MICROSOFT has suffered further set-backs in the UK education sector this week after Becta, the government procurement quango, reformed its purchasing regime to break the software giant's hold on education, and launched a programme to get schools to adopt open source software.

At least three open source software suppliers submitted tenders to Becta yesterday for the £270,000 Schools Open Source Project. The winner will spend two years building a community of schools which uses and develops its own open source alternatives to Microsoft software.

Becta has also specifically called on open source companies to join its £80 million framework list of certified suppliers of software to schools, contracts for which will be awarded in June. The last framework list consisted entirely of Microsoft suppliers and drew Becta widespread criticism for favouring the convicted monopolist over cheaper, homegrown alternatives.

The INQUIRER learned of three open source companies that had bid for the School Open Source Project. Though none of them were prepared to confirm that they had submitted tenders yesterday, they said the competition was an indication that Microsoft's influence was waning in the UK's public sector.

Mark Taylor, president of the Open Source Consortium, said: "We've been telling Becta for a while that they need to help kick start open source in the schools market. They said that would be skewing the market, but we said, 'it's already skewed'. All we are asking for is an even chance."

"The procurement list is biased against open source companies," said Taylor, who is bidding for the work as head of the Sirius open source consultancy.

"We will have open source companies being official suppliers to education for the first time. Becta are at last taking practical steps to open up the market. "

Ian Lynch, director of business development at The Learning Machine, another open source company that submitted a tender yesterday, said: "I think a lot of this stuff is indicative of the fact that Becta is changing. Five years ago, open source would have been a bigger risk."

He said that Becta started reconsidering its allegiance to Microsoft after Stephen Crowne became its chief executive two years ago.

That year, a complaint about Becta's procurement practices was taken to the European Commission, and one fifth of all MPs backed a parliamentary motion by Liberal Democrat MP John Pugh that rounded on Becta's procurement rules for excluding open source. Becta has since taken numerous steps to address the issue.

A sign of this is Microsoft's failure to agree new licence terms with Becta despite talks that have dragged on for longer than 18 months.

Microsoft, the convicted software monopolist, is also long overdue agreeing a renewal of its UK-wide megadeal with the Office of Government Commerce, the UK's procurement sheriff. Prime mincer Gordon Brown met with Bill Gates in January, just as the government started renegotiating its Microsoft megadeal. After they met in January 2004, Bill Gates got a knighthood and the megadeal was extended for another four years. Six months on from their latest love-in, they are still haggling the renewal and the prime minister has started singing the benefits of "openness".

The OGC announced on Monday that competition for places on its Educational Software Licence Framework had opened. The invitation to tender it wrote jointly with Becta called for open source suppliers to take part for the first time.

"We are particularly seeking suppliers who can provide a comprehensive choice of software solutions including appropriate open source and free-to-use alternatives and advise users on best value licensing," said the framework's contract notice on the Official Journal of the European Union.

Open Source Software Watch is the other of three known open source software suppliers to have submitted tenders for the Schools Open Source Project yesterday. µ