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Monopolists Dropped Off At The County Line
An anonymous reader submits: "In
this discussion thread members of PLUG (Phoenix Linux Users Group) may have come up with a way to pressure governmental agencies to switch to software other than that from Microsoft. County purchasing policies in Maricopa County, AZ prohibit purchasing from companies or persons convicted under state or federal antitrust statutes. At least one other county, Coconino, that I have checked so far has similar requirements. I think that it's time to make the government follow their own rules and stop spending any more money with criminals."
I seriously doubt this will encourage adoption of Linux in situations where it would not otherwise be used. It is far more likely, unfortunate as it may be, that the statute will be ignored or even changed. Microsoft is seen as a necessary part of doing business, and that isn't likely to change significantly any time soon.
-- Adam
The people who have to deal with them know exactly how to use them to best result. In a former life when I was working for a government agency and was responsible for ordering computer hardware/software, I had to know how to file an RFQ (request for quotation) so that only the single vendor I had already picked as the best source could meet the requirements. It's not hard to do. If they want to use specific products because it's what they're used to, or think they're the best solution, they will use them.
The way to change this is to rewrite the purchasing policies so that they have clear definitions that aren't subject to interpretation, with no loopholes. But it IS government we're talking about here, remember?
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
If the government can't spend any more money with criminals, the DEA would have to stop having undercover drug agents giving money to coke dealers, and hence would stop funding terrorism, and hence result in heightened national security.
Woohoo!
Many people, myself included, believe that for many governmental application, open source products are superior to closed source products, particularly those sold by Microsoft. I won't dive deeply into the arguments, but governments require open access to their data for all time; they shouldn't be forced to buy expensive upgrades from a single vendor because the vendor has decided to change the file format.
That being said, we're not going to convince members of governments on technical merits. They don't understand technical issues, nor should they. We charge them with governing the people, not with hacking around with e-mail servers. In order to talk to these people, we have to speak a language that they understand; the language of laws and regulations.
If we want the government to do something for us, we have to speak their language.
If you ran linux. It is a superior OS, and is far better than the Windows shit that you run.
Yeah you've come to the shocking conclusion that people at slashdot are full of shit. The mods have a very nice and selective "We see what we want to see" attitude. Ever wonder how come you never see a SINGLE intelligent rebutal of the linux zealotry here? Its no accident.
This seems great at first glance, but I can think of a few caveats. How long does the ban last? Companies continually reinvent themselves, and the marketplace itself changes completely every few years.
So while this sounds good when applied to Microsoft, what about telecommunications companies? Will the government have to shut off all their phones, because no one is clean enough to supply the service? How about aerospace and defense? Motor vehicles?
The need to punish bad behavior must be balanced with the taxpayers' getting value for their dollar. There are good (and free!) alternatives to Microsoft software, but not everything else.
a way to pressure governmental agencies to switch to software other than that from Microsoft
Isn't "pressuring people to do things" what got MS into trouble in the first place? Do you want linux pressured onto people? Wouldn't you rather they made the choice on better terms?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Yes, and?
There are sensible laws (the Government not doing business with convicted persons or companies) and then there are unjust laws (not allowing me to view a DVD I bought without agreeing to additional agreements [EULAs], even though I'm not breaking copyright law). It's perfectly valid to complain.
And by the way, the Government don't enforce the DMCA, the entities who reckon they've lost money do.
It looks like those policies just prevent Microsoft from being a contractor to the county. They don't prevent some other contractor from using Microsoft's software in their bids, nor do they prevent the county from purchasing Wintel boxes from someone like Gateway.
As the initial post on the PLUG group said, > [Is there any technology that is Microsoft exclusive? I believe there are sites that explain how to replace Exchange Server completely using Linux/OSS; and SQL Server is replaceable with mySQL; IIS & ASP is replaceable with Apache & PHP, right?]
If using this law simply gets Maricopa County to examine the software on the merits as opposed to blindly following the nobody-ever-got-fired-for-choosing-MS meme, that will be a victory for OSS right there.
Acutally, laws such as this one are designed to avoid dealing with companies and people who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, which is a fairly good way of avoiding poor purchasing decisions, regardless of the "technical merits".
Sure, you want to check out the quality of the stuff you buy, but it is generally easier to just avoid the stuff sold by crooks, and only do your checking of products from reputable dealers.
Maricopa County contains the city of Phoenix, among others. Hardly podunk.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Well since you don't buy Free Software from the developers, you only need to determine if the people selling you support, and/or the CDs are criminals, so there is no problem.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Any source for any of this? Not that I don't believe they're plausable figures, but I never heard of "Congressional immunity" as relates to drunk driving.
I'm all for open source, but the gov't offices do need time to convert to open source. Everyone is heading in this direction slowly. The more application vendors that support linux, the more users that will move over.
Just my $.02
It's Maricopa County's own policy which states that they're not allowed to buy from MicroSoft, or any other company following a federal conviction for unethical business practices. Nobody's picking on the Maricopa County comptroller and forcing them to do something against their wishes; residents of the county are trying to get their own local government to follow its own stated policy.
