EU Will Not Divulge Microsoft Contracts

Elektroschock writes "Marco Cappato, a Liberal member of the European Parliament, wanted to inspect the EU's contracts with Microsoft. His request was denied. '...the [divulging] of [this] information could jeopardize the protection of commercial interest of Microsoft.' Apparently the European Council sees no clear public interest in the release of such contractual material, and so 'the Secretariat general concludes that the protection of Microsoft's commercial interests, being one of the commercial partners of the European institutions, prevails on the [divulging] for the public interest.'"

Well that's just a load of BS, lemme tell you...

[tobiah (308208)]

[Blocked] It has been determined that the contents of this comment do not serve the public interest.
-The Secretariate General-

US vs. EU interests?

[jonaskoelker (922170)]

What really fascinates me is that the people high up in the EU governance food chain think that the business interests of a US company is more important to the citizens of the European Union than information about what their money is being spent on.

Does that mean I finally get the first post?

[MeNotU (1362683)]

Only took 7 years!

Not in their interest?

[HangingChad (677530)]

It's not in the public interest to know how much public money MSFT is getting and for what? It's a certainty MSFT doesn't want it getting out how much of a discount government agencies are getting, and what other inducements they're tossing in to sweeten the deal. If it gets out gov agencies are paying $50/seat for Windows, every other enterprise customer will want that deal. I'm not sure how keeping that secret is in the public interest...unless they're worried MS will raise the price if it gets out.

If it were up to me...if the taxpayer buys it, the taxpayer owns it. And that would be true for software, or at least for the licenses. Imagine if the federal government could negotiate for government wide enterprise license deals. If the Navy closed a program, they could take the software licenses they don't need and transfer them to the Marines or another gov agency. I always thought it should be that way. What's MS going to do about it? Not sell to the government? Yeah, that would be smart, drive gov adoption of open source.

Re:Not in their interest?

[pclminion (145572)]

It's not in the public interest to know how much public money MSFT is getting and for what?

That's not what is being claimed. The information IS in the public interest -- the argument is that Microsoft's commercial interest is MORE IMPORTANT than the public interest. Which I think is even worse-sounding that what you said.

More and more...

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

Almost EVERYTHING governments do is not in the public interest.

Ireland was right to say no ...

[The_Other_Kelly (44440)]

This is why Ireland said NO to the Lisbon treaty.

When you see the response of other EU nations,
you can *feel* the arrogance. Not just to the citizens,
but to smaller nations.

The EU is losing touch with basic democratic principles,
especially the concept of Accountability.

They have forgotten that they are servants of the people,
and need to be reminded.

Re:What Rights?

[rbanffy (584143)]

Anything that involves public money and is not a matter of national (or continental, in this case) security should be open to scrutiny.

Re:What Rights?

[jopsen (885607)]

EU what?
I'm sorry but exactly what kind of enforcement agencies those the EU have?

AFAIK the only intelligence agency is Europol, and all it's investigation are performed by member nations it has no executive rights anywhere as far as I know...

My guess is that EU got a really dirt cheap deal for some software... And promised not to tell others... Like everybody else...

Re:What Rights?

[erroneus (253617)]

*THAT* is likely to be the correct answer. Microsoft plays very fast and very lose with their pricing when threats to their monopoly are encountered. My guess is that their prices dipped to near-zero while they were being prosecuted in European courts in order to help influence opinion about Microsoft... and/or possibly fluctuations may be observed around the time that OOXML was up for ISO vote as well.

Re:What Rights?

[jopsen (885607)]

My guess is that their prices dipped to near-zero while they were being prosecuted in European courts in order to help influence opinion about Microsoft...

Are you insinuating that there're any links what so ever between what the European court and the contracts the EU counsel have to buy software?

The judges who convicted MS in the antitrust case were not politicians and they were not publicly elected!
To insinuate that the European court could be bribed by offering cheap contracts to EU counsel is absurd.

(I assume the contracts we're talking about is the software delivery contracts Microsoft has with EU, where EU is a customer).

The real reason it interesting is because the European Union probably did a study as to whether or not an opensource solution would be better. And they probably found that Microsoft suddenly would offer their software for close to nothing... And then the politicians decides that they'll get Microsoft since the price is not that much different... Only problem he doesn't see is the lockin... :)

Re:What Rights?

[forkazoo (138186)]

Not exactly, as it's horribly unfair to Microsoft. Think about it, if the contract was released, then all of Microsoft's competitors know just how much they need to undercut Microsoft's price to make the sale on a huge (HUGE) contract. You're putting Microsoft at a competitive disadvantage. This is why most (if not all) government contracts are sealed in this manner.

