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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."
Is the world coming to an end? Is it a sign of the apocolypse?
What is the world coming to when we have GOOD laws that are basically ignored?
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
monopolists should be dropped off on baltic avenue. nobody wants that piece o' crap.
--
fight global cooling
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."
Note the second link's page doesn't actually say that the contractor must be debarred (prevented from providing services), but only that they may be debarred for a period of up to 3 years. I expect that someone would have to bring this up in a council meeting of some sort to actually have the action taken.
Does anyone know when this law was enacted or what it was in response to?
Now we have to find a way to get the mainstream media to cover this. At the moment all we have is a story about a small discussion. It's hard to say how hard it would be getting this covered in the mainstream media however. They really like sensationallist stories but this also might strike them as kind of a fluff story like buying software from MS being against the law is these counties is just some sort technicality, it might be difficult to get this taken seriously. There is also the issue of whether other juristictions share this law. Does anybody know of anywhere that has similar laws?
I stole this Sig
on one hand you want the government to abide by the rules set forth for this, but you do not want the government to abide by the rules about enforcing the DCMA?
But I'm having a little trouble getting past this URL:
I think if I was on a list hosted at pluglist.mybutt, I would expect it to be about something else besides Linux..
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.
Short term cost, this is arguably true.
But you dont have to pay the subscription cost yearly to MS to sleep with them, so you save money in the long run.
As for 'well supported', this is a function of its userbase. Guess what happens when more users use Linux? It becomes 'well supported'! Amazing!
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
apple has a smaller user base than linux, and it is "well supported"
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!
It's not practical for us to stop using Microsoftware, because it's simply too pervasive and dominant, and the costs and penalties for switching are too high.
What? What do you mean "That's the definition of an abusive monopoly!"? But it's so hard to switch away from Microsoft. We know that's the point, but, uuh, we don't wanna. We'd have to learn stuff! We're civil servants, that's not in our job description. And don't get us started on the long term career risks of being in the same room where an actual decision gets made to switch from the biggest, safest option... [etc, ad nauseum]
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I doubt the status of the current litigation would matter to the local laws. I had thought that MS was convicted of both federal and various state monopoly practices and thus would be subject to such local laws, regardless the out come of the various settlement negotiations and lawsuits.
I won't dive deeply into the arguments,
Don't worry, someone's done a pretty good job of describing the arguments for you...
Jay (=
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.
This would be insightful, were it true. The pending case is the sentencing.
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
Says who? As far as I understand it this is exactly what a court has decided that they aren't doing, and this has been upheld by a higher court.
It doesn't make any difference what MS has been charged with or convicted of, because they haven't been sentenced.
Says who? They've been convicted, and Maricopa County policies talking about convinction, not sentencing.
A law set forth in a podunk Arizona county
Yeah, Maricopa is a podunk county. Not much there, considering it's the fourth largest county in the U.S. Oh, and it's the fastest gaining county in the U.S. as well.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
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
You don't always have to speak with money to get lawmakers on your side. If you can give them a cause to rally around that is a) safe for them (i.e. nobody could possibly object) and b) will make them popular with the people (e.g. pass laws against major souless corporations that are attacking small furry animals with chainsaws), they will be all over it in a heartbeat.
Give lawmakers the chance to oust those in the government who have "been hiring criminals to fulfill government contracts in direct violation of the rules," and you're getting close...
yeah great law
now how long until someone enforces it
and can you ?
hey how do you make a guv dept work inside the law ?
(personally I throw bricks at their windows until they get fed up and comply)
regards
john jones
Um, not true. The findings of fact and conclusions of law are entered. They have survived appeal. It is only the "sentencing" (the remedy) that is in dispute. Microsoft does indeed stand convicted of violations of the Sherman Act.
I think that it's time to make the government follow their own rules and stop spending any more money with criminals.
29 members of Congress have been accused of spousal abuse.
7 have been arrested for fraud.
