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U.S. Army Warns Microsoft To Back Off
declan writes "My CNET News colleague Ina Fried has written an interesting article today about how the U.S. Army has told Microsoft to stop sending free CD-ROMs of Office 2003 to government employees. In what's effectively a cease and desist order, the Army said: 'Your offer of free software places our employees and soldiers in jeopardy of unknowingly committing a violation of the ethics rules and regulations to which they have taken an oath to uphold.' Whoops! Perhaps this is Microsoft's latest way to fight free software at the Pentagon. Remember that just 8 months ago, the Army paid $471 million for Microsoft licenses."
Yep... I'm in the navy and this new item hit the streets last week (I considered submitting it as a story--oh well). We had guys and civilian contractors in our building getting free copies of office. My hate for ms reached a new high--talking about caught red-handed trying to plant seeds that will secure them--argh.
Separately, as a member of the military and despiser of the pitiful quality of ms products, I've always been strongly concerned about the military's use of ms products. The military, like many parts of the government, subcontract-out most tech work and implementation. The contractors, with sealed pay rates and support plans, have no problem deploying huge ms flagships at given branch or sub branch of the military (and then forwarding all the licensing bill to uncle sam). In other words, the root concern is that senior military folks that make the money decisions, need to get the job done but don't have a technical background (ie, to them, linux, microsoft, a server, source code, hacking, and TCP/IP are all one and the same). The contractors drum up offers, the military takes one, and--wham--the US gov't is now shelling out to ms in huge numbers and there's no one who looks at and says, 'is this the best way we could be doing it?'
If you've been around the government, you know what I mean about how scary the contractors are in terms of quality and knowledge when it comes to industrial back-end technologies. I'm on shore tour now, but when I was on my sub, you'd see these people doing a software install by blindly reading out of a SPAWAR procedure. I'd ask them stuff as they went along to gain knowledge and tips, but I usually got back a sheepish "I'm not sure". Grr...
Andy
G-Force music visualization
Totally agree.. it's all just a conspiracy to get Outlook into as many computers as possible. They know that the main battle is being fought over the groupware. Whoever controls the groupware of an organization will have a big influence on the rest of the software installed.
For anyone who doesn't beleive me, just try migrating Exchange server / Outlook to anything else, and you'll realize the depth of the insidiousness of microsoft mailing out copies of Outlook. They are miring IT department with otherwise good intentions.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
Um. $500 retail is crap.
Fair is fair, use the same value they do when calculating their "$90000000000 billion lost to software piracy!" figure.
Beep beep.
If it something is sent to me for free, it is um, well, free!
Here, take this gold bar, absolutely for free, it's a gift. You pay nothing, it costs nothing! And now, about that contract of ours...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
A while back when I was an IT monkey, I seem to remember Office2000 would install Outlook even if you specified not to, in the custom install. And don't get me started on trying to uninstall internet explorer...
This is why I turned to *nux and never looked back.
For quite a while Microsoft (and probably plenty of other software companies) has been donating software to schools and taking a tax write-off for the full retail cost. Not only is the first one free but it's apparently a tax benefit for MS.
I bet a lot of schools and charities would love that software.
I bet the kiddies would love a free bag of herion or crack, too. But does that mean you should donate one?
Let's not get another generation hooked on Windows.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Oooh, I love slipperly slopes like this ...
.. the value of an 'intangible' is whatever people are willing to pay for it. In the case of Office 2003, that value is a little more than 20$ as evidenced by the millions of people who've paid more than 20$ for it.
.. it's not just the cost of the paper your bills are printed on.
Why don't you give me your car for free? You wouldn't have a problem with it, right, because you assert that by giving it to me for free, the value of the car is reduced to 0$. Magically, by giving it to me for free, you suddenly don't mind giving the car up, because it becomes worthless through the process of you giving it as a gift! Yeah, thats how it works!
PS
Whats the value of providing you with your 'intangiable' current internet service (since you don't actually receive a physical object in return for your ISP fee?) Gee, its whatever you're currently paying for it
"Old man yells at systemd"
As I pointed out when I submitted the story, Microsoft already makes copies of Office that time out after 90-days or let you register via CC during the trial period. You can get them at most Kinko's and so on, and certainly somewhere on Microsoft's website.
