Israel Suspends MS Office Purchases For Now

case_igl writes "The Seattle Times is reporting 'that in an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft Office software and is encouraging the development of an open-source alternative.' The Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew-language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. The spokeswoman said the government was unhappy with Microsoft's refusal to sell individual programs from its standard Office package, which includes e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications. Microsoft representatives in Israel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment." The Associated Press article is carried on many other sites as well.

Comments

Good!

[nycsubway]

More power to them! Microsoft Word's default Hebrew fonts are non-existent, and the alternative Hebrew fonts aren't very good. Nor are any of the office products very good at inputing right-to-left text. I hope the improvements to openoffice will make their way to other countries.

Good example!

[hak hak]

I'd like to see more countries do this. Hopefully it'll help convince businesses and people that Microsoft isn't the only choice.

Re:Good example!

[GeckoFood]

I'd like to see more countries do this. Hopefully it'll help convince businesses and people that Microsoft isn't the only choice.

What M$ will end up doing is waffling on the price down the road somewhere and try to schmooze Israel into coming back to them. It then becomes a matter of whether or not Israel is disenchanted enough with M$ to tell them to go away or if they'll recant and take the new deal.

In an effort to keep India from going open source at one point, M$ decided that offering software at a steep break would work to keep India in the shackles. IIRC, India went open source anyway after much debate.

Will the scenario play out the same way? Dunno. Either way, it'll be interesting to see what happens next. I am willing to bet that M$ will cave on the price to avoid losing business, with not too much concern over the revenue. It could be too little, too late, but they have little to lose by trying that. And since they have done that before, I expect history to repeat itself.

In the end, I hope Israel sticks to their plan and turns from M$ Office. And perhaps this is the new trend?

Re:Good example!

[u-235-sentinel]

I've been watching this happen over and over again. Country after country have been walking away from Microsoft over the last few years and it seems to be accelerating.

$300 for XP Pro and $500+ for Office is shear lunacy. Before you spend ANY money on hardware, you already have spent more than the hardware is worth just in a simple OS and office product. Not worth it. Not even close. When I asked for a refund for XP Pro on my laptop I was told I would receive a check for $10. Is that what I paid when purchasing the laptop? Of course when I asked for 10 copies of XP Pro at the same price they were a little miffed at me. Bummer dude.

If I'm keeping score properly, there are about 30 countries in which the Government has "allowed" opensource alternatives. Most have required justification for non-opensource software and why opensource can't be used for the work. Microsoft isn't totally out of the picture. They have a seriously reduced role which I'm encouraging everywhere I can.

David vs Goliath?

[Baron_Yam]

It seems to me that one of the reasons MS has always been able to create inconvienient packages from groups of software, and then sell at very high prices, is that they OWN most of the market. In other words, they're so big that you and I can't possibly expect to demand a concession.

Of course, now that countries are starting to realize that they're big enough to push back, we have more of a Goliath vs Goliath thing going on, and maybe MS will start to be more flexible in the way it offers its software. Maybe they'll start to consider adding a language pack when they stand to lose sales to an entire nation.

It'd be nice to be able, for instance, to buy Word and Excel without PowerPoint, Access, or FrontPage. (It'd be even nicer if Frontpage and everyone who contributed to it's creation were cast into Hell, but that's another story!)

Re:Peace , definitely Good!

[diersing]

I think you over estimate the power of OSS.

In the height of the cold war, lets say you met and befriended a Russian. Lets say a thousand people did, lets say a million.... what what % of the population do these personal relationships make governments change policy? My guess is, it doesn't happen. When ideologies not only vary, but conflict to the degree Israel and it's neighbors do, personal relationships will have very little effect unless we're talking about the nation's leaders becoming buddies, which at the very least will facilitate more discussions. Of course those discussions will anger some sect will continue to launch terrorist suicide attacks which will of course, be retaliated for and the vicious cycle continues.

The problems in the middle east are complex, maybe too complex to solve today. My hope is the next generation of middle eastern will have more understanding and tolerance for one another, but then again, that generation will have lost fathers and brothers to the violence and will have thier own bones to pick.

Mo' choice == mo' betta

[The Infamous Grimace]

I'm an admitted Apple addict (fan-boy, whatever...), so...

I installed OO.o for OS X the other day, and poked around a bit. Gotta admit, it isn't anywhere near as easy to use outa the box as either Office or AppleWorks, at least for me (got both installed). That said, I think it has a lot of potential, and I'm anxious to see what the Aqua-native version will bring. And the folks over at OO.o admit that it's not for the faint-of-heart, and recommend it only for geek-y types at this time.

I'd like to see Apple release an update to AppleWorks, for both Mac and Windows. I also think Apple should support Linux as well, and expect that they eventually will. The more competion that MS has, the better off we all are. It's not like MS can't make good software - Office v.X and Flight Simulator come to mind as examples of good products.

Anyways, hopefully MS will continue with their recent trend of seeking outside input (as with the questionaire sent to Linux users.

(tig)

Re:"Peace" process, definitely Good ?

[Malcontent]

There will never be peace in the middle east. Why?

1) There can only be peace between equals. Israel is much stronger then palestine. Between unequals there can only be surrender. The palestenians are unwilling to surrender.

2) God is telling the israelis that a certain plot of land belongs to them. Once God tells you this all else is moot. There can be no peace as long as god is telling you to build houses on somebody elses property.

3) Neither party wants peace. That ugly fact really is the most important one.

What strikes me most is how this whole issue is so tainted with religion. When one country invades another one eventually they make the subjugated people citizens. This is what china did in tibet, what the Americans did to the indians, what the russians did all over eastern europe.

it's been decades since Israel took over the "disputed terrotories" and yet it has made no move to make any of those peole citizens? Why not? Because Isreal is a jewsish state and introducing millions of muslims into it's population as first class citizens would break a covenant with God. It's not a racial thing, it's OK to have some muslim citizens just not a majority or even a politically significant minority.

IMO Israel should annex the lands it won fair and sqare in a war. It should then do what every other nation in history has done when they won terrotory in war and that is to make them full fledges citizens. I bet that a vast majority of palestenians would love to be first class citizens of a modern democracy.