Microsoft's Bulk Deal With New Zealand Collapses

vik writes "The latest 3-year, pan-government deal that Microsoft has been establishing with the New Zealand government since 2000 has collapsed, opening the doors to the wider use of open source software in government. The NZ State Services Commission (already a prize-winning user of open source) says in a statement that it '...became apparent during discussions that a formal agreement with Microsoft is no longer appropriate.' Having lost their discount, individual government departments will now have to put their IT requirements out to tender individually."

RIP

[Smivs]

Another nail in MSs coffin?

Open Formats

[Nerdfest]

The individual departments should be required to use open formats where open formats exist. It's far past the time governments should be held hostage with proprietary formats.

More diverse or just trickier?

[dov_0]

So the NZ gov will not make a contract with MS centrally, leaving individual dept's to tender individually. Well, it just means that the central States Service Commission with it's liking of FOSS will no longer have as much influence on software purchases, leaving possibly less open-minded dept CIO's to make contracts. At a higher price due to lower volume? No great loss for Microsoft there. It may even be a winner for them.

Re:Open Formats

[Daengbo]

I agree that should be the number one short-term goal for governments of the world. The only problem is, what do you do about issues like OOXML, which is a standard, and which MS supports in name, but which isn't actually supported by anyone? Gaming the standards system has become too easy and corrupting standards has no penalty.

What ever happened to the good ol' days when you put up an RFC and a reference implementation and everyone tried to make sure new stuff worked with the old stuff? If there had been a reference implementation (ahem ... OO.o), we wouldn't have the weasel ODF support in MS Office SP2.

Re:RIP

[Bert64]

Maybe microsoft should work on making windows more user friendly so you don't have to spend hours in the dos cli configuring irq numbers and io addresses, dealing with constant crashes and manually installing networking support just so they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with..

Oh wait, it's not 1993 anymore...

Linux these days is generally much easier to install than windows, and proprietary unix was always much easier than windows (because like macos, it came bundled with hardware designed to run it)

Re:RIP

[sumdumass]

It's likely a positioning move to get steeper discounts.

What would put another nail in MS's coffin would be them calling the bluff and forcing NZ to take on quite a bit of Open source software. Once past the "OMG it's different then what we have always used" stage, it might be more then enough to the government agencies and lead to more OSS adoption.

Re:Linux

[elrous0]

Remember that David only defeats Goliath in the movies. In real life, David usually ends up with a slingshot shoved up his ass.

Re:A small win, but MS has lobbyists

[drinkypoo]

...yet none of them are on the bid in NZ. Surprising isn't it?

No, but not for the reasons you describe. It's called simple bribery and collusion, and it has to do with Microsoft, and big bags of money. If the corporations didn't come along with complete programs for these government pinheads to look like they were doing their jobs, they might actually have to do them.

Re:RIP

[SpaghettiPattern]

and proprietary unix was always much easier than windows

Nope. UNIX was/is much easier to maintain when setup half decent. Keeping 10 workstations running was peanuts compared to Windows. To install it you needed to know your stuff. No deceptive comfy pillow was supplied. Ever installed SunOS 4? Ever added a 3rd party SCSI disk?

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough, but the global Linux community is considerably larger than Microsoft so the particular placement of that slingshot is open for debate.

Nothing will change though

[flyingfsck]

NZ will still buy all software from MS, just at much more inflated prices. Buying OSS from a zoo of little guys is just too much hassle for IT and the buyers.

Re:RIP

[noundi]

Thank you for proving my point. While you are using Windows you have little knowledge of how important driver support is, you take it for granted, just like my sound server example. You don't know that it's important to check for supported hardware because whatever you stick inside your PC has been supported so far.

You're saying that you're about to change PC equipment. Before you decide what you want google around for those pieces of hardware and make sure there are stable Linux drivers that support them. It doesn't necessarily need to be old equipment so don't sweat it just yet. Do this and I promise you that you will have the most painless OS installation you've ever experienced, no exaduration. Your initial thought might be "how annoying", but then again if you had low level knowledge (and wanted Linux) you'd probably end up buying a complete setup from a vendor that supplies Linux support, but you're not. If you were an advanced user you'd find no problem in doing this quick research. If however you're the middle person with, let's call it phantom knowledge, you'd try to do what the advanced guy is doing with the ambitions of the low level guy, getting you absolutely nowhere. The only way of learning this is by doing, so do yourself a favor and set yourself on the path of becoming an advanced user, it really doesn't hurt.

As I said, if you're really up for it the only thing you need to do is check for Linux support for the hardware you're going to buy, the same way as you've been ignoring Mac products due to incompability (or other more obvious issues not mentioned).

Oh and about "laziness". You can disagree with me all you want, and you probably should, but I've seen and helped so many people with similar/related problems and my conclusion is, even they'd disagree as well, that they've simply been lazy. They know google, they know english, they have fingers, and most importantly they have a question. Don't tell me that's not being lazy. :)

Re:RIP

[fwarren]

Sure, its laziness, but we're all lazy. Sometimes we want a computer to act like a device that just works, without hassle, at all.

It is a lie. Repeat after me. "A Computer is NOT an appliance".

Some things are not inherently simple. A blender is simple, a toaster is simple. A telecsope is NOT simple. You have to adjust where you are pointing it and the focus, know about lenses.

Things are moving along. Compare an SLR camera from 20 years ago to a push and click digital camera of today. There are still things to learn but the simple "point and click" "appliance" camera of today is a very powerful camera.

Microsoft has done everyone a diservice by saying that a computer IS an appliance. Take any group of hardware and add $200 of Microsoft products and you will have a working system. Easy to use and secure.

Everyeone wants to do word processing, but they don't want to lean how their OS stores files...so they can't find what they saved an hour from now. Everyone wants to send email, but they don't know how to read an error message that tells them why their email could not be delivered.

Short of running a kiosk, we are not anywhere near the "appliance" stage of PC computing. Anyone saying otherwise should be swiftly kicked in the balls. Even if he is a geek with funny haircut and wears glasses.

Re:RIP

[Ant P.]

Now try buying an all in one printer, a USB TV Tuner, and a Wifi USB stick. Remember-NO RESEARCH. Now go to distro foo and see if device barr you just got at Walmart works.

Having bought an overpriced prebuilt many years ago, I've been through all that and more. I still remember the five hour delay while Windows Update downloaded a 30MB bloated, shitty sound card driver over dialup because the OEM install CD didn't bother to include one. It worked on Knoppix "out of the box". Guess windows just isn't ready for the desktop.