19 have been accused of writing bad checks.
3 have been arrested for assault.
71 have credit reports so bad they can't qualify for a credit card.
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges.
8 have been arrested for shoplifting.
21 are current defendants in lawsuits.
And in 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving, but released after they claimed Congressional immunity.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If you are convicted of a felony crime try getting a license to sell real estate, own a gun, etc.
We say that they have "paid their debt" but as with so many things that people say, it's not always sincere.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Since you CAN'T BUY Microsoft software, but must LICENSE it, and a license is a contract between you and Microsoft, any use of Microsoft software is disallowed. A third party may supply the media, but the act of agreeing with the EULA to activate the software enters into a contract relationship with Microsoft. Answers your question -- there is NO partner or affiliate involved in making the contract with Microsoft. Because Microsoft doesn't want it. And, it was Microsofts idea to not sell the software, but to license it. So, governments that have laws such as this on the books SHOULD be stuck.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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
Arthur Andersen LLP has a criminal conviction for obstruction of justice. That's much worse. As of last Saturday, they're out of the auditing business, because the SEC won't accept audits from a felon. All Andersen audit clients must find new auditors immediately. The company will probably go bankrupt. Criminal charges against individual executives may follow.
How about a full re-post of the highlights of the discussion thread for those of us behind extremely restrictive firewalls?
pluglist.mybutt.net is blocked as a sex site here.
Post back and let us know what you found, I too live in Pima County (Tucson).. and am too lazy to search for myself :)
-J
The mainstream population can not use linux easily or efficiently. Windows is king of the hill right now, and by the time Linux gets as easy and efficient it will be just as big and ugly. Quit bashing or paycheck if it were not for the windows platform, nothing we did could reach millions of potential customers. It may not be great but it's the best we have!!
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.
No, the public interest trumps any other consideration in a government setting. "technical merit" is meaningless of public information is trapped in proprietary formats.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To protect that county's taxpayers from fraud or misappropriation of funds.
If a company has been convicted of antitrust violations, it seems reasonable to expect that company's products do offer as much value as their pricetag suggests. Otherwise, the company never would have resorted to crime, no?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
True, but since there are many reasons, people are switching:
as is demonstrated by the fact that some people are now using GNU/Linux, and before they were not, and that that number is going up, not down.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
haha.. the mental image of Bill Gates wearing prison stripes, pink underwear, and living in Tent City makes me happy.
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.
If the situation is so clearcut then kindly present some concrete examples to back up your claims. Of course I will not hold my breath, as I do not wish to die of asphyxiation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Monopolists Dropped Off At The County Line
I'm sorry, but this title makes me think back to the old days of the Dukes of Hazzard. I can just picture Bill and Co. sneaking into the county to sell some copies of Windows, and then hauling ass for the county line to get away from Boss Hog. Then they'd taunt him from the other side of the county line (considerately rendered in white paint).
Of course, at least the Dukes were "good old boys, never meaning no harm".
No where does it say in a criminal's sentence that as part of their penalty they can't get a job as a cop
No court tells all convicts that they are banned from voting for life. If you are a convicted criminal, there are suddenly some areas in society where you lose priviliges. These areas are not decided by the judge doing the sentencing, they are decided by those who feel that people who break laws are untrustworthy in whatever the context may be. Even if a court does not give a sentence that say that the defendant may not work in this or that place, some workplaces may yet independently choose not to allow criminals.
Some countys have apparently made the choice that previously convicted companies are not good business-partners. This is not a sentence. This is a business decision.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Actually, Unix in general is the sort of system that is meant to be deployed and forgotten about. If that requires something underneath that gets mistaken for "rube goldberg" by the unwashed masses, then that's really what's required.
Serious computing simply requires more reliability than was achieved by the original MacOS.
Also, "duplication of effort" is just another way of discribing competition and replaceability. Both are things that would generally be considered critical for progress within a free market.
