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Norwegian Government Expires Microsoft Contract
Jeppe Salvesen writes "The Norwegian sites are bristling with the news, and hopefully this will leak worldwide. The Norwegian Government has dropped their contract with Microsoft. Microsoft had an exclusive deal with national and regional government. Administration Secretary Victor D. Norman states that 'we feel that our contract with Microsoft in reality has given Microsoft a monopoly in a field where competition would serve us better.'. My translation. The race is on."
They're not against Microsoft, they're just dropping the exclusive deal with them - i.e. whereas previously they might have had to use the Microsoft product, they can now choose what they think is the best software for the job.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
M Gandhi
Not really. I don't know how good Windows Norweigan support is (pretty good I'd imagine) but KDE has been translated into over 40 languages iirc, and many other Linux apps also have Norweigan translations.
You would never be able to tell normally as GNU gettext hides it all from the user.... in fact I just checked, and I have almost 30 norweigan translations on my machine, and I haven't installed any special language packages or anything.
So, if the Norwegian government is run by Microsoft, does that make Bill president/king/tyrant? I guess all our base WAS his anyway...
King: Norway is a monarchy. But since the king
ain't got no say anymore, maybe prime minister.
Norway is also a U.S. ally: all their base are NATO.
You rang?
The following translation was also posted over at Linux Today a while ago.
But - I thought that Microsoft is not offering
Select 5.0 after August 1, 2002 or some such?
I suppose that what mr. Norman means is whatever
MS offers as the "upgrade" from Select 5.0
No government bodies are prohibited from buying MS software, but as noted above, they are not actively encouraged to do that anymore.
Press release
No.: 43/2002
Date: 12.07.02
Contact person: Senior advisor Kai-Ove Nauen, t. 2224 4964
Increased competition for software in the public sector
To stimulate the use of open source software in public administration,
the Minister of Labor and Public Administration Mr. Victor D. Norman has
decided not to enter into a new Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway
through the Adminnet cooperation.
Via the Adminnet system, government bodies on all levels from State to municipal
have a Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway that is valid until November 30, 2002.
This agreement gives public bodies the possibility to buy Microsoft software at lowered
prices.
The use of Microsoft software is very extensive in public administration, and for some
product areas there is very nearly a monopoly situation with market shares approaching
95%.
The use of open source software, e.g. Linux, may stimulate competition and reduce an
unwanted segmentation in parts of the IT and communications market.
To help make open source software a real alternative for public bodies, the Adminnet
cooperation will not enter into a new Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway,
says Minister Norman.
In the IT/communication strategy for public sector that will be presented this fall,
further actions will be presented that will promote the use of open source software in
public bodies.
The article is translated at desktoplinux. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6576907451.html
As I am norwegian and have read several versions of the same article by now, I can inform you that they are just dropping the "exclusiveness". They have a "Select 5.0-deal" with Microsoft that means they can buy software at discount prices. It's this deal they are now dropping to encourage competition.
Link to The Norway Post's story.
A point that seems to have been missed here is cost. I work for a pseudo-government agency that runs Windows almost exclusively, and I can tell you that it constantly irks me to watch us spend thousands of dollars to upgrade licenses for what I consider to be an inferior operating system. When you're talking about taxpayer dollers, a responsible government entity will review the more cost-effective possibilites when considering an operating system. If I can deploy Linux for free and spend $75.95/copy for Star Office 6.0 as opposed to $299/copy for Windows XP and $579/copy for Office XP, the as a government entity I should save my taxpayers money and do it. Sure, it may take a bit more work, but it's the responsible thing to do IMO.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
I figured it would have been Finland (link) cutting the Microsoft handcuffs first! Home of Linus Torvalds, no?
Are the taxes genuinely higher for a given income level than in the USA?
Yes. Not only do they have steep income taxes, but a 25% sales (aka VAT) tax as well.
The USA has a very low tax burden for a western industrialized country. The main reason for this is lack of nationalized health care system, which adds considerably to the level of taxes.
If you use the media available for Volume License customers, you do not need to activate each license, product key and machine via the Internet, only the retail (and possibly Academic versions) require online activation. Instead, you get a product key and media to install on machines.
I have used the product key and media from our Select agreement to install XP Professional on about a dozen test machines without having to go online except for updates.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Interesting you should mention this. Language could actually be a factor in FAVOUR of dropping Windows. Norway actually have TWO written forms, Windows only comes in one of them (as far as I know, someone might correct me on this one). Whereas both GNOME/KDE is well on their way into be translated into both of them.
And if this wasn't enough, we have a lappish minority in the north of Norway, and I bet it'd be quite hard to convince Microsoft into making a version for THAT.
For Linux, situation might be a little different. It's much simpler for the norwegian government to hire someone to do translations of Linux softwate, much of it which uses gettext, and is easily translatable. Not to mention that a project, Skolelinux (Linux for schools, see http://www.skolelinux.no/) has that as one of their stated goals, and are working on exactly that.
So, language might be an argument against Windows and FOR free software.
True, they canceled the contract because MSFTs offering was "sub-optimal and too expensive". the inquirer covered this a couple days ago here
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Your can of beans expires. Because it becomes stale. Because it can't be eaten. Your license expires. Because you stop paying.
Your contract is "terminated". "Norwegian Government Terminates Microsoft Contract".
Sheez.
this is the same minister who bought a million dollars' worth of airline tickets from an airline that hasn't started yet, just to make sure he had an alternative to the (partly government-owned) semi-monopoly called Scandinavian.
It'll be fun to see what happens next.
It's actually considerably worse than that. You see with Linux you can actually move to a workable thin client solution like the folks in Largo Florida. With Linux you can easily support hundreds of users with one commodity Intel-based server. For about the same price as an upgrade to your current Windows OS and office suite you could move your entire office to thin clients and never have to worry about client side problems ever again. Imagine how much easier your life would be with one machine to configure and a whole pile of thin clients that you could simply throw away if something broke.
Talk about low TCO.
Of these three, Windows (and MS-Office) supports only one - namely Bokmål. True this is used by 80% of the people or something, but that still leaves 20%. KDE in contrast supports both nynorsk and bokmål, and thereby it supports 98% or more of the people (sami is spoken by quite few)
Especially in schools this is important -- there are laws that say you have in primary school the rigth to get all teaching-material in your language, as this law is today interpreted, this means only books, so Windows is allowed. However, in my opinion it would not be unreasonable to count the programs used on the computers (and the helpfiles) as part of "teaching materials". Afterall, the students are commonly required to use many of these programs, and I don't see what relevance it has that the text is on a screen instead of in a book.
If Norway has a bad reputation, it is because of lies like yours and fascists who try to force their own views on everyone ("I think it's cute, so you can't kill it for food. If you do, I will make sure you pay.").
And Norway is not doing this to support Linux. They are simply looking for cheaper solutions because they find Microsoft to be an expensive alternative, and they would like the possibility to give others a chance to compete. That's it. It's all about money.
Clever signature text goes here.