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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."
And you know what, there's a reason for it. Others where I work got copies as well, and they are already pushing for us to get an Exchange server. There are many features in the new "Office System" that require server support. When you try to use a feature that requires support on the server, a message pops up about how you need to contact your systems administrator to find out how to enable this great new feature.
Sounds quite useful to me. Just like people at educational establishments getting free software from them.
I wouldn't mind getting the stuff for free! Trouble is, everything else that is legally free for me is worth the price I would pay for it, for office suites and operating systems anyway.
Microsoft: Hey, looks like you dropped a 50 dollar bill... /wink
;)
Army: Were you just trying to bribe an army official?
Microsoft: Uhh, no..that must have been mine!
lol, thanks slashdot. I needed a chuckle.
Its actually interesting to read this, I just assumed that things like these happen all the time. Its nice to see safegaurds such as this in place AND functioning.
["The department, which oversees national parks and other federal lands, concluded last month that the software constituted an unacceptable gift--one valued at more than $20 and from a party with whom the department does business or whom it regulates."]
The article goes on to mention how many govt are looking into open source
With all these legit copies of Office 2003... I wonder if the licenses are transferrable?! If they are... sell them on Ebay! I for one will be purchasing one for $10... plus $15 shippping. :P
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)... oops
If I were to mail unchecked binary files to senior officers and ask them to run them without verifying the contents for trojans, worms or viruses the Department of Homeland Insecurity would likley have me shot in their Happy Fun Camp at Guantanamo.
And unlike a certain company *I* don't have a criminal conviction, a record of giving things that could hurt national security to the Chinese (Windows source code) or a past history of underhand payments to subvert the political process!
Where is the justice in that?
Beep beep.
If it something is sent to me for free, it is um, well, free!
Nobody pays list. Sometimes it is discounted, somtimes it is bundled, sometimes you get it for free.
What is the value of an intangible? I know the media isn't worth $20.
But hey, this is Slashdot, so everyone will say here. here.
[BTW I have a legitimate copy of Office that I figure cost me FAR less than $500 - it was included in my MSDN subscription... which I also did not pay anywhere near list price for. I paid FAR more for my Qt license to develop Linux software.]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I was on the carrier USS Kennedy the other day I remember seeing virtually every computer terminal onboard running MS Windows in some form or another. I didn't see the nuclear portions of the ship, but you never know...
When I worked for the Navy as a civilian, we weren't supposed to swipe the MSDN CD's. Now it's all cool?
Why did I stop working for the Navy? Could save me a few bucks in the long end.
I'm still trying to figure out why people still use or pay for a word processor?! Seems silly to actually buy a suite for over 400 bucks USD. I love OpenOffice on the Windows side, and it runs on Windows 95 machines flawlessly.
http://www.geocities.com/baddsectorr
My dad used to work in the contracts office in the Air Force and you couldn't accept anything that could be considered a gift. (IIRC there may have been a monetary cap on what you could accept but it was really low; even legitimate things like Christmas baskets or company tchotskes were frowned upon, which kind of weirded out suppliers the first time they dealt with the military since it could come across as rude when an Airman tells you to take your fruit basket home with you). Violation of this was taken very seriously. As big and established as MS is -- not to mention the fact they've dealt with the gov't on a contractual level for over 20 years -- this is a pretty boneheaded move. They should have known better and whoever authorized this should get shit-canned.
I am a Network Admin Here in AK and I can tell you that one of the most poisonous aspects of .Mil networking is Civillians. The other is the decisions made by Command Sections who are only interested in one thing, Budgets.
It sucks being told that your decision base on good sound Tech principles is not what they want to hear because of the cost involved.
The free software giveaway came about because a lot of paperwork is created in time with no war. Therefor people have to take their work home to get finished to make deadlines. So leadership said take a copy home install it. The Mil makes you use it. you have to get the work done so you are entitled to a free copy.
Integrity is the hardest thing to keep.
Nope, the U.S. Army and many federal agencies have always had a policy like this. They won't even let you buy them lunch if you're a contractor etc. I think the value limit of anything they can accept is something like $10.
Wonder what would happen if we all sent OpenOffice.org CD-ROMS to not only the Army, but to other government agencies? Seems like a fantastic marketing idea to me, and I dont think (?) that employees would be breaking ethics rules, since it is free software.
bash: rtfm: command not found
So how do you think the market will react if we are spoilt with choice between Microsoft product and Linux products, all free of charge?
Most of us here would choose Linux any day not because of the price, but the freedom and security. But how would the mass consumers think of it?
