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Portugal's Vortalgate — No Microsoft, No Bidding

Posted by kdawson on from the bad-for-bidders-and-for-bidness dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Companies using software other than Microsoft's are unable to bid at many Portuguese public tenders. This is due to the use of Silverlight 2.0 technology by the company, Vortal, contracted to build the e-procurement portal. This situation has triggered a complaint to the European Commission by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association; the case is unofficially known in Portugal as 'Vortalgate.'"

5 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kdawson by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > This is due to the use of Silverlight 2.0 technology by the company,
    > Vortal, contracted to build the e-procurement portal.

    I'm sure the bid said, "accessible via any computer with a web browser"? Or "apps available under x, y, and z OS's", or some such?

    Quite frankly, although Microsoft getting people dependent on their proprietary APIs is a common business model, this isn't really Microsoft's fault, but Vortal's. Or the doof who put together the RFQ for this particular service for not being more specific about what kinds of computers can access it.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  2. Re:Kdawson by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Silverlight is a wonderful programming platform, easier and more elegant than flash will ever be

    That's nice and everything, but anyone using Flash OR Silverlight as a required part of a tendering process needs to be put down for the good of humanity. What could possibly have been going on in their tiny little minds? Responding to this insanity by babbling about Silverlight being better than Flash is absurd.

  3. It's 2009 by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's 2009. There's Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C#, and Tcl, to name just the main languages that can be used to write web software (I've even seen a page done in Cobol on a lark). Javascript is well established, as is Flash.

    Silverlight comes along offering nothing new but plenty of obstacles and lock-out of end user browsers, requiring active download of a plug-in, and yet, there are bozos out there willing to commit paying customers and their websites to an endless, costly, non-standard nightmare in exchange for nothing! You can't make shit like that up, it's real.

  4. Re:Kdawson by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mono will always be behind and you can count on MacOSX support being dropped quite soon. Using Silverlight now is no different than what using activeX meant in the past.

  5. Re:Macs, moonlight. by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Silverlight 2.0 versus Moonlight 1.0 which does not implement any 2.0 features... maybe..?

    And by the time we get Moonlight 2.0, Silverlight will be 3.0. You'd almost think they were doing it on purpose...