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Norwegian Government Expires Microsoft Contract

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-for-them dept.

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."

2 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So, what *UX flavors have good Norwegian suppor by Jobe_br · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting how here on /., when discussing an alternative to MS, the first (and usually only) alternative to be discussed is Linux. As far as a desktop OS is concerned, Apple's Mac OS X may be far better suited to the task. Since the subsystem is very closely based on Open/FreeBSD and hence supports all the "information wants to be free" technologies that Linux does, the real comparison is the user interface.

    Now, I have a whole lot of respect for the GNOME and KDE efforts (I have Ximian on my laptop and KDE on one of my desktops), but they've got a ways to go to reach OS X's level of ease-of-use. I believe OS X is also localized in Norwegian, but I could be wrong on this count (if I am wrong, then that's a good reason to discount OS X :)).

    Apple's no longer *just* for creatives, designers, writers, etc. It is (at its core) a highly productive and functional operating system built on a highly stable and powerful subsystem. With OS X, you can *get things done*. For the novice computer user, OS X can be a good deal more intuitive than either Windows OR any of the Linux UIs.

    *sigh* ... this isn't a flame or a troll, just a commentary.

    Cheers.

  2. Re:The key is standards, not software by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nah, I'd use my new godlike powers to force MS to document the formats properly. There's nothing intrinisically wrong with the .doc format as far as I know, certainly forcing the use of ASCII or RTF (even xhtml) would be a step backwards in some respects. The problem isn't Microsoft technologies some of which are good, the problem is that people get locked in to them