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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."
As goes Peru, so goes the world......
I found the last comment in his interview interesting:
"Integration" is the lever that MS uses to generate revenue. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of this and are assessing its value as best they can (given that they've lived in the MS Matrix monoculture for so long.)
Quoting from the Financial Times article that is another Slashdot story, too,
"Provided by the management for your protection."
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they fight you.
Then you win.
It's not as funny as:
Step 1. Create Gcc.
Step 2. Create Linux kernel.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. World Domination!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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
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.
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.
Unfortunately I have to post this as an AC but I'm speaking as one of the top geeks in a large place of work (~6,000 employees). We're not upgrading to XP and we're tesing a large group of people (~200) on Linux and OpenOffice on machines we've had in storage for a year. Thus far there have been no real technical problems although the user education has been a bit of work. Once they are familiar with an X desktop they spend most of their time using email and "Office" anyhow.
We love it, we love the price and we love the excellent support we get from newsgroups and FAQs/docs.
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.
I've run into OpenOfficeMS Office export and import problems even with plain Word letters, so I can't imagine a complex spreadsheet with macros will work very well.
The owls are not what they seem
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
Working for the houston civic authority doing IT support, I can tell you that many of us are severly displeased with this decision. It boiled down to the 'old boy' network whent he choice was made for SimDesk, and many of us openly suspect a rash of kickbacks in this lowball bid win.
Almost all of us are MS certified types (I have my MCSE), and a few of us use linux at home or as web servers for some of our intranet infrastructure. The running gag is that the change over in hardware in terms of on site servers and bandwith enhancements will cost us more than three times our current agreement with MS for our existing systems. MS had lowballed too, offering us a very attractive licensing and support package that was not only reasonable (by MS standards), but significantly less than their 'going rate' packages.
Alternatives in using pure *nix were also presented, some rather attractive on the face of it, but ultimately they were rejected for training and hardware costs, as well as for the fact that they are not very well known or supported in the kind of environment we have going on here in Houston. Over half of our PCs would have had some kind of driver problem, more than 2/3rds of our existing software and DB systems would have been rendered incompatible, an worse still there were no alternatives for some of our vital statistics and infrastructure support apps. A wash.
This whole thing has us more than a little upset, and some of us laughing as we learn more about SimDesk. It's bandwith intensive, and many of our outlying and important network nodes are on less than a typical home broadband connection (with up to 50 user machines and servers!).
Don't believe everything you read... it wasn't a rejection of MS because it is MS, but rather an old boy deal done by friends and mutal friends.
Yeah, it's competition for Microsoft and face it, Microsoft is the monolithic dinosaur with an aging product line. SimDesk, whatever you want to say about them, is the fleet of foot furry little rascal which is prepared for the coming ice age.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
> 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.
I'd say that it's just a case of a city supporting its own entrepreneurs, supporting its own tax generating companies, supporting its own residents.
It's like buying from your neighborhood hardware store, grocery store, or five and dime. Oh wait, they're all national chains now... Looks like folks didn't shop there enough to keep them alive.
As a Houstonian, I'm glad to see a Houston business getting support from the city.
Hmm, actually that would be Piper, the guy who initiated the move from Microsoft:
This is hardly the type of case that one would want to use a poster-child for open source. 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 don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The Chairman and CEO of SimDesk, Mr. Waters, is "responsible for the strategic direction and management of SimDesk".
Mr Waters was founding chairman and CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) and served BFI from 1969 until 1997, when BFI was sold to Allied Waste for $9 billion in cash. During the 1980s, BFI pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing. More details:
They would seem to have the makings of a worthy successor to Microsoft.