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Details of Linux-in-Munich Deal Revealed

Posted by michael on from the craaaaaaazy-prices dept.

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today is running a piece about the lengths which Microsoft went to in order not to lose the government of Munich's account to a Linux-based proposal from SuSE. Interesting to see how these types of contracts are structured, and just what Microsoft is willing to give up to prevent losing to Linux."

2 of 685 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Linux competitiveness. by FFFish · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To put the final nail in the coffin, SuSE/IBM ought to bring the project in under the accepted bid price. That would wake up a LOT of PHBs.

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  2. And no license compliance overhead by jackbox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I didn't see this mentioned in the article or in the comments here, but I'd bet one of Munich's "strategic" considerations was the overhead in managing license compliance. Particularly with MS's concession to unbundle MS Word for some machines. Watch those savings go down the tubes when the MS lawyers come by and say, "So, can you prove you have installed only MS Word on X thousand machines?"

    Assuring license compliance on desktops is a frickin' nightmare, and the lack of that overhead is a major advantage of open source software.

    (And that's not even considering the ridiculousness of the Microsoft position that basically says, "We want your business so much we're going to let you NOT buy some of our software that you don't need! Yes, normally, we make everyone buy this whether they need it or not, but because we pride ourselves on being customer-driven, we will actually break our own rules and not sell you something you don't want!") Sheez. GMAB. (Give Me A Break)