Swiss Open Source Decision Going Microsoft's Way

hardsix writes "The recent legal wrangling between a group of open source supporters led by Red Hat against the Swiss government's decision to award an IT contract solely to Microsoft appears to be going Microsoft's way. A Swiss lawyer close to the case claims that a preliminary ruling has rejected the open source group's request to overturn the Microsoft contract however the case is still ongoing and there is still room for appeal. 'The Administrative Court hasn't made its final ruling yet but even if it finds in favor of Microsoft, there is still room for appeal. No matter what the ruling will be, an appeal will likely be filed to the Supreme Court, whose final word will have substantial significance in the future for public authorities with regards to computing services,' said Swiss legal firm BCCC AVOCATS. Open source supporters argue there has to be real political will for open source projects to succeed in the public sector."

They Did Not 'Look At The Options'

[MediaStreams]

Did you bother to read the actual articles? The issue is the fact that a single vendor was handed a contract without competing bids.

So, no, they didn't 'look at the options'.

Re:Talk about bad losers!

[robot_love]

No public tendering process was made. The contract was handed straight to Microsoft. Therefore your comment is irrelevant.

Re:Talk about bad losers!

[internettoughguy]

Im a windows user currently, but it seems that a government not tendering its contract to the lowest bidder means it's swiss taxpayers who are the real losers here. It stinks of corruption, and its just not how you do business in the public sector.

Re:They Did Not 'Look At The Options'

[arose]

They decided that there would be no point to accepting bids because Microsoft was the only vendor who had a product that could meet their needs.

Not surprising when you write the whole big basically describing Windows without mentioning the name, I've seen bids like that, they are written with the intention of not having to look at anything else.

Re:They Did Not 'Look At The Options'

[sumdumass]

I don't think the correlation to that can be easily drawn. Of course the recommendations of the Government's IT departments would have in impact on the requirements but without an open bid, they do no know what is availible from who that could meet those requirements.

The open bid process is supposed to make sure that governments using public monies usually derived from taxes are not squandered, wasted, or used to benefit someone's outside interest. There is no assurance of this no matter how intelligent or unintelligent you believe the government IT departments to be without an open and public bidding process. You are inferring that their judgment is proper and it should play a role in the process but for all we know, the decision could be because someone wants to see their MS stock rise before they sell it. You are making a leap in claiming their competence and meeting criteria more so then the inference that they are ignorant of alternatives. You have no idea what the motivations are and at least with an open and public bidding process, they will have to justify their decisions with sound and verifiable facts. OF course this doesn't limit the benefit someone might see from a jump in stock prices or some kickback scheme hiding somewhere but it will how strong the justifications are that will both increase competition in the future as well as point to potential conflicts when the sole justification can be "we will have to educate out techs if we go with something else" or "i like the ribbon in MS office".

Re:This isn't that outrageous

[Registered Coward v2]

I think the problem here is that you didn't read up on the backstory which shows that they did not consider Red Hat or any company that wasn't Microsoft.

According to the article, it was a reissue of an existing contract; so not having a tender is not necessarily unusual. If the current vendor / supplier is performing satisfactorily then they are often kept in place since ripping everything out an starting new is likely to be more expensive and introduce a while new set of problems.

Is that right? It depends on the context and how the renewal was negotiated. From the article the Swiss government's actions do not appear unreasonable; and the response by the other vendors is the typical one from those that don't get a contract. Nothing new or exciting here, other than it involves open source which is a hot button here.

Re:They Did Not 'Look At The Options'

[binkzz]

Build a better product and the rest will follow. "Political will" is well, politics.

If only that were true. Building a better product alone is not enough, certain companies will mix with politics and try to push the better product into the ground any way they can.

Re:They are obliged to accept bids by EU rules

[KlaasVaak]

They are in the European Free Trade Association most EU rules apply to them and in exchange they get free movement of people in the EU, trade without restrictions with EU member states, etc. It makes them a virtual member of the EU just one without any influence.