A little chaos is preferable than being stuck with a hack meant for an 8mhz CPU. Perhaps if Apple had a more "chaotic" environment, a version of Next that can run MacOS binaries might have come along much sooner.
The only thing that keeps rubes like you from being able to deal with the likes of (bare) Unix is your own emotional limitations.
Also, it's easy to "be secure" when you don't run any services. You can run Unix like that too. Most of the Linux variants do this infact.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
That law is to protect the county from sweetheart deals where the procurement manager suddenly gets an all expense paid trip to Bermuda in exchange for the bid. It has nothing to do with the culpability of MS or not.
Even if MS is barred, because they have broken the law, who buys directly from them?
Isn't most of the stuff sold by OEM's who bundle HW. SW and services together?
Even software only purchases go through a middle man.
Maybe you're missing the point. They aren't saying that they aren't going to allow people to buy Microsoft products in that county, they are saying that the county itself should no longer buy Microsoft products because of a provision in county law that says the county can't do business with a convected criminal.
Microsoft has been found guilty of violating Anti-trust laws therefore technically the county is violating their provision by buying products from Microsoft.
The government hasn't made any rules about spending money on microsoft products, so what rules are you suggesting they follow?
The Government of this county has made a rule (see above), so in this county they should follow the rule. Of course it begs the question of weither or not people should be locked up for some of the outdated/stupid laws that are still on the books.
Of course this whole thing is somewhat based on a technicality that never gets into the questions of 3rd party re-sellers or what the law was originally intended for in the first place. So unless these people have researched it then they may end up doing more harm than good. (I can just see the county raising taxes for a switch over)
The Anti-Blog
How exactly can a government pass laws against purchasing from a particular company, considering the fact that the company is still operating under perfectly LEGAL pretenses and practices?
Good question. It's still being battled in courts. Berkeley's city council had their law repealed by higher courts regarding their boycott of major gasoline suppliers (due to international actions). The law was repealed because of the limits of domestic government on international relations, and not due to any other presumed illegality by your argument. After the law was repealed, the city distributed a memo simply suggesting that the city employee's choose a certain supplier (local to CA named Sunshine, if memory serves). (read No Logo: Klein)
But this is a domestic issue, so it wouldn't fall under the same category of domestic agencies defining international relations. Furthermore, it doesn't impose tariffs on interstate commerce by raising the bar for entrance (i.e. it's not requiring local vendors, which would require any comers to have offices in AZ which would present a difficulty to smaller vendors who could not afford to open new offices to meet requirements). Since it doesn't impose any barriers that infringe upon federal requirements, it appears that it is a local issue, and the policy wouldn't have any problems in any level of court. Procurement laws exist to suppress monopolist action by the government in the first place. They define a strict protocol for selecting vendors (i.e. some formal guidelines require a minimum pool of respondents before a purchase can even be considered. If it doesn't meet the minimum, the purchase could simply die, even if there really is only one possible vendor for sproingie widgets).
I said it in my other post, but reiterate here: your argument deserves to be modded down simply because you fail to demonstrate any sort of knowledge of government procurement.
The government hasn't made any rules about spending money..., so what rules are you suggesting they follow?
I cut out the vendor name to make my point. Local government agencies have as much power as state and federal agencies. Some might argue, they have even more power, since it directly affects your local community. It's just that local agencies don't have federal power, and federal agencies don't have local power (why else do you think that federal raids always coordinate with local authorities?).
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
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.
CRAP.
They told us to hold them to a higher standard by electing them. They said they would make the country a better place, or at lease a safer one. They claimed superiority to their competitors. They claimed to want to help the people. Go listen to all of their campaign speeches.
I expect there are a lot of people in the world who lie and cheat and steal. And I try very carefully to see through the lies, avoid the cheats, and not get ripped off by th thieves.
So then the liers, cheaters, and thieves are making the laws, I do what I can to remove them. THAT is in ALL OF OUR best interests.