Local Residents Urge Local Government to Follow Local Government Policy.
Yes, I suppose it does sound absurd, at that - it wouldn't look out of place in the Onion, anyway.
The law is a county law and perfectly legitimate. Bare in mind "government" just doesn't mean the Government of the United States of America, nor does it merly mean the Government of the State of ___. It also applies to even smaller divisions of people, even to the point of town ordinances. Some aren't legally binding as the next level up (city or state or national or whatever) laws supercede them.
In this case the government (the local government) *has* made rules about spending money on Microsoft products, that is to say, products that are produced by a company convicted of an anti-trust violation.
Same with any other company.
The law is constitutional (though could be challenged) as there is nothing unconstitutional about setting forth laws governing purchasing requirements.
Now of course, this is a single county, and the law is probably quite old, heralding from the Rockefeller days (total shot in the dark, just an unfounded assumption) Possibly it's not paid attention to anymore. Still it is a law, and if enough people in that county bring it to attention the county will either follow it, or revoke it.
But again, it's a single county. And quite possibly it might only mean that one can't buy products from Microsoft (not retailers) which makes it a moot point anyways. (I haven't read the law, as I can't access it). Either way it still won't have much effect on the rest of the world.
Any convictions? That should be what matters.
--
E_NOSIG
Has anyone else noticed that the amount of Linux/OSS bashing on /. has increased a lot lately?
This seems really weird to me. Are people coming here just to bash OSS? What happened to all the intelligent, free-thinking conversation?
/. seems to be flooded by static these days. If these people can't handle us "zealots" why don't they get their new somewhere else? Are they getting paid derail discussions by asserting half-truths? What's the incentive? Do they just post so that others will waste time posting proof they're wrong?
MS has been convicted.
This law is constitutional. (moron)
Computers do work without MS software.
There's no such thing a "congressional immunity"
Linux is easy to use, just hard to configure.
Anything else I missed?
If they don't want their freedom, fine. I'll keep mine thanks.
It is the government's duty, in the case of anti-trust violations, to take action which will restore competition to the effected market. The easiest way to do this is to support companies that compete with the monopolist. Personally, I don't care if they pick Apple, Sun, Linux, BSD, or even FreeDOS, as long as they don't pick Microsoft, a convicted monopolist. That is, after all, exactly what the law states, and any of those choices would acheive the desired result of increasing/enabling competition in those markets which Microsoft currently dominates.
Also, technical merits? Are you honestly contending that there is a situation where you would choose a Microsoft solution over everything else based solely on technical merits? What technical merits would you base that decision on? In this situation (government IT) having an open document standard accesible in perpetuity has much more technical merit than being able to edit the current flavor of MS Word document format without breaking obscure and seldom used formatting, to counter the most common example. Hell, just accesible in perpetuity would be fine, but Microsoft has proven unwilling to provide even that. It is not the governments responsibility to accept information in whatever form the public wants to give it to them, it is the publics responsibility to shoehorn that information into the form the government accepts. That is why I have to use a form 1040 instead of just jotting down my income and number of dependents on any old scrap of paper, or just sending them a copy of the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my finances.
Regardless, technical merits are NEVER the sole basis of such a decision, and often they are not even a particularly important part. Costs are a big part of it, as are, especially in a government situation, political considerations such as supporting local businesses and thus maintaining the local economy. Momentum also plays a part, as organizations are more likely to simply upgrade what they have, for better or worse, than start over from scratch, or if they are starting from scratch they will generally choose a technology which an important member of the organization is most familiar with, whether or not that person is actually qualified to be making such a recomendation.
I feel that there are any number of vendors, both open and closed source, who are better suited to the requirements of government IT than Microsoft; namely security and long term information access. This law is simply the kick in the pants necessary to force this particular body to consider those other solutions. Naturally, I would prefer that my government choose open source solutions, as I believe that investment in open source maximizes the value of my tax dollars, but other choices would certainly be acceptable.
Drunk drivers should not drive busses, embezzlers should not be appointed to the treasury, child pornographers should not work at schools, and abusive monopolists should not be rewarded with government contracts.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Well, yes, just as in the 50s and 60s there were people who wanted laws against murder enforced but didn't think much of laws imposing, say, segregation. I don't think the implication of hypocrisy is valid.
That is one big kernel!
Windowmaker works fine, it is nice and small. You don't need KDE or Gnome to be useful in a GUI environment.
They could go to Mac, BSD, or Linux (this list would be longer, but OS/2 and Be OS are not options...I wonder why).
Mac may not be an option either. Apple may be very hesitant on taking advantage of these laws just in case MS decides to stop shipping new versions of Office/IE for them. Abusive monopoly and all that.
Then again Apple's new ad campaign is very anti-MS. I'm sure they have to walk some fine line to not upset the folks at Redmond too much, while Redmond walks the fine line pretending not to be a monopoly.