U.S. Justice Dept. Chooses Corel over Microsoft

peg0cjs writes "The Justice Department, which challenged Microsoft Corp. in courtrooms for nearly a decade over antitrust violations, will pay more than $2 million each year to buy business software from Corel Corp, according to this article from CANOE. 'The Justice Department will make WordPerfect software available to more than 20 organizations inside the agency, but not the FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration, which use Microsoft's Office business software exclusively, said Mary Aileen O'Donovan, a program manager in the Justice Management Division.' According to the article, the deal is worth up to $13.2 million over five years for Ontario-based Corel. Has sanity finally set in, or is this just a blip in Microsoft's dominance in controlling government software decisions?"

Comments

The reason they didn't choose Opera

[WillAffleckUW]

is that most of the Homeland Insecurity guys like Country music instead.

FBI

[tarquin_fim_bim]

You'd have thought that this organisation would have demanded the most advanced and reliable technology available. Mr. Clippy: Are you falsifying a confession?

The real reason for lack of interagency coop

[Red Moose]

So....with the FBI *not* having Corel and say, the CIA *does* have it, is this a reason why interagency cooperation is difficult? E.g., Some agent gets info of a terrorist plot and his comp crashes and all he has is the stupid fucking happy-dog in Office to help him? Does the FBI send stupid Outlook HTML emails to the CIA saying look this crazy fucker is going to Guatemala to buy suitcase bombs so stop him, but the CIA get it and can't read crappy illegible Outlook mail, so they send it to the NSA who with their l33t sk1llz transfer it to .txt but they can't get the information out because it's deep inside loads supid meta bullshit from Outlook.

How about no-one buys anything for any amount and just uses Open Office.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Corel were a woman, I wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick.

Me neither. Dicks can be traced, even with the serial number filed off. Much better to fuck her with a wooden dick you've carved yourself, or a wiffleball bat.

good drugs

[kirkb]

but not the Drug Enforcement Administration, which use Microsoft's Office business software exclusively

Hmmm... I wonder what they're smoking...

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[lukewarmfusion]

Superuser tip: If you're using Microsoft Office, hit Alt-F4 to improve interface.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[ackthpt]

Regarding why no OpenOffice - well, I guess the OpenOffice lobbiests just didn't know as nice restaraunts to take the decision makers.

"What do you got against Taco Bell?"

Re:No Noose

[matt-larose]

umm no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_jure

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[rikkards]

Nice to hear but not really surprising. Law firms have always been the staunch bastions of hope for alternatives to MS Office due to the control that you get with Wordperfect.

Why wouldn't the DOJ want to do it as well.

Funny story, I did some IT work for these guys http://www.mbm.com/ who are an IP law firm in Canada and they were the worst for pirating software. I think they had licenses for some COTS workstations that one of the previous IT admins had purchased but they had gone with beige boxes and had installed the same licensed copy (not MS Select) on the remainder of their workstations (about 60 or 70). They had also an Access based application (PAATSY or something like that) which had been licensed for a bunch of users but everyone in the company used it. To allow more people to use it they copied the database several times and if a user needed read access they would open a copy instead.

I don't think they had bought enough CALS for their Exchange box either and had only 1 licensed copy of Wordperfect.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[tepples]

Which is annoying, as MS Word .doc is the standard format.

ISO what? IEEE what? ECMA what? You keep using the term "standard", but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[bsharitt]

I keep trying that, but Office crashes every time I do. Do I have to enable superuser mode first?

Sounds like someone could get rich...

[leonbrooks]

...by bidding OpenOffice at USD$25 a seat.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[henrygb]

When you are flying in your NASA rocket, remember that each part was purchased by competitive tender and the cheapest bid won.

MS wanted $150, Corel wanted $40(US) per copy

[Anonymous Coward]

and OpenOffice costs what?

de facto

[CarrionBird]

.doc is the de facto standard. And you are an pedantic troll. It's very simple.