There are also good congress-critters. It's always a good time to get rid of the trash and support the good. I guess the only think to add is that not all of congress is bad, just the handfull of bad apples. Let's clean them up, not excuse them.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
How is it unconstitutional for a local county government to set a local county purchase policy?
or do you think that the constitution restricts what every single governing body in the US can do and not just the federal and (after the 14th amendment) state governments can do?
people who throw around the word "constitution" should read the beast.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I live near Takoma Park, MD, which voted itself a Nuclear Free Zone about 15 years ago. The ordinance prohibits the city from purchasing anything from companies "knowingly or intentionally engaged" in nuclear weapons production. To my knowledge, there have only been two waivers in the 15 year period (try finding a company that makes streetlights that isn't involved in nukes!), and the residents of the town consider it generally a success, even if the police department had to drive Chryslers (eewwww!).
Of course, this is not your most conservative-leaning electorate - I think the #2 registered party is the Greens (after the Democrats) - so keeping the political goodwill to enforce a choice like this was easy. Of course, Snohomish or King County may be a different matter entirely.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
As someone who has worked for years in a "Microsoft shop", and also been a Linux user at home for even longer - I think everything has its place.
When an old friend of mine started up a business as a local ISP, I remember him wanting to go with Linux for everything. Everyone else running a similar ISP recommended OpenBSD instead. (Something about it being better at handling concurrent tasks when you start getting hundreds of simultaneous users, and arguably more efficient TCP/IP and routing capabilities.)
In the end, he stuck with Linux, mostly because he was more familiar with it - and was confident it would suit his needs reasonably well. As far as I know, he still uses Linux today and it gets the job done - but he did have some hassles that only got fixed with newer Linux kernel versions over the years.
Many MS shops are this way too. They've been told numerous times that Linux servers are better solutions, and in fact, they don't dispute it. They simply opt to deal with the "devil they know" instead of the unknown. Hundreds of thousands of businesses "get the job done" every day on MS software, despite all the bugs, security issues, and expense.
What some people perceive as being a "Linux Zealot" is often a frustrated systems admin trying to drive the point home that it's worth the trouble to learn something new and throw out the existing, even though it "gets the job done".
Right now, if you don't go with MS products, you are in a "any color you want, as long as it's black" type of world. Linux is currently the only other viable operating system that runs on a PC platform, in many cases. (Apologies to the BSD guys here - but BSD is a lot more conservative in their hardware support. Sometimes it just won't run all the peripherals or newer hardware you own, making it an unworkable option.)
We had BeOS - but it's dead. We had OS/2 - but it's dead. We still have Mac OS, but it's proprietary.
Sound like a whole lot of discussion and no action!
Here's my poor assed excuse for a letter to my County Councilmember (yes I do live in Maricopa County)
Councilman Fill in name here,
I am writing you in regards to the news that the Maricopa County Council is debating an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. However, I have read that according to Maricopa County Policies, Microsoft should be disqualified from any contractual business with the County. I would like to declare my support for Microsoft's disqualification.
According to MC1-902 DEBARMENT AND SUSPENSION OF CONTRACTORS, I read the following:
"B. The causes for Debarment or Suspension shall include, but are not limited to, the following:
2. Conviction of any Person or any subsidiary or affiliate of any Person under any statute of the Federal government, this State or its political subdivision or any other State for:
k. Any other offense indicating a lack of business integrity or business honesty which affects responsibility as a Contractor.
3. Conviction or civil judgment finding a violation by any Person or any subsidiary or affiliate of any Person under State or Federal Antitrust Statutes."
Microsoft, having been convicted of Federal Antitrust Statutes (penalties pending), clearly falls into the catagory described in part 3, and several court cases past and pending show a clear lack of integrity and business honesty as outlined in part 2. I cannot find that ANY government body would be willing to work with such contractors, let alone having rules against it and clearly ignoring those rules.
