Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Loses Showdown in Houston
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the city of Houston has decided against using Microsoft software. It really is amazing how much it costs to use (and maintain) software. I can't help but wonder if this will become a trend." Turns out they decided on the relativly unknown SimDesk suite, which has nothing to do with The Sims, sadly. Many, many posts about this. In additional news seldo writes "There's an interesting interview on News.Com with Peter Houston. He discusses Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows."
Think about it. For the first time in a decade, what with all the city and national governments giving the dirty bird to Microsoft in favor of Linux or other alternatives, Redmond has finally realized that it has real competition again. Better, Microsoft can't 'embrace and extend' this competition without a significant alteration of their core business plan.
This means that, for the foreseeable future, MS users will be getting a product that will be the result of a pricewar with Free software, will have features that compete with OSS features, and will have a level of quality that attempts to approach OSS quality.
I don't think that Microsoft will belly up any time soon, regardless of how wonderful that would be. I do see Windows getting very good in the near future since quality and ease of use are the only ways it has left to compete with Linux.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
He discusses Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows.
3) then you win.
It's starting to look like the US recession will be one of the best things to happen to the Open-Source movement.
No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche
If you look at the CEO's bio, he's some Houston good-ol boy who made a billion at BFI (trash collection), and now is dabbling in high tech.
Since everything in Texas is controlled by good ol boys, I'm sure the decision to use this software was anything but objective.
This means that, for the foreseeable future, MS users will be getting a product that will be the result of a pricewar with Free software, will have features that compete with OSS features, and will have a level of quality that attempts to approach OSS quality.
Have a look at simdesk.com - it's covered in words like "proprietary" and "patented". Houston's decision is neither particularly good nor bad for OSS.
I'm not seeing anything at the web site that says this is OSS?
;) Wonder if SimDesk is getting any tax breaks from Houston?
They don't need to embrace and extend this software because they already HAVE software that does everything this purports to do, the MS Office Suite. This is just a clone of Office, nothing innovative, I can't download the source, heck I can't even get a price list off of their web site.
I think this is just a case of price. The city of Houston got a great deal from a Houston based company. What's it called when a city practices nepotism, except without the relatives? Oh yeah, politics.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they fight you.
Then you win.
Every time I see this my immediate reaction is "So _that's_ why Microsoft is so successful." I'm not trolling; I just find it hilarious that so many Linux advocates consider crazed zealotry and endless flames about other operating systems to be passive resistance.
It's just a cancer to the MS bottom line. Just wait until OpenOffice/StarOffice has come a little farther. The only thing I'm waiting on is Quartz support in OS X.
I have 3 companies that I've converted to Linux in the last 2 years and it saves tens of thousands of dollars.
Now if I could only get sftp to not crash on my raid-0 smp computer at home!!! damn thread model.
The actual meat of the story is interesting, an a hopeful sign, but so is the lead paragraph. It presents Microsoft as bullying it's clients into agreeing to it's terms.
Nothing new there, but when this is the tone taken by mainstream media, and seen as so non-controversial that it's mentioned and then passed over, then Microsoft have already lost their key battle. Their marketing depends on them being seen as the safe option. If they are seen as the problem, then (as here) people will go looking for solutions.
From the interview with Peter Houston:
I still believe Linux is an extension of the Unix paradigm. It's a command-line-focused approach that's not particularly designed to be user friendly. The Windows approach is very different.
This kind of shows how clueless Microsoft really is about competing with Linux. Lest anyone forget that Windows was nothing more than a extension of a command-line-focused operating system called MS-DOS that wasn't particularly use friendly? Microsoft just started to hide the command-line with Windows 95. The same is happening with Linux, as it gains more acceptance. More and more tools are being developed that eliminate the need for command-line work.
True, any distro of Linux isn't quite at the XP level not needing to use the command-line, but it's starting to head in that direction. And if more and more companies and, more importantly, governments start to actively look at switching, there will be a big boom in eliminating the command-lind dependence.
Just my 2c.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
After reading all this, it sounds like Houstin opted for SimDesk only because they felt trapped by Microsoft licensing issues.
