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Portugal's Vortalgate — No Microsoft, No Bidding
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.'"
first port !!!
Silverlight is a wonderful programming platform, easier and more elegant than flash will ever be, and you have a whole subset of the .net platform for you to use, which makes it very powerful. So Silverlight is here to stay. Take your medicine and don't be bitter.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
What about Macs, and Moonlight. Granted Using Silverlight is a stupid move done by STUPID Developers, and braindead PHB. But still if you wanted to do bidding you had ways.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Good for Portugal. It is about time some country stood up for quality closed-source software in the face of all you open-source zealots who won't take total cost of ownership into account.
Yeah, clearly Microsoft was the superior solution. Just ask Netflix! Their users got very pissed off at the proprietary nature and lower quality of Silverlight. It's a piece of shit that M$ promotes because they want to own this market. Why anyone would be dumb enough to continue to use Microsoft when alternatives are available is a mystery.
...that such a thing could happen.
Incompetence or corruption, which is worse?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft." Might not hold much longer.
Heh!
What else can we do? Everything said, it is Portugal...
Thumbs up for ESOP for filling this complaint!
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.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/First-Beta-of-Silverlight-for-Linux-Available-for-Download-99110.shtml
...would like to apologize to our Portuguese friends for giving them that horrible, overused suffix.
I have a commodore_64 for which has been working just fine for me for many many years, but I am told that I must have a "web browser" in order to post comments to the Slashdot web site. This is DISCRIMINATION and requires a substantial outlay of cash for me. As soon as I can find a government official who doesn't laugh at me, I'll be filing my complaint.
Do other countries/languages use the "-gate" nomenclature for every government scandal/complaint/event too?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
.net was a wonderful platform adopted by everyone. and flash was the driving force behind web.
in an alternate reality perhaps.
Read radical news here
If I think that I would have a good chance of getting the contract with my bid, I would find a windows machine to do it.
In today's economy, purism is a luxury.
I suppose Flash is much better supported on Linux. Hmmm. Yes there are flash versions, but Adobe took their sweet time about it, did they not?
I'm not a FAN of silverlight (or flash!), but Silverlight seems to be better supported on Linux and Mac than Flash was initially. I could be wrong about that.
I don't undrestand why Microsoft gets blamed for producing a product that isn't supported on platforms that Windows isn't supported on. I may as well complain that it took forEVER for Amarok to get Windows support, and it's STILL not available! Or, even better, that Safari took forEVER to be ported to Windows! Or whatever other software you care to complain about.
If developers choose to use a MS only product, that's not MS's fault. Ms is under no obligation to produce software that works with everyone's, including their competitors, operating system. That makes no sense, monopoly or no monopoly. Now, if they were forcing the developers to use Silverlight, or forcing Adobe not to let Flash have a Windows version, that's different.
I don't know why the vortigaunts in question don't just zap the portugese computers and make them work. They do wonders for pretty much anything else. I mean, I don't know anything about computers besides how to play half life 2 and even -I- know that much.
s/Firefox/Firefox on Linux/
My blog
... I must object to these allegations in the strongest terms. Our QA department went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure compatibility, by testing our software not only on HP and Dell computers, but also Lenovo, Sony, and Acer. Whatever objections these critics have are clearly spurious.
One! Don't you feel dumb.
Two! Look at you.
Three! Don't you ever make jokes about me behind my back or else I'll stomp you into the ground
http://www.mono-project.com/news/archive/2009/Jan-13.html
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Isn't Portugal's current prime-minister (Jose Socrates) notorious for his close association with everything Microsoft?
And isn't he currently at the center of a national scandal involving serious corruption charges?
And didn't his government recently try to sell the notion that the Intel Classmate they are introducing into public schools is a "portuguese invention"?
Anyway, this sort of report does not surprise me one bit...
I'm not a FAN of silverlight (or flash!), but Silverlight seems to be better supported on Linux and Mac than Flash was initially. I could be wrong about that.
Why on earth do you imagine you would you need either Silverlight or Flash to submit a bid?
This isn't a frigging high end interactive-video-entertainment application, this is something that shouldn't need anything more than Mosaic 1.0 or Lynx.
On Slashdot, that comment is immediately recognized as intended to be humorous.
It is rude of them to commune by flux shifting in front of those whose Vortal inputs are impaired. They should vocalize in our auditory language as a matter of courtesy. Unless they wish to say unflattering things about us. Just so.
