Swiss Court Halts Non-Competitive Contract With Microsoft

Ade writes "Looks like the challenge to the Swiss Administrative Court concerning the government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding was successful: The court has issued a temporary injunction (note: article in German) against the Federal Office of Buildings and Logistics (BBL), effectively stopping the CHF 14M (£8M; $15M)-contract to deliver licenses and support for software used on government computers for the next three years. According to Swiss Government practices, any contract over CHF 50'000 has to undergo a public call for offers. The BBL cited 'no serious alternatives' as the reason which this contract never did."

Probably Saved a lot of money

[jellomizer]

Having done work for the State of NY, I am sure this happens else where.
Fair and Competitive bidding work like this...
You need a job to be done.
You call the guys who you want to do it.
They do some "Free" analysis of the problem.
They give you the requirements as they would do it.
They also attach the Resume of the people who they want to do the work.
They make the bids to match the requirements and fit the resume of the people.
They take in all the bid.
Then they find the winning bid (which isn't the cheapest) but is a perfect match to the requirements. (which happens to be the company that did the free analysis)

Re:Well of course there were no serious alternativ

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't usually feed the trolls, but I'm feeling generous today.

1. Many servers run on Linux, and have done so for a decade.
2. Every Linux distro I've installed since 2000 has installed using a GUI, and then booted into a GUI, and needed no compilation or tricks to get to my mail. I just clicked on the Thunderbird icon, entered my POP information and mail was flowing.
3. Linux is supported by major corporations. Unless you consider IBM to be some type of small-fry company.
4. Races don't have levels, professions have levels. Thus there is no such thing as a "level 5 dwarf". But there is such thing as a "level one slashdot troll"

Oh, and you are showing your age there gramps... not many people under 30 have even heard of Tron, let alone know what the word "fanzine" means. Oh, and it's not referred to as the "world wide web" anymore, people just call it the internet or the web.

One final word... this story is about a government contract. Governments networks are run by industry professionals, not "average users" and even if they end up with Windows, the admins will almost certainly know plenty about how to use Unix and Linux, as well as other OS's.

Re:Well of course there were no serious alternativ

[Insanity Defense]

Thus there is no such thing as a "level 5 dwarf". But there is such thing as a "level one slashdot troll"

Basic Dungeons and Dragons did have advancement within race for non humans so you could have a level 5 dwarf or elf (but not human). That changed within Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.