It's not clear to me they will save money, although it does seem clear that by doing this they can at least quantify the amount of money they need to spend. I wonder if these kinds of MS sales tactics can be argued as entrapment or bait & switch? Customers shouldn't need to feel like they must pay millions to get MS off their back, especially when the amount involved is in dispute.
A greater concern for Houstin is where the data will be stored. It's not clear from the website or the marketing blurbs if the SimDesk apps drop documents locally or remotely to the SimDesk server. At a minimum, the patent-pending Trashbin is purported to be remote - which would give you access to this content from anywhere. I sure hope this system is secure!
Of course, the fact that they are looking to partner with Unisys is reason enough to be concerned. Remember GIF? TBPH, Microsoft doesn't look like a bad alternative here -- if anything this should be a wakeup call for MS that license audits need to be approached with extreme caution.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
I think it depends what you're doing. If you're sending information to customers, then simply export your OpenOffice docs to PDF. You should be doing this anyway, even if you're using MS Word, because the PDF is the only way to ensure your document will be delivered properly. Heck, even MS Word isn't compatible with MS Word!
If you need to collaborate, then encourage everyone on the team to either adopt an open standard (HTML, RDF, etc.) or get them onboard with OO.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Given the small budgets, byzantine approval processes, and both political and bureaucratic stumbling blocks that affect civic IT departments (and I sadly speak from experience), the most effective place to get cost savings is at the client side.
Only a very few people at the civic level need independent workstations, and the cost of support per user is higher than that of private-sector firms of comparable size. Ripping out the PCs and replacing them with Sun Rays or Wyse terms is a bright solution for cash-strapped cities. However, don't confuse this with a move to open source: as has been pointed out above, it's a fallacy to think that "proprietary" is synonymous with "Microsoft."
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
I disagree. If everybody was honest, you'd be right. But that's not the case.
Microsoft has spent years and years outright lying, cheating, and stealing, in order to come to market dominance and stay there. (If you don't believe me, go ahead and review the anti-trust court cases.)
So *any* win for non-MS companies, even proprietary ones, is good. It will help mature the industry, and make it less lopsided. I'm not interested in the complete destruction of MS - that'd probably end up being just as bad as what we have now; a monoculture.
But these *are* wins. Microsoft has less money in its pockets to lie about FOSS, for instance. It has less clout to twist people's arms.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
This is the "Hailstorm" issue all over again. But it does have certian advantanges for poor folk who don't own their own systems, which was one of the reasons Houston starting looking at it. An out of work homeless person can put his resume on it, and then access his resume later from any other system he manages to get access too. He doesn't have to haul a floppy around with him out in the elements where he lives. If you read the article, it was tried out in public libraries as a way to "bridge the digital divide", and apparently was wildly successful.
Due to the fact that SimDesk holds your data hostage, they can probably offer a very different pricing structure than traditional software vendors. They can charge peanuts for the clients, and then keep charging you access fees for the server. Think of it as the first MMOS (Massively-Multiplayer Office Suite)
Why go Open Source when you can funnel millions of taxpayer's dollars to somebody's brother-in-law, so they can kick it back to you. They're based in Houston and the COO is the son of the CEO. The whole thing stinks. Remember, this is the city that bought you Enron.
I write papers in OO.o all the time and take them to work in DOC format to print them on the better printers. I've had no problems. Otherwise, I can use RTF (which MS Office can still manage to mess up).
You seem to be missing the point that people are migrating away. DOC isn't a reliable format for business. Ask any expert, and they will tell you that you should be using RTF or HTML. If you communicate to clients in one, proprietary format, then you are an idiot.
it is so very common and so disturbing that companies have machines in storage for over a year.
i realize that some companies and some workstations might have sensitive data. REMOVE THE FREAKIN' DRIVES and sell/give them to employees.
the last place i worked had hundreds of decommissioned (sp?) notebooks and dock stations in a closet. there were plenty of desktops as well. sure, nobody wants the crappy 15" monitors, but the machines can be put to use with or without drives.
the fact that employees are able to and do keep company sensitive data locally on their workstations is another issue that i'll try to stay away from.
computer hardware is a quickly depreciating asset and expense. it really really irks me that companies hold onto this stuff that geeks go gaddy over. imagine a beowulf cluster indeed.
