then they could buy from a reseller to get
around it.

2. EULA: It does not matter where the license was aquired, the EULA is a
CONTRACT between only the county and MS, not some third party vendor.  If the
law applies to contracts between the county and the party contracted with, I
don't see a way around the law.

I don't remember and am not looking at the wording of the law so I don't know
if it affects which one of the above, or both. 

Alan

On Wed, 3 Jul 2002 09:41:13 -0700 Trent Shipley <tcshipley@earthlink.net>
wrote:

You appear to be in a minority here.  The majority are adopting a different 
approach.

1)  No one qualified to provide a legal opinion has stated that it is illegal 

for Maricopa County to source from Microsoft.

2)  Assuming it *is* illegal to source from MS, the bureaucrats can simply 
get MS product from resellers.

3)  Assuming it is illegal and there is no legal way to evade the rule, 
forcing the County to follow the rule will be counter-productive in terms of 
both long-term relations with County IT and for PR.


On Wednesday 03 July 2002 08:57, you wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Lets not forget the issue that brought the sunshine.  According to the
> procurement procedures of Maricopa County, Microsoft can and should be
> debarred from competing for any county contracts because it has been
> convicted of federal antitrust violations.
>
> That is the point that needs to be made loudly and strongly.  No matter how
> many shills MS wants to bring, no matter how much FUD and misinformation
> they want to spread, they cannot weasel their way around the letter of the
> county procurement procedures.
>
> - --
> Jim
>
> Freedom is worth protecting
>
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> =3tRG
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