So if Microsoft true intention was to familiarize large customers with new features, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to send them:
a) a self-running slideshow/video showing demonstrations of the new features (a la Video Professor, autoplay and go)
b) the aformentioned 90-day trial edition so they could install and see how well it works and then turn around and requisition it if they find a reason to keep it
c) MSDN or other licensed version that has no restrictions but the EULA clearly states the copy is not legit and cannot be used for actual business (development and testing only)
Somehow I don't think that's what Microsoft is doing. What they are doing is handing out free license keys to what retails for $499+. That means whoever happend to open the colonel's mail could just slip the key in his or her pocket and take it home with them, register it on their home system and enjoy a free copy of an outragously priced package. I mean, if everyone gets a free copy for personal use, stands to reason when requisition time comes around, people will suggest Office 2003 like they have at home.
This is bribery. Just because they call it marketting doesn't make it any less unethical. Otherwise, why can't GM just hand over the keys to their new SUV so that people can become "more familiar with our new features"? A legit Microsoft license (the actual hologrammed piece of paper with the key on it) is just as tangible and valuable as any other real-world freebie.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Um. $500 retail is crap.
Even if it's $5.00, it was my duty in the Navy to say no. I worked supply for a while and I would not even permit a vendor to buy my lunch. The military persons who accept the free copies are in violation of several standing orders and could be literally get 20 years at hard labor at a nice gated community in Kansas.
-- $G
I bet a school could really save some money by getting those "free as in beer" copies of Office.
But hey, why should schools save money?
But that's just spreading the monopoly even further. I don't want my local school district to get Office for free. I want them to have to caugh up $25k out of thei extremely small budget for licenses. I want it to cost them a much as it can. Hopefully someone will eventually realize that they can do it for a whole lot cheaper with Macs or Linux boxes. Also you can bet that every single free copy of Office or Windows they give away is one they automatically count as a new user, even if the user uses the CD as a coaster. That's not fair either.
That doesn't square at all with my experience... former Air Force talking here.
Most pilots are bright folks, they just stumble when confronted with an area where they have no background or training (like anyone). If you're starting from scratch, Linux is just as intuitive as anything manufactured by microsoft.
Incidently, the Air Force has plenty of tech-saavy people, often in the form of reservists. I've had systems guys in deployed locations who were company-grade officers... but senior software engineers at major corporations, often using linux on-the-job. Many of them hated our reliance on MS products, and looked for ways to use more-functional things every chance they got. Good grief... our NT servers in Saudi Arabia had to be rebooted monthly or they'd simply cease to function (don't even get me started on service packs).
MS is not the way... it is a way, and that's all you can say. Pilots are more than swift enough to use linux if you gave them a little training.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The real goal of the program isn't gifts, it's the tried-and-true microsoft crowbar they use to get into any organization. One key 'early adopter' or in this case recipient of the software starts using the system. Then everyone who works with this person is forced to upgrade as the old versions are incompatable with the new version.
Government employees are a great target for this because it forces all the non-governmental organizations that work with the government to get licensed for the software or face not being able to exchange documents.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was watching a television show on the history of weapons used in the American Civil War. Colt Firearms did something similar. They sent beautifully engraved and inlaid Colt revolvers to many generals and public officials. They were just gifts, but it was an obvious attempt to gain influence with decision makers in the government.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
MS Office 2003 may not be selling too well, but that is no excuse to give away free copies of it to government employees to boost marketshare.
Rather it would be better to give free copies to the education market that cannot truely afford it. Our college still uses MS Office 2000, and trying to do a PowerPoint XP/2002 Slideshow on a machine with Office 2000 and a Projector loses a lot of the special effects and other things.
Also interesting to note is the media copy protection that MS Office 2003 has in it. Another reason for avoiding MS Office 2003 and sticking with an older version of MS Office or going with OpenOffice.org instead. I can see novices copy protecting their documents that they need to share with others and then someone in a different department tries to open up a shared document and it won't let them, and they need access to the info ASAP. We already see this problem partically when novices set passwords on documents and share them and don't tell anyone else what the password is.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Our armed forces have higher ethics and morals than 90% of the business executives in the world. They don't make the decision to start a war, never have and never will. Learn how to read the constitution.
The above post is from aflamebaiting troll.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I believe the his point was that since this just showed up in the mail, you have no way of knowing if it's really legit. What if someone had trojaned a copy of office and started sending it out to people saying it was from Microsoft?
Fighting Free software with free software.
(Okay, I know they are two different types of free; hence the capitalization).