I don't know many actual developers who concern themselves with the above mentality. The most successful ones just seem interested in cobbling together interesting bits of code regardless of how big or little the perceived audience for the code is.
I think the real importance of most of the zealots is about on par with the importance of the MS user groups. They're promotional mouthpieces, but their real-world effect is shadowed almost entirely by the effect of the actual software.
So? Quite a few people have absolutely no interest in complex spreadsheet macros: giving, recieving or creating. You're simply describing an artifical problem.
This is simply another example of 95% of people being disinterested in 95% of msoffice features.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I read the article. You're merely incapable of thinking abstractly or in terms of metaphor.
Their aim is infact to turn their PC's into X terminals. No, they won't be running eXeed. However, they will be using web browsers to achieve the same end result.
However, the "X terminal" is the model they are attempting to immitate.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
the computarded of this world, have big dreams, and big mouths, but when it boils down to it, they could all be on PII 333 mhz machines and not know the difference. they just want to type emails or documents and surf the net.
learning anything more would upset their days (learning bad, stupid good mentality) and perhaps make it possible for them to do more work at work. they say, I WANT THE STARS AND THE MOON, but would settle for a trip to the end of the hallway for some coffee in a heartbeat.
ok, there is a point in the rant. X desktop + mozilla + OpenOffice is more than enough these days.
anyhow, m$ is trying to convince the world of the one thing everyone knows is not true. that they could possibly compete on price, quality or up time.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Youre making an assumption that the Simdesk business plan doesnt end with:
2. Get bought out by Microsoft.
3. Profit!
This is exactly the reason why a win for ANY proprietary software company is a not a win for Free Software.
Why would Houston dump one overpriced proprietary solution for a different one that merely costs less? The city could have deployed Open Office for nothing and put the money elsewhere! Then after everyone was used to Open Office, the switch to an open source OS would have been easy.
As it stands now, Houston is out of one big frying pan, but squarely in the middle of a smaller one. And either way they're getting burned!
Yes, Piper may be a liar, a cheat, and a thief (we don't even have a plea in the case to which you refer), but not in connection with the city of Houston's bidding process. As we see from material you quoted:
"The county District Attorney, in a separate probe, examined Piper's financial records and stumbled into evidence that Piper may have embezzled $200,000 from his previous employer, Reliant Energy." (emphasis added)
In fact, I'm at a loss to explain the newspaper's decision to drag this unrelated scandal into the article. I hope it wasn't to discredit one side in the Microsoft vs. SimDesk contest.
"I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse." -- Groucho Marx
How is this legal? How is this allowed?
If I owned a company and said hell with Microsoft software, and they walked into my company, I would throw them right out on the curb.
It's just that simple.
WHY are companies/municipalities allowing this!?
Just say no, you cant browse our computers to look for stuff, its private and none of their buisness!
End this madness!
Sure, but why should you want to send/receive a spreadsheet with a macro to/from a client?
The company I work for has occasionally sent to contractors fairly complicated spreadsheets. We have specific tasks to complete, and these have proved the best method to accomplish them. We expect the contract to use the tools we provide to accomplish the task we set.
--Ravensfire
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
And I tend to agree with you with a single exception.
You're right that it's (on the surface at least) neither particularly good nor bad for OSS but if you consider the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" way of looking at things then on some level this kind of thing may help. What's the single biggest obsticle for anyone else in the software universe other than Microsoft? That would be "Microsoft" I think. Anything that competes with them successfully, anything that takes their full attention from what you are doing to compete with them, and anything that demonstrates an ability to win anything against them is good for everyone hoping to do the same.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Maybe not good for OSS, but it does provide overall competition in the market, which MS is in desparate need of.
Once OpenOffice and StarOffice mature some more, and we see the Linux community develop some if the integrations that MS claims it can't, THEN OSS becomes another, and more serious competitor.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
That's it. This isn't a win for OSS or for Linux, it's a win for everyone that doesn't rely on M$ day in and day out. It legitimizes what we do to people that don't understand.
