Microsoft, the NHS, licence fees and oddness.

While looking around in the strange and interesting world of Microsoft and the NHS, I found this; a page offering NHS employees in England and Scotland (sorry, Wales and Norn) downloadable MS Office for £9. Which is near as damnit free, even in these straitened times.

But hold on. Isn't the NHS the largest employer in the world, after the People's Liberation Army, the Indian railways and the H1N1 virus? It is. Some 1.5 million UK workers are held tight to its matronly bosom. Which means that roughly five percent of the UK's working stiffs are eligable for Microsoft productivity nearlyfreeware - through that one scheme alone.

That's an awful lot, even before you consider how many other companies may be doing something similar. And I thought MS had a principled objection to making software available at low prices? Doesn't paying less cost you more, in the MS world? And what does this do to the rest of the market - can a company with such an overwhelming presence in office productivity software push discount product like that, under the NHS logo? (Yes, clearly it can. But should it?).

The more I look at large software companies and their licensing schemes, the more curious I become about what would happen if a lot more transparency was imposed. It's not a simple thing to do - if you ever feel the need to talk to yourself, try asking Microsoft or Oracle or SAP or IBM about SME licensing rates. And if that's not silent enough, try asking Microsoft about who owns the IP in the stuff it's doing for the NHS.

And finally, for bonus points, take a look at this, one of the most bizarrely dysfunctional flow charts I've seen in a long time. See if you can find five things wrong with it - and then, for a gold star, work out what it's actually telling us about the relationship between the NHS, your money, and Microsoft.

More on this later. Oh yes.