Are we all forgetting about Moonlight? Silverlight actually has a supported fully open-source alternative. Flash does not-- the open source flash solutions are basically reverse engineered while Mooonlight has support and documentation from Microsoft-- while retaining no licensing snafus.
Basically, you're all letting your fanboy rage over Microsoft blind your sense to the point that you're pushing a fully proprietary non-oss solution (flash) over a fully open source solution. If this site simply keeps in mind that Moonlight support is the base level of silverlight support to shoot for, then they've got a completely open-source friendly solution that has decent development tools (silverlight has a beautiful C# .NET base that is far easier to work with than flash-- not to mention can be developed with free tools).
As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter how much better the development is made by tools, docs, and language, or how open source the project is... all that matters is Microsoft affiliation.
So slashdot isn't necessarily pro-linux, pro-oss, or pro-free software. It's just anti-microsoft. I mean, that's the major crux of slashdot- that is its entire focus. Isn't that a little... you know... sad?
Here's the final word: if Microsoft is beating the Adobe toolchain in a cost-benefit-analysis, then more people should volunteer on Moonlight-- the project is progressing well and should remain at a competitve level with mainline silverlight. It has way more of a chance than gnash or anything, that's for damn sure. If Adobe wants their customers back, they can open source flash. That's that. I could use less binary blobs in my system.
bl0odfarts. FreeBSD
Seriously, who needs or uses "Silverlight" anyways? With Flash, Javascript and HTML v5 compatible with all popular operating systems: Windows, linux, OS X and others, do we really need or want another MS proprietary protocol to do the same thing, but also lock us into using Windows? Nope, don't think so!
Just two cents
- Vortal portal is not about jobs, it 's really about public procurement
- the problem is not only silverlight. The certificates only work on Microsoft, so you can not sign a proposal
What? I believe i'm a pretty well informed guy and I've never heard of this "case" before.. But ye, the government is pretty tight with Microsoft and proprietary software/standards.
"Portugal is the leading country in the new MS technology Silverlight"
It's sad, but i bet some of the portuguese media will put a positive spin on this. (if it gets their atention)
Wasn't that some direct to video Dolph Lundgren sci-fi action movie?
(...) Microsoft getting people dependent on their proprietary APIs is a common business model, this isn't really Microsoft's fault, but Vortal's (...)
No! It is the portuguese govern's fault! They should have tested properly what they bought!
Silverlight works on 98% of computers (Windows + Mac) and for that other 2% theres Moonlight, Wine, or VMware. This really isn't an issue.
Isn't there an open-source, blessed-by-Microsoft implementation of Silverlight for Linux, released through Novell? (Or was it part of the Mono project?)
Moonlight?
... sometime around 2000 give or take a couple of years. The government hired a company to write software so that small businesses could do their tax returns online. The software was supposed to be OS neutral. The company first got the Windows version running and released, and then asked themselves "now ,how do we port all this ActiveX stuff to Mac and Linux?"
Not having any involvement in small business taxes, I don't know how it progressed after that. I hope it involved firings and large penalty payments.
(This is all from my fallible memory, so may not be entirely accurate.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
VortalGates
I agree Silverlight is probably better than Flash, but that's setting a rather low bar.
Agreed - this is setting the bar low. A much better bar would be SVG. The 1.2 draft already supports every feature in Flash or Silverlight and is completely open (comes from the people who made HTML if this is new to you). It's completely xml based with the same DOM programming interface as HTML allowing AJAX as we're now seeing for HTML.
And here's where Microsoft is at fault:
SVG is probably already supported to some degree in your browser natively without any plugins (unless your primative enough to still be using IE) which is because Microsoft has been passively refusing to include it in its browser - presumable because it IS a direct competitor to Silverlight. Check out the MSDN thread about it's support that's been running since 2006 with no proper response.
websites should use the common denominator in technology for the content they need to expose. In this case some dhtml and ajax would suffice.
In my opinion Vortalgate is the ultimate abuse of power, imagine that you want to work in IT for the government, how can you even apply if the job postings there is the only way you can access the job and you are using linux ? Only MS users would get hired, the MS fortress is safe forever ! This is the ultimate abuse of power from the MS and the portuguese ministry of technology, i.e. if you do not have our shitty alternative to shitty flash you can't apply for a job !
The Portuguese prime minister have shown cases of corruption before and i suspect the same here and with the portuguese magellan laptop.
