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!

[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.