Free Site License To Online Office Suite For Indiana Residents

from the how-will-Microsoft-respond? dept

Last year, we had a story about the city of Houston ditching Microsoft in favor of an online office suite called SimDesk. There hadn't been much news out of SimDesk since then, but Broadband Reports points us to a story about a new SimDesk deal with the state of Indiana to provide SimDesk for free to every state resident for at least two years (and possibly longer). It sounds similar to some "site licenses" that many companies offer their employees or which universities offer their students, though SimDesk isn't getting paid for this. Instead, they seem to be doing it in exchange for an investment. Microsoft (just as they did in Houston) is likely to cry foul, and complain that the state is competing unfairly against them. It's also unclear from the article how they prove who is an Indiana resident (the site appears to require an address, but I imagine that could be faked). Also, what happens if someone moves out of Indiana? Either way, the state could just point people to something like OpenOffice, which is already free if they really just wanted people to have a free office suite, instead of having to set up a special SimIndiana site.

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