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Nigerian Government Nixes Microsoft's Mandriva Block
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."
You know you're corrupt when the government of Nigeria steps in to block your shady deal.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That Microsoft didn't even try to push their new OS.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
My name is Stephen Ballmer I am the Chair Executive of William Gates of Redmond in the United State of America. I am contacting you with regard to transfer of a huge sum of laptops from the OLPC project. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that everything has been taken care off, and all will be well at the end of the day. I decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction.
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
Seriously, you have a very good point. That is the way business is done in some third world countries. They don't consider it wrong. Anyone with power expects to be paid, much like waitresses expect to be tipped here.
Microsoft apparently failed to pay all of the right people.
Yes, this is a P.R. disaster in the making, in more ways than one.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
In fact, the statement "Microsoft complies with law" is demonstrably false. The courts have spoken.
I for one am very happy to see this stopped! I grew up in a "third world" county (Belize), when my siblings and I joined our parents in the US, I recall one of the first things they did was get us a computer (CoCo 2). I wouldn't be where I am today if they had not (good job and my own little project http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html/ ). While I did do some growing up on Windows, it has been almost 9 years since I switched to using Linux exclusively at home. As someone that grew up in a developing nation, I firmly believe there is no better option for it that FLOSS.
Education and technology can level the playing field. Perhaps in the first world, we can afford to argue about the merits of FLOSS vs closed source. However, this isn't the case when you are worried about where your next meal is coming from or if you can afford to vaccinate your child. The Gates Foundation could really show it's altruism by helping to support OLPC or the Classmate PC.
Cecil
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
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?
The thing is, in poor countries like Nigeria (especially in Nigeria), bribes are essentially standard. It's hard to get anything done in some countries (Nigeria included) without at least small bribes. What generally makes news is when the bribes are discovered by the western press. That doesn't change the fact that almost every business that works there is going to get dragged into that bribery system in one way or another if they wish to operate.
The really big surprise isn't the bribes. It's that the Nigerian government intervened to *stop* the bribes. Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...
I have the memory of an elephant. I remember going to the zoo and seeing an elephant.
I want to mod you troll, but you're exactly right. So I'll reply to you instead and remove the temptation.
XP is genuinely a fairly competent system. If you like closed source. And six-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerabilities. And Defective Restriction Management. And a vendor that tries to destroy every free alternative to their product with BS patent/copyright lawsuits. And supporting a convicted monopolist. And...
Also, how on earth do you have such high uptime if every monthly patch requires a reboot? You're not...unpatched, are you?
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
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...
Bah. Late to the party, as usual, hope more than 3 people read this. Let me share a story... it's been over 5 years already, so I hope I don't get into trouble for sharing it.
Picture a budding "third world" country, but one a little closer to the south of the border: Guatemala. Also picture a huge, monolithic Gov't institution, the Ministry of Education, where a small, dedicated team has been assigned a major project: switching all of the Ministry's PCs to Linux. This meant not only the PCs in the administrative buildings, but also the computers in every school in the country. Which in reality wasn't that huge of a project, because it's a smallish country, and at the time few schools had PCs for the kids.
Still, it was a very exciting project! We sincereley felt that what we were beginning could have a very positive impact in the lives of Guatemalan kids, exposing them early on to the advantages (and difficulties, too!) of the gospel of Open Source. But we soon ran into trouble. The hardware was hopelessly outdated -- note we didn't have the advantage of Xubuntu and other nice modern end-user distros for legacy HW, plus we met with serious and organized resistance from the many Ministry bureaucrats who decided they weren't going to give up the Microsoft OS they barely knew how to operate.
We soldiered on nonetheless, for a couple more weeks at least. But we could tell a storm was brewing at the higher ranks. Sure enough, the project gets axed, and a head or two rolls. Technical reasons were claimed, but we techs knew very well that the technical hurdles could've been overcome. Rumors abounded, and we all had our own suspicions. My own suspicions were confirmed when I had the chance to talk to a senior management guy who had managed to keep his job, who told me in no uncertain terms that Microsoft was very directly responsible for the project's cancellation, by courting Gov't officials and offering a generous "discount" on the many licenses the Ministry needed to fully comply with the law -- most of the Ministry's Windows PCs were illegal installations in the first place. And also, that palms had indeed been greased -- no proof, of course, but knowing how most (yes, most!) Gov't deals go down here would have been enough for me to believe this, but the confirmation by that bureaucrat left me with no doubt.
Cut to 5 years later. Millions were poured into the "legalization" of thousands of the Ministry's PCs, but the benefits for the average schoolkid remain to be seen. I often wonder what this country's schools would look like today if greed hadn't gotten in the way.. but sadly that's a recurring theme in corrupt countries. MS has a lot to answer for, in my humble opinion.
anon because this is still a very dangerous country