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Nigerian Government Nixes Microsoft's Mandriva Block

Posted by Zonk on from the money-well-spent dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After trying to bribe a local supplier with a $400,000 marketing contract, Microsoft has still apparently lost out in trying to woo Nigeria's government to use Windows over Linux. Microsoft threw the money at the supplier after it chose Mandriva Linux for 17,000 laptops for school children across Nigeria. The supplier took the bait and agreed to wipe Mandriva off the machines, but now Nigeria's government has stepped in to stop the dirty deal."

4 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. The Nigerian official was furious. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Because he did not get his proper cut. Let us not hang our hats on the Govt of Nigeria or Azerbaijan. The real battle is for the mind share of corporate America. That is the fountainhead of all the money MSFT is using to subvert ISO or bribe vendors in third world countries.

    Just an hour back there was this story about MSFT including some game vendor's malformed copy protection driver for six year into every damn computer in the world. What percentage of them played that software? Why a corporate server that might end up in a blade rack without even have a dedicated monitor or mouse got this driver? Why are the corporations not demanding full disclosure of what dlls are needed and what are not? Why isn't there a third party service that will advice corporations which components of Windows could be safely removed by looking at the company policies and use patterns?

    As long as the customers accept everything dished out by MSFT patiently, there is nothing we can do to make it change. Education of the customers is the most important thing if we are going to rescue computing from this monoculture.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  2. Not illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After public statements from Mandriva officials implied the marketing deal is legally questionable, Microsoft said last week that it complies with international law and the law of the countries in which it operates.
    Except for the US and the EU, of course, where it is a convicted monopolist.

    In fact, the statement "Microsoft complies with law" is demonstrably false. The courts have spoken.
  3. Re:I thought corruption was only a 3rd world probl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I must admit that I thought corruption was a problem of the 3rd world alone. But now, we see that a [major] US corporation was perpetuating corruption.

    Finally got tired of living under a rock, huh?

  4. Re:Wow, just wow! by nwanua · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing is, in rich countries like the US (especially the US), bribes are essentially standard, except they're called tips, golfing trips, expensive dinners, payola, campaign contributions, plane tickets to Hawaii. It's hard to get anything done in some countries (US included) without at least small "incentives". What generally makes news is when the bribes are discovered by the western press, resulting in scandals and "tighter legislation". That doesn't change the fact that almost every business that works there is going to get dragged into that "incentive" system in one way or another if they wish to operate. Try building _any_ structure on the East coast of the US.

    The really big surprise isn't the "incentives". It's that the American government intervened to *stop* the "incentives". Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...

    there... just adding some perspective...