With MS's cash reserve, they could very soon use such tactics, like they have a cheaper version of Windows for pirate-infested countries.
I work for Fortune 100 company and we got the same deal but have to pay shipping cost.
from the e-mail
"Welcome to the Microsoft Home Use Program. Through an arrangement between Microsoft and your employer, you are eligible to order a licensed copy of select Microsoft Office desktop programs you use at work to install and use on a home computer.
Welcome to the Microsoft Home Use Program. Through an arrangement between Microsoft and your employer, you are eligible to order a licensed copy of select Microsoft Office desktop programs you use at work to install and use on a home computer.
Please click on the link below to order Microsoft(R) products for home use.
https://hup.microsoft.com
Be sure to place your order for Home Use Program software within 30 days of receipt of this email and before your employer's arrangement with Microsoft terminates, whichever is sooner."
By coming to Slashdot and reading and believing in these stupid stories you are already telling us that you are ready to increase your hate without any cause.
Did you you *read* the story post or my post?? This is *real* -- what the hell are talking about... "made up story"??
If you know better than thousands of the contractors then why don't you build a business and show us how you can do it better,
If you follow that pesky URL in my tagline, you'll feel pretty dumb.
Andy
G-Force music visualization
Funny you should mention SPAWAR.... :)
I work at a SPAWAR Systems Center and it was my understanding that the Navy bought a 'Select' license from Microsoft. So we have been passing around Windows 2000/Office/Visual Studio CDs and just calling up Microsoft licensing to get keys.
So Im not sure why its a big deal if MS is sending free CDs to the army, I imagine that they have a similar licensing arrangement as we (navy) do.
As for contractors, my experience has been that they might use windows platforms, but they roll out their own proprietary solutions (like web services, etc.) to lock the navy into hiring them for maintenance contracts. Things that MS has a solution for (dot net for example) may do the job but contractors won't touch it, they offer their own homegrown solutions. Not to say that dot net is great (it isnt) but I think contractors are even worse than Microsoft.
Unfortunately their is a huge bias towards outsourcing everything to contractors and not trust government workers (I'm a civilian federal employee) to do the job. Most of the money that goes through the center just goes out to the contractors, which I think is a huge mistake. The contractors keep all the technology closed, don't tell us anything useful on how to modify their systems, and expect just fat checks.
Eh, just have them use Macs. Surely they won't have a hard time dragging files to the CD icon that automatically appears on insertion of a blank CD-R and pressing the obvious "burn" button?
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
So software, claiming to be from Microsoft with a free license, is arriving at Army posts.
No doubt it's intended to be installed by army personnel and used as an office suite while processing internal messages, right?
If anybody on the command staff is thinking clearly, anybody who actually INSTALLS such an abomination has a LOT more to worry about than an Ethics violation.
Just think: If you were in the Army would YOU use free-in-the-mail software to process sensitive military information?
This is no joke. Battles have been lost because the size and location of the forces were betrayed by such things as an intercepted order for toilet paper.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At the time the VPs insisted on bringing in hired guns to sanity check what I was doing. Heck, I didn't mind. Besides, all they knew was Cisco and exchange. I pretty much had to write their report on how linux operates as an email server, a firewall, and a web server. (Not that organizations hadn't been using Linux for years at that point.) Heck, I even ended up doing most of the legwork for the audits.
Needless to say, after that experience I have found that contractors are at best a sounding board. You sure as hell better have an idea of what you want before you call them.
Unfortunately most people don't have a clue.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
We have pilots who are in charge of a 320 million dollar airframe but can't figure out Outlook.
Maybe this just means Outlook is a shitty choice for an email client? I'm sure officers used a nice textmode client for their electronic communications in the days before desktop PCs and GUIs. Why wouldn't something like pine be just as appropriate now?
Since Microsoft introduced software activation, it has bin harder for non technical persons to pirate windows
Could it be that Microsoft have discovered that the pirating done by home users did a good job in promoting their software as these users never would buy a full price copy anyway. But if they use it at home they would still be able to recommend it to friends and employers and help MS to help the MS-Office document file formats to being regarded as a defacto standard..
If they get MS-Office for free, Microsoft may think that these home users are less likely to use OpenOffice.org at home, only to discover that it is very compativle withe the MS-Office suite and largely offers the same value as their expensive package. And then they are less likely to show their boss, or install it at work perhpas preventing Microsft from selling other products such as Exchange and database servers.
Giving free software to employees companies and government agencies that have large Microsoft contracts is probably just the beginning.