Ah, the Rush Limbaugh excuse machine comes to Slashdot. Let me get this straight- you are saying that a good ol' boy, deep in the heart of Texass, is a Liberal?
give me a break. your so called conservatives are nothing of the sort when it comes to skimming large amounts of money from the public drawer. This dates all the way back to Kissinger- the bigger the crime, the bigger the immunity. That is the Republican way- rape what you can, have the gool ol' boys cover your ass (no pun intended, although Deliverance comes to mind).
I live in Chicago, and we fortunately got rid of our so-called Conservatives, because they pretty much robbed the state of Illinois for the past 20 years that they were in charge of the state.
What is their legacy? A huge, staggering debt. Corruption scandals. Croonie-ism and patronage (hell, half the state politician's last names are Ryan).
And my personal favorite is a State funded daily traffic jam that we call our Tollway system. Why anyone would want to PAY to sit in a traffic jam is beyond me. How they can justify it and call it necessary, and at the same time raise how much they charge... well, its criminal, and hopefully some people are going to jail on this one.
Anyway, please dont blame the problems in Texass on 'Liberals'. It makes you sound like a person who has Rush do your thinking for you.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I have to ask, why was Tatro SOOO against this move? So much so that Piper was investigated for rigging the bid but later nothing was found. This sounds like what the Microsoft sales reps were saying at the beginning( before the contract was actually awarded ). Is/was Tatro receiving funds from Microsoft?
I just loved how the Texas Attorney General backed out of the DOJ/States vs Microsoft case when Dell and another Texas company pressured such a move. You know Microsoft 'asked' these companies to do this.... What did they 'ask' of Tatro??????
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
What kind of rigging is possible when there is only one bid?
The absolute best way of rigging a bid process is to ensure that there is only one qualified bidder. I've seen several techniques used to arrange this:
And, if all of that doesn't scare away all of your potential bidders, you can still tell your preferred vendor to lowball their estimate to make sure they're the lowest bid, planning for "cost overruns". If you want to be really dirty, you can even leak the other bidders' proposals and prices to your preferred vendor so that they can be sure to be the cheapest. Doing that is a good way to end up in jail, though.
There are *many* ways to rig a bid, and I'm sure I haven't seen them all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This is hardly the type of case that one would want to use a poster-child for open source.
.NET ads at the top of Slashdot, they are being paid by both sides.
Who said anything about open source? One second look at the Simdesk front page throws up words like 'proprietry' and 'patented'. See next paragraph.
Particularly as it appears that Sim desk is actually closed source and that this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story.
You are waaay off the mark. A big win for a company that is competing with M$ Office is news because breaking the M$ hold on the file formats is important for open source making headway into the desktop market.
At the moment, M$ can change its file format as much as it likes to cut off any competitors. Those offering compatibility have no choice except to play catch-up.
If large government departments and corporations start using "Office compatiable" software then they are going to be upset if M$ starts producing incompatiable WP files. These are the kind of people that M$ have to listen to.
When large segments of markets start using different competing "Office compatible" suites then they will start making their users saving by default to a format that they *know* will work in all the suites (eg Word v.XXX). Once everybody gets locked into this version, and it's difficult for M$ to change it without upsetting too many people, then instead of playing catch-up everybody (open source and proprietary) can concentrate on polishing accurate import and export filters. This would be excellent for consumers.
You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?
Judging by the
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
"...it appears that ... this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story. You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?"
Most people here don't like Microsoft for very good reasons. Just because the editors seem to dislike Microsoft (which I would assume) doesn't mean they're being paid, doesn't mean they're posting articles with large bias, or only posting anti-MS articles. The editors have an interest in Microsoft and what happens to them, as do most computer geeks.
Microsoft, AFAIK the biggest software company in the world and certainly the most powerful, just lost Houston. That is news. I'm sure the editors got a smile on their face and said, "Sweet, post it, sounds cool," but that doesn't mean anyone is getting paid off or that the Slashdot editors are largely biased.