Signed
Someone who works for a government contractor

Yes, good god. Just imagine if players in the market were permitted to know current market rates for specific services. It'd be chaos. It'd be terrible. It'd allow vendors to compete on price for government contracts, and result in government potentially picking a less expensive option for using taxpayer money. Heaven forbid. At least we all know that picking Microsoft is the best possible example for slashdotters of a company that should never be put at a competitive disadvantage!

Re:What Rights?

[deraj123 (1225722)]

There's a big difference between bids being sealed during the bidding process, and them being opened after the deadline has passed. The first practice prevents the situation you're describing, while the second practice provides for public knowledge of how tax money is spent.

They're not talking about BIDS anyhow.

[Chas (5144)]

They're talking about contracts. Signed and sealed deals between MS and the EU. That gives zero competitive advantage to ANYONE, because the deal already went through, and the next time you have to compete with Microsoft on a completely different project.

Re:What Rights?

[EdIII (1114411)]

That's not the same thing. What he meant by "anything" was "any expenditures". The government should only have income from the taxation of it's citizens. We all "know" it's coming from us, so tax returns do not have to be disclosed to everyone.

ALL expenditures not DIRECTLY related to national security MUST be open to scrutiny. To do otherwise invites corruption into the system.

Re:What Rights?

[blowdart (31458)]

Nor is this a Microsoft issue; even if that's the only way to get it onto slashdot. Generally no contractual information like this is ever revealed; the UK government (for example) always refuses requests like this, even when people try to find out how much failed systems, or failed buildings cost.

Re:What Rights?

[by Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden contractual information has to be made public when dealing with the government, punsihable by criminal law.

Sucks to live in the UK.

Re:What Rights?

[jellomizer (103300)]

The US government is actually quite open, more open then you realize. Only when it comes to military/security information US is quite about it. Just tune to CSPAN 1,2,3,4,5... and you can watch most everything that is happening with the legislative area of our federal government, and every law passed or failed. Know what the debate was etc... It is that most of us are to lazy to actually look at the information and say it is a closed government. No they won't tell the general public about their brand new airplanes that can fire a laser at a top secret satellite to have it bounce back and kill a target half way around the world. But for the laws that get passed there is actually good transparency and I bet if you needed to you can find out how much they are paying Microsoft for their licenses.

Re:

[stocke2 (600251)]

The problem is this is public money being spent, and they should be willing to divulge this information to clear up any ideas people might get concerning government collusion with a large corporation. They are free to use whomever the please, but the practices they use in determining who to contract with should be a matter of publicly available policy.

They need to protect businesses equally, and if it appears they may be protecting a certain business over others, it does make it look as if there might

Re:What Rights?

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

However it is the right of governments to decide what they make public and not. And for my American friends remember that we have a different view on things like this, usually European governments are MORE open than the US.

The idea that governments have rights is absurd. People have rights. The people have delegated certain tasks to government for their own convenience, and have accepted limits on some minimal subset of their rights so that society can best protect the rest. Note that "society" is not the same as "the government"; the government is just a mechanism used by society to accomplish certain specific things.

Re:What Rights?

[Sir_Lewk (967686)]

Couldn't have said it better myself. The mere fact that so many people have a reversed understanding of who works for who when it comes to government is scary.

Re:What Rights?

[orielbean (936271)]

Rights of governments? The people give rights to the government in order to serve the people, not the paternalistic other way around. Government exists to serve the people. Where do you think the money to pay MS comes from? It's like your dad taking money from your trust fund, giving it to you, then telling you that it is your allowance that you earned! The money is the public's money. We agree to let the government protect us from harm and so we allow state secrets to exist in order that our common enemies do not use that information to avoid detection. Everything else that does not fall into that narrow category should be exposed to sunlight and competition. This is a simple paternalistic monopoly protection scheme for MS.

Re:Is the left hand even connected to the right ha

[Duckie01 (10586)]

So let me make sure I understand ... this is basically the EU equivalent of a United States Senator [Marco Cappato, a Liberal member of the European Parliament] asking the House of Representatives [the European Council] for a contract the House negotiated on behalf of the government and getting denied?

Well yes at least to my understanding that would, unfortunately, be quite accurate.

I'm a EU citizen... I don't like this *at*all*.

Re:Pitfalls of socialism.

[by Anonymous Coward]

How the hell you link this to socialism is beyond my comprehension. I don't think you know what the word means.

Re:European Parliament

[pejyel (1275304)]

When has the European Parliament and the public interest ever coincided?

Hum let me think ...
When it voted against the 3-strikes law for downloaders? [iptegrity.com]
When it voted against software patents? [ffii.org]
When it voted for restrictions on the use of radioactive weapons? [beagle17.gnn.tv]
The EU Parliament [europa.eu] can really hardly be criticized, except for the fact that it doesn't have that much power, which in my opinion is a real pity. Go troll elsewhere. [4chan.org]