In fact I would notbe surprised Microsoft to bundle CDs with Windows and Office with every computer magazine you buy. The sofware will be licenced for private use only.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
At least they were when I worked for a major defense contractor in the '80s. Their rule was $0.00 - absolutely no gifts whatsoever. Not even a Big Mac for lunch or a coffee mug from a vendor/subcontractor's rep or a US Government agent or member of the military (our customer).
Violations were a firing offense. My employer took ethics quite seriously, at least after some engineers and managers were caught taking bribes & gifts from vendors in the mid '80s. They were promptly fired and blackballed from the industry. Their clearances were permanently revoked so it was legal.
Microsoft should properly be stripped of all government contracts for this violation. Too bad it won't happen. Bill Gates is Bill Gates.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Similar rules are for dealing with NY State. In some ways it is a good thing because it prevents the agency from going with the contractor that offers them the most gifts and not nessarly the best price or quality. But sometimes it can make things difficult as well for smaller companies who want to thank the state for there business. Heck we can't legally give them a pen with the company logo on it. Or a box of Doughnuts. But normally if it under $10 it can usually slip threw the cracks. But it makes it hard to bring a rep from the state to a company paid lunch at a nice place, to discuss business in a more casual setting. But it is also helpful knowing that a big corporation cannot do the same at a nicer place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Erich, you've got a great idea. I have the Gnuwin CD that I've been giving to others. iirc, it has a slightly older copy of OpenOffice on it.
I'll check the link you provided if there is an updated version of OOo so that I can start handing those out as well.
Don't wonder. Start posting your suggestion on the OpenOffice site if they have a slashdot style feedback page, or email them. I'll post it on Newsforge, others should post elsewhere.
Maybe one of the commercial distro companies will decide to pick up the effort, though they may discount the idea of providing a tool that works on Windows. If they have enough brains they'll realize that it's to their advantage to move them to OOo because they aren't all jumping on Linux anyway. The more they move to OOo, the easier the switch will be later.
Start cross-posting your idea. Hit the companies if you have time. Strike while the iron's hot.
I have to give the Joes credit, they generally kicked in some reasonable amount - a few bucks each - evne though the company feed the rest of us too, and it would have been impossible for any accountant to tell if the Joes paid "enough".
If this seems like jumping thru hoops, you have no idea how seriously the military takes its rules.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
how come it is so expensive in the stores? Can they afford to give it away? If so, can they afford to lower their price in stores? Hmmmm.
Sig it.
Dear Mindless Slashbot Troll,
Just because something is closed does not mean it is inferior.
Also, to include the token open source reference, recently the Navy purchased several Xserves with Yellow Dog Linux for their submarines.
Finally, Apple embraces the open source community a heck of a lot more than Microsoft does. They don't use a monopolistic position to try to force software down the user's throats. Their licensing schemes are infinitely less rigid than Microsoft's. Need I go on?
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Yep, and EDS has royally screwed up that contract, too. Late deployments, deployments costing much more than forecast (but I think EDS has to eat up the difference), reduced productivity.
It has also killed a lot of small businesses that used to supply technology and office materials to Navy bases. For office supply and technology purchases, there are strong incentives to buy locally, even if it costs more (which sounds bad, but has a VERY good reason). With EDS doing it all, (some) local economies around these bases have been tanking.
Inconceivable!
if they are giving office away for free, I dont feel so bad for downloading it from mldonkey.
spend money here
It just depends on why they send it really and what the soldiers do with it.
You're a soldier in the army. When you get done and are ready to pursue a career or maybe even become an entrepreneur, what software are you going to be using? Microsoft Office, right? And why is that? Because Microsoft has been so lenient to allow you to use their software as much as you can for a fair price.
On the other hand though, there could be a money issue involved... as Microsoft could just be waiting for someone to mess up and make some sort of copyright infringement. Highly unlikely I know, but possible. Also, it's just another way for them to make the company a larger monopoly than it already is.
For soldiers that use other products though, more power to you! Open-Office, j00!
New SlashDot poll: The US Army vs. Microsoft
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
He mentioned this in a newspaper interview. Doesn't have to be an Office CD at all. You get yourself on the premises at a company, ask to use the restroom, and "accidentally" drop a CD-R on the floor with a handwritten label like "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL - SALARY DATA". The CD-R would have a Trojan installed by Autorun.
I wonder if he realizes how many businesses have locked down their desktops with Group Policy settings.