There are many alternatives to Microsofts products. Alternatives that have broken no laws, Federal or Local, are well supported and used by many large governments (Germany, Taiwan, et al). As a concerned voter in Chandler, I must point out that I cannot support criminal behavior and would hope that my County Council would see fit to do the same and ONLY consider alternatives as Microsoft is clearly unqualified to meet County requirements.
Thank You,
fill in your name here
If you can come up with a better one (and i'm sure you can cuz IANAL or much of else for that matter) then post it somewhere. Templates people, we need templates!
sig of the day: If wishes were horses poor men would ride - unknown
Very good post, BTW... All I was going to add is that arguably, a "technical merit" of a platform is the ability to run the widest range of software applications available.
It's probably for this reason, alone, that MS products still get entrenched in new business start-ups. Say you need a really powerful accounting/financial package. In Linux, what do you go with? I know there are a few packages around for small or medium-sized businesses, but what if you're larger than that? Perhaps, if things were really based completely on "technical merits" - you'd just hire devlopers and write your own. Realistically though, almost every large business will instead choose one of the big ERP packages made to run in the Windows environment, or go with something for an AS/400.
Re-education + buying new hardware (because there's no driver support for that, RTFM) + administrators to run your new servers + well... you get the picture.
Plus what state manager in their right mind is going to take an arable system and scrap it? This is why mainframes live on even though there's "better" technology out there: they may not be pretty, but they just work.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
It's not that they are being pressured into Linux. 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). There is a barrier to leaving Microsoft, and this is a clever way of overcomming that. It's my favorite emotional argument these days, "Do you really want to give your money to a convicted felon?" It's very effective.
The point is that in many places, it is already illegal to do business with Microsoft, but that law is being ignored. The governments agreed to the statute when they passed it, now it's time they obey it. Insisting that a local statue be obeyed is not a Microsoft-esque scare tactic, it's civic duty. You can't sit idly by, hoping that local governments realize the techical merits of Linux and spontaneously switch (espeially when Microsoft and de Tocqueville (spell?) conspire). It's action by the people that changes the government.
It's a bonus that it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
for your county govt to grind to a halt. Anyone think of the ramifications of a sudden shift from MS to an alternative OS?
Grind to a halt? This just says no more purchasing. Existing systems are fine. They'll be phased out in the same way they are at the moment. Just replaced with something else.
1) Hundreds of COTS and Vendor developed Windows apps will need to be replaced or re-written costing taxpayers more money.
Most windows apps have an equivalent that could be used. The painfulness of switching to Linux would be no greater than that of moving from 98 to XP.
The vendor developed apps might be a problem. Would WINE solve it? Maybe. Maybe not. Could a small bunch of Perl/TK/Webapp programmers solve it? Possibly. Vendor contracts are renegotiated all the time. Again, the key word is gradual phase out, which happens all the time anyway.
2) User re-training costing taxpayers more money.
Not more than the UI shifts from Office 2k to Office XP. They're fairly big. And people can adapt to new tasks. Not a big deal.
3) New vendors for tech support of new apps and OS, re-training or replacing county tech support personnel costing taxpayers more money.
Really a whole lot more money than we currently spend to renew MS licenses?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
You hurt your own argument - you saw examples of poor RFQ because they omitted pertinent facts.
Needed: one SCSI hard disk with external case and power supply. Internal hard disks are unaccepable due to lack of space and power with the cabinet.
Needed: one flat-screen display suitable for use in a high magnetic field. CRT (and plasma?) displays are unacceptable due to environmental interference with their display.
In the case at question, it's easy to write the RFQ. Needed: one OS and office application suite capable of supporting email, basic text processing, spreadsheet, databases and web browsers. Compatibility with existing document format is desirable, but shall not be a disqualifying factor if the new format is sufficiently self-documenting to eliminate "lock-in."....
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The rest of the paragraph addressed that: momentum and familiarity.
