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Mandriva's Open Letter To Steve Ballmer
An anonymous reader writes "An entry on the Mandriva Blog, written by Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon, says that the Nigerian government, after ordering thousands of Classmate PCs with Mandriva Linux installed, has suddenly decided that they will instead install Windows. They will pay for the pre-loaded Mandriva Linux on the low-cost computing devices intended for children in the developing world, but immmediately replace the OS. The blog doesn't quite use the 'B' word but does suggest that this was not a decision that the Nigerian government made on its own."
First, you have no evidence of bribery. Just insinuation and highly unprofessional whining from a "CEO" who any board of a non mickey-mouse company would fire for making such a post. Second - your analogy is bullshit. Bob's Concrete Construction does not pay "the government" to "get the contract." Rather, the construction company might pay somebody with particular power and insufficient oversight to get awarded a contract that it wouldn't otherwise on its own merits. You can't bribe 'the government' to win a government contract, obviously. Every act of selling something has costs. There are costs to advertise. There are costs to meet with clients. there are costs to point out the relative strength of your product compared to competitors. There may even be things like 'loss leaders.' We don't think of any of these items, generally speaking, as particularly unethical when done in reasonable amounts, and certainly we don't call any of them 'bribery.' When actual cash-in-a-paper-bag bribery does occur - we naturally blame the organization whose lack of accountability allowed it to occur first and foremost. If a minister in nigeria would accept cash-in-a-bag he's acting against the best interests of the citizens he is entrusted to represent, while the cash-bag-giver is arguably doing exactly what is in their shareholders interests - securing more sales. but what if there was no cash in a bag, but simply a meeting at a fancy hotel in london where microsoft hashed out the relative merits of its product and offered a competitive price.. is this "bribery?" If so, then nearly every business traveller in the world is guilty of it on one end or another. More to the point - you dont know what happened or to what degree. Your words indicate a fairly naive understanding of what bribery is and where the responsibilities lie. Until then, perhaps idly spreading rumors isnt such a good idea.. oh wait.. tihs is slashdot.
Millions? Millions? Um... Ok.
Uh..., apparently he knows more details of the deal than you do. Perhaps because he actually RTFA. It was certainly not a "more competative (sic) bid" that prompted the Nigerian government to buy the PC's with Mandriva installed and then pay more money to purchase Windows, and then pay still more money to replace the Mandriva install with Windows.
Nigeria and Microsoft. Please...
Occam's Razor says this deal has bribe written all over it until proven otherwise.
From bribing standards board of sweden, to bribing nigerian government. microsoft is losing its edge it seems.
Read radical news here
It takes a huge amount of bravery to stand up to the puling hordes of the Stallmanistas. The Nigerian government simply because convinced that having their citizens growing up and only knowing a third-rate operating system would effectively cripple them in the world marketplace.
Why eat mad-cow brains when you can have steak? It just doesn't make sense, and Nigeria realized that.
Another great thing about the deal: if Nigerians are employed to install Windows on those machines, it will give them valuable experience of Windows, from beginning to end. That is a worthwhile job skill, unlike knowing how to install one of the billions of different flavors of Teh Lunix.