You need to learn how to read your own writing:
"A personal benefit"
- An employee of the US Army now has a full version of Office 2003 to keep/take home/install on their laptop, home PC, child's PC...that's a personal benefit
"Offered to an employee"
- These free versions (prefaced with postcard) were sent directly to employees within the Department of Defense, not from some employee discount program or sold in the cafeteria...that's offered to an employee
"with expectation that a favor will be granted in return"
- And why the bloody hell do you think Microsoft does anything? Humanitarian aid? Support our troops? No. Obviously if you send thousands of free copies of Office to an entity, odds are that you are bound to put one in front of people who are in charge of software purchasing. Thus they are now more likely to plunk down someone else's (taxpayer) money for Office than perform due diligence and find more cost efficient options...that's expecting a favor.
"They are offering a useable version" just like GM could offer a useable version of its SUV instead of a pamphlet and a test drive at a dealership. All Microsoft eval version are fully function with time limits (even XP retail is technically eval for 30 days if it's not activated). There is no reason to give full versions other than one has long term value as a personal possession and the other has only short term value as evaluation material which is supposedly the purpose of this software.
GM would hand out keys to SUVs in a heartbeat to anyone who worked in Army aquisitions. "Gee, we need some vehicles for MP's to tool around the base, do we get 1 Humvee for $256000 or 5 Yukons for the same price?" What stops them is that people can more clearly see the connection between giving away free cars to decision makers. While the cost difference between a $50000 truck and a $500 software package may seem big, I'd be willing to bet that the Army buys a LOT more software than civilian vehicles (after all, every employee "needs" Outlook for e-mail, but few needs official transportation) so who is to say the profits are stake aren't just as high?
The Air Force is currently getting a congressional spanking because the person in charge of deciding who would get to fill an air tanker contract (Boeing) ended up being hired for a cushy VP position at the same company (Boeing). Hrrrrm. I guarantee that Congress is looking into this as a bribe and not merely an "unethical" mistake.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You haven't met some of these folks yet. Obvious is not sufficient. For some of them, I am slightly surprised they get infected with viruses because they would have to realize they had to click on the attachment to activate it. Typically though, they learned to click on the attachment because somewhat sent them some pornography and told them how to view it.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
So Microsoft sends freebees to Government Employees? I used to work in hospitals. The drug companies used to come by all the time. Everyone got gifts. We got playing cards, pens, calculators, toys, etc. Guess who paid? Who else? The public,of course. The same poor slobs who have to pay Microsoft. That's why people have to go to Canada to get pills.
MS is the best way to do it....
We have pilots who are in charge of a 320 million dollar airframe but can't figure out Outlook. We just got E-Pubs and with it pages of documentation on how to burn a CD using WinXP.
I'm sorry, I'm confused. You say that MS is best, but then you cite how difficult it is for your users to get anything done with two apps, which are both made by MS. You don't relate any experiences with non-MS apps to compare.
It sounds like your documentation and training suck, not so much your software. Even so, in my personal experience Outlook is a lot harder to use than many other mail clients, and burning CDs is really not that hard (for me, or the high-school dropouts I used to supervise at Kinko's). But your anecdote fails to support your initial proposition completely.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
> 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 wonder whether we could come up with a model for OSS development based on that scam^w scheme.
Donate your code, give yourself a tax writeoff, kind of thing.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Maybe this is how MS is arriving at the billions it claims it looses from pirates. They forget to write off the free copies that they tried to give to the military.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
" It takes less time to get a random high-asvab grunt up to speed on a windows NT based system than on a linux system.
Do you have an evidence to back up that claim? Any studies? Documents? Or are you just making up crap as you go?"
If you need a study to see my point here, you are an idiot. Many, MANY more servicemen will have experience with Windows at home, school, or work than will have experience with Linux. You could sit them in front of an NT server, hand them a quick reference card or even just the help files provided with windows and they can be functional. The extra downtime with reboots and blue screens(which are incredibly rare with 2k and XP) can be more than made up for by leveraging soldiers prior computer experience.
" "Sir, the guy we pulled in after the 6 shop got bombed is saying 'what the fuck is this %> stuff all about?'"
I guess there is no such think as a GUI under Linux? I take it you cannot write GUI apps for Linux? All taks need to be done from a terminal? You are very "Insightful" aren't you?"
Not all tasks need to be done from the terminal. But there are enough that do that someone who has only used Windows will have trouble. Linux GUIs are simply not even close to those in Windows for administering the entire system. Even with Mandrake I can't avoid the command line completely even if I wanted to. And even when I can, its not nearly as intuitive as Windows.