Really, 5-10 years ago, what were you going to use? Linux is only now getting to the point where it's a viable solution, and any Unix-based solutions were prohibitively expensive. Basically, you had Mac and PC, and the Mac cost twice as much, so unless you had a specific need for the Macs capabilities it was really no contest. If you had a PC, you had MS, and thus it became entrenched. People stick with what they know. If you don't believe me, try convincing someone to eat sushi for the first time.
MS gets these contracts because they got them last time. It's kind of a "I did crank today because I did crank yesterday" kind of thing. Silly and self-destructive, but humans tend to be creatures of habit.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Some people seem to have the impression that this is just purchasing policy. Well, it ain't. It's state law. It's from A.R.S. (Arizona Revised Statues) 41-2613: Debarment and Suspension of Contractors.
"3. Conviction or civil judgment finding a violation by any person or any subsidiary or affiliate of any person under state or federal antitrust statutes."
It's a law, just like the laws against embezzlement or assault. It's not just a suggestion, it's a lot more. I hope the folks at PLUG carry this one all the way to the goalposts.
The written summary of the article that was posted on the front page of slashdot did indeed refer to Microsoft as "criminals". A rebuttal directed at that, and not the article itself, is still pertinent to the slashdot discussion, which after all, is initiated with the editorial summary and submission text!
Really? The government hires IT people and it listens to them. It's their duty to recomend the best, least expensive solutions and prove it technically. I'd say that should have things moving quickly. As Windoze dies on old government computers it's GNU to the rescue. As industry moves this way more studies with more numbers will be available to prove their point.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Mr. Anonymous Coward, I'm printing that out and saving it for every time I'm told I should use Linux. I've used it, and I find all your comments to be spot-on. I'm a technical person - I write PHP scripts in emacs, for goodness sake - but Windows is just a better choice than Linux for me. Linux zealots need to get their hands off my choices and go play with their OS. For those who like it - great. For those of us who don't - leave us the fuck alone. We'll change over when it works for us.
I wonder if they ever included application lists on a mouse click...
...or multiple desktops
Hello? It's called the "Start Menu"? You know, that thing they stole from Apple in 1995, who had the Apple Menu since 1984?
Which the average user DOESN'T NEED. Average user needs a web browser, e-mail, and an office suite. They don't need 20,000 icons on 16 virtual desktops. If they do, they can install Litestep, DesktopX, or Virtual Desktop.
How many years ago did you stop using it? If Windoze is so wonderful, why did you stop? Did you think "plug and pray" referred to some obscure religious practice? Ever tried to deal with what happens when "plug and pray" fails? Ever load a Windoze box with 359M of DRAM and STILL run out of resources frequently?
The average user has Windows on his machine because that's what the OEM put on it, not because of any deep committment to Bill Gates or love for Microsoft or love for how his machine works with Windoze on it.
While I agree that Linux user interfaces and installation and upgrades need improvement, we already have cities and school districts which have switched to Linux. The only bad effects anybody noticed are that the machines are more reliable and stable, that the TCO dropped, and that life got a lot easier for the sysadmins. If the conditions are right (mainly, the organizations communications are primarily internal, i.e. they don't have to send/receive a lot of .DOC e-mail attachments) this should actually work in most places. With respect to the user... as long as he/she can point and click at it, he/she should be happy. Whether the window if generated by Windoze or X-Windows.
Not all of the experiments with this have worked, but in the workplaces where they bothered to train people on the new software and used it in areas where it applied, things generally went well.
If governments can be forced to follow their own rules about not dealing with companies found guilty of monopoly, in most cases, all they have to fear is reduced expenditures and the knowledge that if they need to pull out a word processor document 20 years ago, it'll be readable.
In the areas where this doesn't apply, being able to throw money that's big from the viewpoint of an individual programmer but small compared to Microsoft tax at these problems should result in better software for all of us.
