U.S. Asked to Put Purchasing Power to Good Use

James Love writes "Today Ralph Nader and I wrote U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels to ask the federal government to use its power as a big consumer to address competition issues in the market for PC client software. These are some of the practices we want OMB to examine: OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture" makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers, and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave; OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software; OMB is asked to consider if it should place a cap of the market share for any one vendor of PC client software, and have the size of the cap depend upon Microsoft's willingness to open up its interface information, or port its MS Office products to additional platforms; OMB is also asked to consider if it would be more efficient to buy code for office productivity products (and release into the public domain), rather than spend billions to lease software."

Comments

microsoft's greatest fear

[nehril]

this kind of thing is what MS fears most: one of the world's largest "customers" jumping into the GPL'd software ring. that would not only give alternatives an enormous confidence boost in the eyes of other businesses, but it would start a massive trickle down effect, as all the companies that the government does business with now need to be "compliant" with something not of Redmond.

this is why MS seems to be fighting gpl anything in the US Government tooth and nail. with bsd-style lincenses microsoft could just take the code for little or no effort, and continue to ride on their reputation (nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft), but GPL locks them out nice and tight.

Government mandates re: software.

[Matt2000]

We've been seeing more stories about Governments either being petitioned to change their software buying policies, or mandate certain buying policies for their various departments.

The problem is that the mandates seem somewhat disconnected by technical reality and what software works best in a situation. My suggestion is that perhaps what should be mandated is a minimum standard of interoperability between systems, and a minimum level of openness about the mechanics through which the software achieves the interoperability.

So for example, the US gov't could specify that any productivity suite purchased by it's departments must support completely an open standard file format of their choosing or design. If MS Office chooses to support that file format properly, that there is no cap on how many units of MS Office could be purchased. If they choose not to, then it cannot be considered.

If that policy were applied to many different software application areas then it would quickly matter less where the software came from, and would start to matter more how good the software was.

Re:Government mandates re: software.

[Znork]

Retraining is such an overrated cost that it's not even funny. These are people we are talking about. Not vegetables. People at least moderately competent at their jobs. Secretaries and government workers who have probably seen more userinterfaces and word processors in their careers than you can count to on your fingers and toes.

If they could transition through mainframe terminals to dos computers to Windows 3.x to Windows 2000, they sure as hell can transition to Linux Windows lookalike apps.

Like my accountant mother in law said about her Gnumeric spreadsheet, 'but you said it was different from excel. How is this different from excel?'.

The only retraining issue will be in retraining the purchasers to bring their own lunch rather than get free lunch with MS salesmen.

Want to know what happened when the letter arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels opens the letter, replies with a very wordy letter whose 'jist' is "We'll look into it", and puts the file in the "review" basket (aka the trash can).

Welcome to America, where your letter is viewed, but dismissed unless you have a large audience of constituents backing you. This is how democracy works, for something to happen, a large group must support it.

Role of Government

[sheldon]

Some good points are raised here. Documentation on file formats should be a required aspect of any product, simply because one of the challenges faced with computers is evolving your old data to new systems over time.

I don't agree that the government should be in the role of creating software. Government is not a good entity to choose technologies the free market should adopt. As far as software purchasing costs, you could make a strong argument for companies to provide reduced rates to government entities. But one should also appreciate that the tax dollars outlayed on software is more than made up by the tax revenues coming in as a result of the employment opportunties the software companies generate.

Re:Role of Government

[milo_Gwalthny]

Well, it looks like Microsoft paid $2.158 billion in taxes in 2001 (that's *paid*, tax expense was $3.804 billion, but that's a pretty much meaningless accounting entry given the $2 billion in tax benefit that MS got because of the stock options it issued.) That doesn't include the taxes paid by and on behalf of the employees of the company.

But, offsetting the amount the US government pays against the anmount of tax MS pays assumes that without the US government, MS would be unprofitable. That is probably not true.

What does make sense it to say that whenever the US government buys something, it gets back 35% of the pre-tax contribution to income of that item. Since MS's costs are not a direct function of their revenue (ie. they are mainly fixed costs), we can assume that the US government gets back about 35% of what it pays in licenses.

Perhaps you are arguing that MS is too big to fail? That, like Boeing, it needs government patronage to survive? That would be scary indeed.

File Formats are the key...

[metacosm]

I think the true "key to the kingdom" is in the file formats. People are scared to break away from MS file formats more than anything, they are a powerful force in keeping MS in a dominate position.

If the formats where standardized (in lets say XML) it would greatly reduce EVERYONES dependacy on MS.

The government has an even greater reason to fear MS file formats. That reason is REALLY OLD DATA. The government needs to be able to work with extremely old file formats, and if that file format is not standard and has simply been "retired" by a company (MS) they are shit out of luck, and will end up making another company you rich for converting those "Word 2000" docs to "BobbySoft QuickEdit 2035".

Re:File Formats are the key...

[Jason Earl]

That's not the least bit true. The specification for PDF is public. What's more there is a huge pile of free software that allows you to create and view PDF files. In fact, using Ghostscript it is possible to turn nearly any print job into a PDF file (even on Windows), so there is no need for Adobe's expensive tools (unless, of course, you happen to like them).

In short PDF is good.

Re:File Formats are the key...

[metacosm]

I just dropped XML as an option, and the reason for I used it is ease of development. It is MUCH easier to parse an XML document when compared to most other formats, and this is by design. XML has strict rules on structure and so forth.

Using XML would reduce the barrier to entry, so that if I want to write a parser that would read a doc file, I could grab an nice XML parsing function (or object) and get the the data I need, then it would be my responsibility to display it as the user expects.

Currently half the battle is just KNOWING where stuff is stored, how to read it, and do it without screwing up the document, and then you have to know how to RE-save it without screwing up the document. XML would make this ALOT easier.

Today, Staroffice can read doc files (thru ALOT of work, and it still gets alot of them wrong) and if Sun wanted to, they could make it look totally different than the document you wrote in word [just like your silly xhtml example], so I do not see how your argument even relates to XML... XML would make working with the file format easier, nothing else, yet, that SINGLE thing would massively lower the entry cost for working with MS file formats.

Is this really an appropriate request?

[rkent]

"Today Ralph Nader and I wrote U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels to ask the federal government to use its power as a big consumer to address competition issues in the market for PC client software.

Um... okay, but is it really the perogative of the OMB to "use its power" that way? According to the OMB's own site, it "evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities." In other words, it's an executive agency designed to ensure that the US taxpayers get the most bang for their buck, efficiency-wise, not to make political statements about reforming corporate behavior. That said,

These are some of the practices we want OMB to examine: OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture" makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers,

... this is still a good idea. Seems like the OMB would be entirely interested in making sure that computers and software bought with fed dollars aren't going to be easily hacked.

and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave;

But this, no no no. This is still a judicial matter, and any penalty against MS is going to be determined in court. An executive agency would be way overstepping its bounds here.

OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software

Yargh! But THIS is another good idea. Again, it's in the financial interest of the country to make sure we're not "locked in" to certain contractors who could then baloon their prices. Not that that ever happens...

So basically, I think there are some good ideas here with regard to protecting the federal government's investment in software and making sure they're not going down any paths simply because MS wants them to, but trying to wreck the monopoly just isn't in the charter of the OMB. Sorry.

Re:Is this really an appropriate request?

[madro]

and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave;

But this, no no no. This is still a judicial matter, and any penalty against MS is going to be determined in court. An executive agency would be way overstepping its bounds here.

I disagree. While Microsoft's misconduct *is* a judicial matter, the United States government can participate in the market just like any other entity.

Automakers like the Big Three do this all the time to auto suppliers, even large suppliers, because they have *huge* purchasing power. Automakers will split their purchases across a variety of suppliers for the same part to spur competition, drive down prices, and basically to keep options open in case one supplier or another comes up with some breakthrough cost reduction or technology improvement.

In fact, MBAs study purchasing power as one aspect of Porter's five forces to determine how fast a firm in an industry can grow (what kind of stock returns it may show). In addition to purchasing power (buyer power), there are

1. Supplier Power (can affect anyone who builds their technology on top of Microsoft's proprietary technologies)
   
2. Threat of substitutes (Microsoft's fear of Linux will increase as the cost of switching to Linux decreases)
   
3. Barriers to entry (usually pretty low in the tech industry generally, but companies can build these over time by having better technology (cool) or by lobbying for laws that make it harder for companies to compete against them (not cool, unless you own stock in the current market leader))
   
4. Rivalry (how fiercely the existing firms compete -- the bursting of the tech bubble cut the number of competitors, but those who are left are fighting hard ... although it sometimes seems that Microsoft is escaping this effect)

Combined, these factors represent capitalism at work, to the potential detriment of Microsoft and to the potential benefit of the rest of the market.

Going back to just the application of purchasing power, this may be a good idea for the government if the goal is to protect itself from risks, enhance efficiency, and all the other good parts of a market orientation. This is a bad idea if the goal is to 'screw Microsoft' or otherwise achieve political ends -- presented that way, you'll have all kinds of companies pestering the government to 'spur competition' in their neck of the woods.

As a Taxpayer..

[RailGunner]

As a taxpayer, I want the hard earned money that the Imperial Federal Government takes from me to not be squandered. I want the Government to be a good steward with MY money, and not waste it as much as they do.

And I consider the purchase of a buggy, insecure, bloated Operating System like Windows a waste of my money. When some Government clerk is just typing up documents on a PC, why do they need a copy of Windows (and presumably Office) when Linux and KOffice or OpenOffice, etc, will do the exact same thing at a fraction of the cost?

I'd much prefer if the government used free, open source operating systems as much as possible, saving taxpayer money and eventually getting me another tax cut (because 4 months is too long to work just to pay your taxes).

Cause it's our damn money, after all.

And people complaim about corporate welfare...

[brooks_talley]

...so, in a nutshell, Nader is saying that the government should make an effort to influence the marketplace in a certain direction, rather than letting natural market forces dictate what heppens (questionable/illegal business practices being part of the market).