Remember, this is a world where you can't do the corporate thing and send someone away for training or hire a new admin. There isn't time for that when the lead is flying. This is a world where you may have to replace your team of trained administrators because they just got killed, and you need them replaced immediately or more people will die. You need to be able to leverage peoples prior experience to pull it off, and that experience will almost certainly be in Windows products.
OH that's a laugh. An anonymous coward calling someone a troll.
.4 or something? There will be bugs! Despite that, it is, in my opinion, still better than outlook.
Let me tell you my experience: MS office is fine for the most part. Outlook, however, is utter junk. The junk mail controls are unwieldy and barely work. The security issues are huge (although I don't know about the latest version--I haven't touched it yet), as are stability issues.
Now, comparing it to Thunderbird is not the correct way to go. I like thunderbird, but its what? version
It's easier to setup multiple inboxes, filters, the junk mail controls are painless to setup and they WORK! It's an amazing product for a beta/alpha product, but it's still a beta/alpha.
Now, as for openoffice, yes it lacks polish in some areas, but here's what it has: XML? yes. PDF? yes. Math formatting? yes. Other nifty features? oh yeah. All the features of MS office? No way.
The question is, which feature set do you need. I personally rarely use any of the advanced features of MS office, and I would guess that most secretaries don't either. There are a few people that need them. Fine, but most of us don't.
Let me also state that all those feature's are fine, IF you want to run windows. Personally, i prefer linux (for a variety of reasons), and therefore can't run MS office all the time. That being the case, I would rather just use one office suite, not 2.
As far as "networking that works" on linux, this is where I have to laugh the hardest. I remember trying to get multiple computers to either daisy chain OR go through a hub to connect to the net on windows xp/2000/98. No way. It failed miserably every time. Even my friends who support windows professionally say that's what you should expect. Just keep trying until it works (ack!).
Mandrake, on the other hand, set it up perfectly the first time, and I was on the net with both computers in just moments, even the time I was using dialup. It was flawless, and the user interface was about the same in terms of usability.
I don't have wireless, so I can't comment on that particularly scenario, but if you have a wifi card that's supported, it should be fairly easy under linux.
I guess i'm just saying that there are good reasons to go with linux, if that's what you need. Most of us don't need MS, we just think we do. Currently, the ONLY reason I have windows is due to some sorry little app that my wife needs that WILL NOT run under wine. Grrrr.
I'm sorry, most of us don't need all the "features" of MS Office, but if you do, fine, use it.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
The .doc file format and .xls file format (the two most popular) did not change from Office 97 to Office XP (2002).
I call bullshit! My personal experience directly contradicts this. I work at a small company that standardized on MS Office 97. We eventually were forced to upgrade to Office 2000 because we simply could not always read newer Word docs that were being sent to us by customers.
All of our product manuals were written in Word 97. After the upgrade to Word 2000, we found that every manual had to be reformatted in some way; sometimes small changes in the header and footer margins, sometimes major rework that required reformatting almost every page. And our manuals do not do anything that fancy, it is all simple text formatting. It was enough hell that we will not be moving to Office XP.
This is happening in State government also. In the State of Texas, no state employee can accept a gift over $50. Some agencies have even more strict rules. Microsoft recently send copies of Office to everyone in my agency. Our lawyer roamed the halls picking up copies and returning them.
Or maybe they could borrow it, copy the files, and return the media?
I haven't used it for a while, since I started using Linux exclusively for email and browsing, but it certainly worked well last time I tried it. It gave me great pleasure to do something easily that those M$ employees who committed perjury in the monopoly trial said could not be done, and the system was faster and more stable afterwards. The illegally commingled code makes the whole OS a mess, a tidy piece of code would never be structured like that, with assorted functions spread here, there and everywhere for no other reason than to make removal diffciult.
Yeah, I may have graduated at the bottom of my T-38 class, but at least I graduated. Scary to think that I'm the one who'll be instructing the new guys in the Tweet, hehe, but I am a good pilot, just not the cream of the crop... I thought I was a great pilot until I met some guys who outclassed me in the most humbling way, and I'm very proud to serve with them and see them go on to the 15's and 16's. Every one of my classmates was definitely tech-savvy, not necessarily computer-software-tech-savvy, but certainly science, technology and math nerds. Most had only heard of Linux, and were typical Windows users until I showed them first-hand what Linux is all about and what it can do. Pilots in general are control freaks. Every one of my classmates I exposed to Linux has fallen in love with it and has awakened to just how crap Windows really is and how much power and control Linux gives you.