I see this as win-win for anyone not a Microsoft stockholder.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well, MS might not have been there on the network, but they certainly were on the desktop, and that's where I think the familiarity was created. For whatever reason, and I'm honestly to young to know, MS beat out the competition. I remember AmigaDOS being much more usable, easier than MacOS IMHO, and I've heard a lot of good things about OS/2. I can only assume it was application support that did it.
When NT came along, folks said "hey, I'm already using MS on my desktops, why not on my server, too? 2 MS products will surely work well together...". Sure, it was nowhere near as powerful as Unix or Novell, but it was good enough and a hell of a lot cheaper.
I recently took a class on Network OSs and the book we used for Windows was published right before NT4 was released (I have no idea why such an antequated book would be used in a college course, but that's the way it is I guess). From the generally optomistic tone of the book, I can easily see how so many got sucked into the NT trap. It's easy to look back and laugh at them now, but these people really believed that MS was going to fix all their problems!
Congrats on your long and successful history with Linux. I think a lot of the reason more people aren't doing that is a lack of concrete, publicly available case studies of successful and well known companies using Linux. There are plenty "Anonymous Fortune 500 company uses Linux in an unspecified way" and "Random small business uses Linux for everything except making coffee" kind of testimonials floating around, but there's precious little I can show to my manager and say "Look, Linux works well enough for Company-You-Respect to trust it with their mission critical data". I've managed to sell Linux only with "We're big enough now that we need a dedicated file server. We could pay $2500 for Novell Small Business and the necissary hardware, $2000 for Windows and necissary hardware, or we could spend $100 for a new harddrive for this box we already have and install Linux for nothing." Perhaps money isn't a consideration for larger companies, but for those grossing less than 7 figures it's certainly compelling, and that's really the market I think Linux evangelists should be focusing on. It would still be really nice to have some real examples from well known companies to point to, since that's what is invariably asked for.
There are tons of small businesses out there with 2-10 windows boxes and a hub all hooked up as a workgroup. Around 8-10 users is where they will start to run into the simultaneous connection limits on their shared folders, and that's the best time to sell them on a Linux file server. Really, the hard part is convincing them to switch to a domain security model, but if you don't mind a little extra work on the admin side setting up Samba user access, it's pretty easy to drop a Linux server onto their network. I keep thinking I'm going to start up my own company to do exactly this, but I keep not getting around to it. But hey, I invite anyone reading this to steal my idea.
If Linux can gain momentum in the small business market, more small business apps will show up for it. Eventually some of these small businesses will grow into large ones, and hopefully Linux will grow with them.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Uh, now *you're* the one coming off as an "anti-Linux zealot". Not sure what your OS of choice is. Obviously neither Microsoft *or* Linux, and it sounds like not BeOS or OS/2 either.
Therefore, I'm guessing you're either a Solaris junkie, or a frustrated BSD user who hates the fact that Linux steals the spotlight away from them so often.
Since you automatically find fault with OS/2 and BeOS for their "proprietary nature" - I'm thinking you probably prefer BSD.
Anyway - I stand by my original statement. Linux is quickly becoming the only option left other than Microsoft for a viable x86 OS.
Apple could add an interesting twist to things by releasing an x86 version of MacOS - IMHO. But I'd also be willing to wager they'll never do it. Why? Because that would instantly devalue/invalidate all of their hardware. (Why pay a premium for a proprietary Mac when you can run the same thing faster on a late-model x86 processor?)
BTW, I never discounted BSD at all. I just question its ability to be competitive at this point in the game. By the very nature of its licensing, people can easily take portions of its code for their use in any other project they like. While that's great from a philosophical standpoint, and will keep it strong and viable with certain sectors - it also nullifys its significance as a stand-alone OS choice.
AKA. "My company, Widgets, Inc. - sees no point in implementing BSD Unix. We're already using the advantageous portions of their networking code as built-in firmware in our routers. All the applications can run under Linux. In fact, my copies of Windows NT use many of their command line utilities, ported directly over from their source code. If I want to buy commercial support, it's available from a number of vendors with Linux. Not so with BSD."
it's fixed