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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?"
A blip? I dunno, seems when the Roman Empire began to crumble it started somewhere, in some little way. Don't discount Corel too quickly and don't underestimate the power of saving a few dollars by a goverment sorely in need of cost cutting. If these tools work well, the next round may embrace FBI and DEA. you have the right to alternative sources of software
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's probably the lawyers' fault. For some reason a lot of them prefer Word Perfect.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Even though I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan, I find something slightly disturbing about my government sending my tax dollars out of country with a software contract award. Why not Open Office?
As a former corel employee !2001 they had posters all over HQ talking about how the DOJ and Microsofts Own lawyers in the antitrust thing used WPO, as WP docs are pretty much the standard de jure ;)
"Be glad you sailed for a better day, But dont forget there will be hell to pay" - Dave King/Flogging Molly
While I wouldn't discount Open Office, $2 million to outfit such a large bureaucracy as the DoJ sounds like chicken feed. Heck, I've been places where we spent more than $2 million dollars, per year, for only about 1,000 people. (Intial outlay is high, then upgrades and service keep you bleeding.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Until recently (the last 3 or so years), the legal profession had widely used only WordPerfect, making it a standard within the community. Even now, there's a significantly larger percentage of legal professionals who use WordPerfect than there is in other professions / industries.
If one department of the federal government were to drop Word for WordPerfect, it would be the Justice Department.
Wow, so the DOJ chooses to buy one over the other. What's the big deal here? If Corel fit their requirements, why would anybody else care so much?
This story has nothing to do with "rights". Your rights and mine are not affected by this story.
Nothing to see here. Please move on.
Perhaps this hasn't occurred to you guys, but maybe -- just maybe -- WordPerfect was a better solution for the DoJ than OOo was.
Do you know what their requirements are? Were you in the board room when this deal was being discussed?
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
How about no-one buys anything for any amount and just uses Open Office.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
I have to agree with the parent. I would love to see the gov move to OOo, and open source in general. However, even casual users of OOo repot major show-stopper bugs (espectially wrt interoperability with legacy MS Office docs). Commercial office suites like Corel's and Microsoft's are simply more stable at this point.
Perhaps when OOo 2.0 becomes stable there can be an argument for moving to open source desktop applications, but until then, I can't blame the gov't for trying to stick to the tried and true.
the standard in legal documents for many years.
I've worked in legal forums on a few occasions (remember Marylin Hall Patel of the Napster ruling?), and the judges/lawyers I've met are insistent on all documents being created/filed in WordPerfect.
No, someone in purchasing just happened to find something cheaper that could get the job done.
Move along, nothing to see here. (as usual)
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
but not the Drug Enforcement Administration, which use Microsoft's Office business software exclusively
Hmmm... I wonder what they're smoking...
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Compared to some of the contracts I've seen awarded lately, this barely even counts as overseas. Besides, we could use more trade with Canada.
:D
As a matter of fact, in light of the fact that you can walk from the US to Canada, one might even say that it DOESN'T count as overseas at all!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
$13.2 million? that's like a penny to Microsoft.
"What's a quarter?"
-Bill Gates on Family Guy
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?c ourt=7th&navby=case&no=991754A
You have not been keeping up with the news. Microsoft sold all their Corel shares a few years ago (which, by the way, were a special non-voting kind so they had no say in how Corel ran their business). Now Corel is 100% private, owned by San Francisco venture capitalists Vector Capital.
Nope, MS sold their shares a few years ago. Corel is private now, owned by Vector Capital of san francisco.
Note MS's Corel shares were a special non-voting kind, which means they had no say in Corel's decision to exit the linux business.
No sanity there...
As mentioned earlier, lawyers tend to prefer WordPerfect for a number of reasons. The Justice Department has a lot of those. :)
OpenOffice may actually have proven to be totally unsuitable for the lawyers in the Justice Department, just as MS Office has proven to be wholly unsuitable.
In addition to historic precedent, Corel has been solidifying their niche market by catering towards lawyers. I think they are the only word processor developer that has actually marketed a version specifically catered towards lawyers, and I believe their general overall development is heavily influenced by the needs of one particular market which Corel is well-established in and wants to stay well-established in.
Unlike MS, Corel is maintaining a stranglehold on that particular market not by underhanded tactics, but by releasing a product that is clearly superior for that particular niche.
I would not be surprised if in addition to the fact that OO has only recently become viable in general, OO may be wholly unsuitable for lawyers just as MS Office still is.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This is news??
DOJ has been using Corel Wordperfect Office exclusively for a decade, and good ol' dos wordperfect 5.1 since there was a wordperfect. I personally have loaded 1980's era wordperfect documents off the network to cut'n'paste into a brief.
Nothing new here.
I hear from users that WP is better to use, but personally I could care less. Office is just plain less trouble to support, and most things Lusers want to do is stupid anyway. Psst... you are on the clock to work, not to play.
Sweet jumping Jesus! I would hate to have you as my System Administrator. As you said -- the USERS like WP better. Not because they can play, but because they LIKE IT BETTER. Just because you don't like the way the software is supported shouldn't be the final reason for not picking the software. The money saved by having the USERS more productive would be more than enough to pay for the support contract.
I should point out that Microsoft has support contracts for Office too. A lot of the time the free information you can find in the MSDN or online somewhere won't solve your problem. If you need to pay in the end anyways, why not use the software the USERS prefer?
Holy shit, where do you work? I'll gladly take your job and save that company time, money, and probably idiotic commentary from you.
That's not true: Federal Courts I know of require PDF.
My wife works for a Federal Appeals court; they use WordPerfect internally but require PDF filings.
Some clients are law firms; all their court filings are in PDF.
Obvious, but ... So $ is saved by installing OSS and thus avoiding licenses. Then, the next year the budget is cut that amount. But again, with no licenses to pay, the cut $ isn't missed.
The only obvious downside is if the office wants to backpedal and repurchase licenses for non-OSS. Seems in such an outcome, the higher ups / accounting types would approve the reincrease of the budget as it is better to have a working department than one that can't due to inappropriate software. But if money can be saved, it seems worth the try.
Seems to me it is likely a rut mentality. Funny, I was listening to a radio program today. NPR maybe. A guy bought a farm, in NY I think, in an area where farmers have been having time staying solvent. He planted lots of crops and let chickens roam them eating the bugs, thus saving on the pesticide bills. The local farmers all watched this closely and saw his success. After the year, he gave (yes gave) the farm back to the original owner. His complaint was that none of the farmers implemented his program. He argued it was because while you can show a person a better way, you can't force their mind open.
...by bidding OpenOffice at USD$25 a seat.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing