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NHS Awards Contract to Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the resistance-is-futile dept.

ChocLinux writes "Microsoft has won a £500m nine year contract to supply software to the NHS, a week after the OGC (the government procurement body) released a report describing Linux as a viable desktop alternative for the majority of government users."

6 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Candy by fembots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think "Microsoft has also agreed to carry out £40m of research and development to provide guidelines and toolkits that will allow ISVs to deliver an NHS-specific user interface" is the candy here.

    MS probably knows it can still compete in customised applications with its almost unlimited resources.

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    1. Re:Candy by ajs318 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One of the things I first started noticing with the strange KDE/Gnome hybrid I ran on my first "proper" Linux box {this was in the KDE2 days, i.e. before KDE was actually any use by itself}, was the way that the button to get rid of a requester, especially one bringing bad news, was usually labelled "dismiss".

      I actually think it's quite sensible. After all, once I've read the message and maybe written it down on a convenient piece of scrap paper, there's not much else I can do apart from get rid of the requester. If I was wearing a tinfoil hat and looking out for black helicopters, though, I'd say labelling the button as "OK" was a way of getting users tacitly to approve of error messages such as "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" and accept them as a fact of life.

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    2. Re:Candy by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I've noticed Firefox implements a prime example of why OK and Cancel are bad ideas.

      "A script on this page is causing mozilla to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script? [Cancel] [OK]"

      If you read these as actions, then CANCEL will cancel the script, and OK will say no, the situation is OK. If you read these as direct, literal responses, to the question, then CANCEL means cancel the script, and OK means... erm, OK, abort the script.

      If you're a software developer for the Mozilla team, however, you read it as "OK means yes, CANCEL means no, that is the natural order of things."

      Better wording would have changed the question to "Do you want to continue running the script?", and better still would have been to change the buttons to "Continue" and "Abort script" (as per your suggestion that "Format" should be the button on a disk formatting dialog)

      I should submit a bug about this.

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  2. Here's how MS does it... by vik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A few years ago, pirating MS software in the government sector was relatively commonplace. Along comes Microsoft and says: "Either you commit to our systems, or we force and audit and retrospectively sue your arse off for breach of copyright."

    Lo and behold, government departments find themselves locked into expensive Microsoft "deals" thereafter, even though FOSS would be more beneficial to them.

    Paranoid delusions? Well, it's not a decision based on the quality of the code, or the support, and it's not the TCO.

    Vik :v)

  3. Re:Costs by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People are used to Windows because it's popular. Why do they want Windows? Because they are used to it.

    You're forgetting one more point - all the software they use runs on Windows. Sure, most of it may well have an equivalent alternative for Linux, but in my case that's certainly not all.

    Sure, that's not true of the average office worker, who really only needs email, web access, a word processor and maybe a spreadsheet, but that's the thing about averages; they don't apply to everyone...

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  4. Re:Costs by ykardia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Linux on the desktop will happen, but it will start with call centres, budget airlines, etc, i. e. in situations where the set of software that people are using is small and standardised and there is a lot of pressure to reduce costs, where people need small amounts of training on the software, and where staff turnover is high (you are loosing the knowledge that people have of existing software anyway when they leave).

    Once it starts getting used extensively in these kind of environments, it might gain sufficient critical mass to overcome the "we use Windows because it is popular" trap.