I'd love to see the rise of Open Source, the fall of Microsoft, etc, as much as the next guy. But I don't want the government using my tax dollars to achieve that (except in antitrust and other legal manners).

The government should research carefully and buy what makes sense. However, no matter how much we all like Microsoft alternatives, in things like office suites, it's disengenuous to argue that there's a viable non-microsoft solution for what amounts to a company of over a million employees. What kinds of deployment and management tools do open source software suites have? How many IT workers are trained to install/troubleshoot them?

Governments in general, and the US government in particular, can just *barely* do their job as is. Asking them to take a leadership role in IT purchasing is like asking Microsoft to take a leadership role in corporate ethics. It ain't going to happen, and the attempt would be an expensive, error-infested waste of time and money for everyone involved.

My opinion is that open source will prevail in the long run -- but I'd rather wait 10 years longer if it meant not setting the precedent of government setting this kind of precedent.

Cheers
-b

Mandating compatibility is a good idea, but...

[mbessey]

for example, the US gov't could specify that any productivity suite purchased by it's departments must support completely an open standard file format of their choosing or design.

How would you actually enforce that? I can see a few potential problems:

1. Unless the specification for these standard file formats is very precise, there will always be interoperability problems.

2. Even if the office software "supports" a standard format, it obviously isn't going to default to that format, so you'll have to deal with the training issues (always use "save as...").

3. Microsoft (or any other commercial vendor) would claim that they need to be able to modify or extend the "standard" format in order to be able to innovate new features. This is actually a valid complaint, and difficult to work around. If you allow proprietary extensions to a standard format, it's no longer truly standard.

I still think this is a good idea, I just suspect that it'd be a whole lot of work to define these standard formats such that they meet the needs of the government and also those of the software vendors.

-Mark

Re:Mandating compatibility is a good idea, but...

[oni]

How would you actually enforce that? I can see a few potential problems:

I disagree. I can't see why software should be any different than other complex systems. The government routinely specifies the size, shape, and functionality of the things they purchase.

The military for example, specifies that MREs must be a certain size, a certain weight, and have a certain number of calories. Companies who complain that they must be allowed to "innovate" are laughed at.

Police departments specify that their cars must have very specific performance characteristics. Companies that say "we can't be forced to alter the product we already make" are similarly laughed at.

Why is software any different? Is it just because there is currently a monopoly?

Part of the problem I think is that software hasn't been a real priority as far as purchasing goes in the past. In my experience, software purchases are made at lower levels of management. There, decisions are made based on what can be bought at CompUSA. It's no wonder Microsoft Office ends up on everybody's machines.

Perhaps if the BSA cracks down on the government a little, they'll see the benefit in providing better guidance to those who make software purchases. Perhaps that will finally drive those purchases away from Microsoft's monopoly.

There's different kinds of monoculture

[Weasel Boy]

You are defending the monoculture of one company providing a single, one-size-fits-all product for everyone. A product that they change whenever they want to, by the way. A monoculture of supplier.

What's wrong with a monoculture of well-defined standards instead? You can use any word processor you want, as long as it saves documents in "THIS" well-defined file format. Ditto for spreadsheets, presentations, address books, web browsers, web servers, etc. It's still reliable, compatible, and interoperable -- perhaps more so than that which is proposed by the single supplier who occasionally decides to redefine what they provide. Call it a monoculture of data, if you will.

Re:Want to know what happened when the letter arri

[jxs2151]

Welcome to America, where your letter is viewed, but dismissed unless you have a large audience of constituents backing you.

Are you kidding me? You do understand that Ralph Nader is the man who brought Detroit to their knees at the height of their influence and power don't you?

I would venture to say that his influence is enough to cause serious change.

Stop being so damned cynical and participate in the process. If you feel disenfranchised in America, it is most likely because you spend more time on /. bitching than acutally doing the hard things it takes to make real change.

Enforcement? Simple

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

How would you actually enforce that?

It's actually very easy.

For text-based files, require them to be XML, and that the Schemas be published.

For binary files, specs already have to be precise (whether the spec is published or not) for reliable operation. And as far as extension goes, mandate that any extensions to the file format be made using specific extension semantics imposed by the format itself (i.e., reserved bits w/ a standards body allocating those bits to registered extensions, mandated publication of the semantics of the extensions, etc).

Re:GPL does not lock them out

[gotan]

The Problem with that is, that people would note that even MS got on the Linux-train. Once they do this they'd have a hard time to explain why the GPL is "unamerican", only not when used by Microsoft.

Also anyone looking into buying MSLinux is even more likely to consider buying Redhat/debian/etc., so that move could boost Linux in general and hurt Windows even more.

Finally Microsoft would have to play on a more level playing field, and what's even more important: until now they didn't figure out how to skew the "GPLd Software" playing field to their advantage. Locking customers in with proprietary file formats won't work here, it's harder to aim the FUD-cannon when they're playing in the same arena, and it's really hard to enforce licence restrictions on the users of GPLd Software.