This is a site for nerds. Nerds, in a large part, dislike Microsoft for very reasonable reasons. This news is interesting. Quit reading between the lines; this isn't CNN, this is a fun community news site.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I think he shot himself in the foot on that one.
This wonderfully brings out the difference between Microsoft and the unix/linux philosophy of "there's more than one way to cat a file". For a long time, I've been of the opinion that Microsoft's attitude toward their customers was pretty much the same as IBM's was in their (pre '80s) monopoly days.
The Linux solution, on the other hand starts with the premise of user freedom.(-: Two different Houstons -- both of whom think that Linux provides the necessary pieces for "the ultimate solution". :-)
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Cost of acquisition not withstanding, cost of ownership & maintenance really ends up being in the joint hands of management & implementers. Management for business ownership & goal setting, implementers for effective implementation. The worst build OSS system WILL cost you considerably more in the long run and sink your ROI, than a similar payware system correctly designed & efficiently built.
/.ers seem to forget regularly : it's not the technology (unless you're doing something patently idiotic like using Access), it's getting management buy-in.
I think that's the crux of this whole debate that all
Again, so what for Houston. If they have competent techs and it's a solid product, sure their ROI will be better. If their techs are incompetently lead (all too common) or inept (as common) then they won't see an ROI and they'll take the easy route out : blame the product\system\people\OSS.
be0wulfe
Free software has powerful attractions - which Microsoft exploited when it bundled a free internet browser into its operating system to challenge Netscape.
Yet another indication that attempts to distinguish between free-as-in-RMS-has-a-dream and free-as-in-AOL-CDs are completely lost on the mainstream media.
Marklar: marklar
This may have been posted already and I just missed it, but if not, here goes:
The article mentioned that SimDesk was installed on the library's computers as a trial basis and it was extremely popular. Maybe since we're all highly computer literate, we tend to forget that there are many out there who aren't, maybe for the simple fact that they're too poor to own a computer.
Think about it. Suppose you were poor and didn't have a computer and needed to do some kind of word processing, your options would be limited. Not considering typewriters and all-in-one wordprocessors, you could either go over to a friend's and use their computer (assuming you had such a friend who wouldn't mind the inconvenience) or what--go to the library?
Assuming the library had a word processor or spreadsheet or whatever it was you needed to use, you'd still have to get a hold of a floppy disk or a zip disk in order to save your work. By using an office suite that enables you to save your work remotely, you eliminate the need for the user to buy storage media--something that for some could be unattainable.
Additionally, as has already been stated, the average Joe Blow user has no need for most of what M$ Office does. By going with SimDesk in the libraries, the city of Houston has made opened the door for many who were previously shut out. Heck, the article stated that it was their aim to make SimOffice available for every poor person.
"What began as Brown's goal to use SimDesk as an affordable way to give poor residents access to basic computer functions broadened into a plan to use SimDesk as a cheaper alternative on some city PCs, too."
And the results:
"... during nine months of the pilot program, more than 30,000 users had written and stored resumes, school papers, legal statements, poetry and other files on the SimDesk server. They couldn't do complex data sorting or many other chores Office does well. Even so, lines formed at the library's SimDesk terminals. Civic leaders rallied behind it. "SimDesk lowers the barriers for the low-income community," says Brian Stevens, executive director of The Telecom Opportunity Institute, a non-profit that guides at-risk youth."
Like many of you, my first reaction was, "Huh?!" Why didn't they go with Open Office?" Maybe because you have to save your files locally and SimOffice eliminates that need? There's no risk of losing or damaging your floppy. However, to be fair, if SimDesk's network or hard drives fail, where are you? It's a tradeoff, I guess.
Anyway, I think the fact that Mayor Brown was concerned about bringing basic computer functioning to the masses, succeeded, saved money, didn't have to upgrade hardware, and did it all in spite of Micro$oft's corporate extortion is quite a feat. So what if it's not open source? Do you really think that any of the new beneficiaries of the free access to the previously unavailable technology give a rip about that?
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Do you have a link? I've tried google, but I just get a bunch of hits on the original story.
If what you say is true, it proves what a hypocritical site this really is, and shows how much the 'editors' really care about free software (ie: not at all).