That being said the MS cancer will spread for everyone needing to exchange documents with the government since the government has made an agreement with MS to only use their products without any public offerings for better options.
And do no say i didn't warn the government, i wrote a letter on their site to both the ministry of technology and the prime minister warning of the deadlock of proprietary formats and the advantages of OSS.
Portugal is either corrupt or ignorant to the bone marrow.
I still have faith that this stupid economic crisis takes care of this kind of problems by makind manking go frugal.
Preferences -> Authors -> uncheck kdawson.
Sheesh, you'd think John Katz was back or something. Hyperbolic misdirection is boring, even when the underlying principle is something you agree on..
Personally I would not use any proprietary formatted content on any website I develop as I want my content to be available to everyone, regardless of which operating system, browser or other software package that they use.
For the record, I prefer Linux to Microsoft, my choice.
With that said, here are a list of issues and/or problems with Silverlight that I copied down from another website, I thought some might find it informative.
Personally I want a FREE and open source H.264 codec. Not only is the quality superior, you can actually compress content down to lesser resolutions that Microsoft Media Player uses (and other proprietary vendors are using right now).
Here are a list of problems, in no particular order, with Silverlight from either this site or this site or a link from one of those two sites...I did not document the exact link that day, sorry. I basically went through the comments or posts (about a month ago I believe, which is why I do not remember the exact website) and jotted down what people, who mostly like Silverlight, stated were problems they would like to see fixed in the next update. I remember believing at the time that I was on a Microsoft website or at least a person who preferred Silverlight to other solutions. Therefore I figured the gripes were from people hoping to influence the next release of Silverlight to be valid. Granted it would not surprise if one or two of them were wrong for reasons I would NOT know.
For me not having H.264 support is enough to NOT use Silverlight. And I am smart enough to know that when they implement a H.264 codec in Silverlight, they will use a proprietary H.264 CODEC rather than many of the open source and FREE H.264 CODECS. And we all know why. For this reason alone, if you are a web developer or have decision making power within your web development organization you should recommend an open source or FREE CODEC as choice NUMBER 1 and if desired a proprietary CODEC as number 2 for Microsoft, Adobe (80% of the FLASH market) and/or Apple. Is there anyone else, operating system wise that I am missing? My point is, if you use the FREE CODEC, (that all the Linux distros support, (top ten distros)), than everyone even the Microsoft and Apple operating system users will have access to your content. Thus you have net neutrality, should the proprietary player NOT be able to play the FREE video and/or audio CODEC; the user can download a plugin, web widget or software package that will play them...and they do NOT have to switch operating systems to get this functionality, they just need a better player than the one provided by the proprietary company. The reverse can NOT be said to be true can it, if the proprietary CODEC will NOT work with the FREE player, the proprietary company will NOT provide a way to play the content, except with their player. . That alone is enough of a reason NOT to use proprietary players. The fact that the FREE players use SUPERIOR Video and Audio CODECs is icing on your cake! While the new Windows Media player will play H.264, go back and verify the resolution and frame rate that it will play it at. A bit lower then the alternative FREE codecs...no surprise to me there. Consider that before Windows Media Player 8, they would tell people to take the VC-I codec and increase the frame rate by a minor amount in a lame attempt at generating what they called, laughingly,
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
The problem with SVG is that it tried to be a "kitchen sink" spec and big companies like Adobe and Microsoft sat on the committee throwing in every thing to get at their competitors. It's a great spec but several dozens of times more complex than HTML/XML/CSS. It's not a "grown" spec, one that grew by specification and implementation like HTML did. It's a "spec by committee" with a bunch of conflicting good ideas that nobody took the time to put into real software. Even the people that are implementing it are all starting in different places because it's so big... so what each browser does have doesn't even act right.
The whole thing needs stripped down into what we can have in 6 months on every browser that's started it. Then write another spec for 1 year's worth of work after that... then see where it goes from there. The same issue with CSS2/3 that the specs are smaller, but too big, there's no synchronization of implementations.. nobody uses ANY of the features.. and none get tested or standardized.
how did this get on /. this is neither news for nerds, nor stuff that matters. one search leads to nearly 5 million hits to refute the story posted.
http://www.google.com/search?q=silverlight+linux&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
maybe the real story should be that portugese companies don't know how to google.
lose != loose
Moonlight 2.0 builds that support Silverlight 2.0.
Mono has a hackathon going:
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight2Hacking
Which lists the areas they're looking for help with.
My video compression blog
And the specs to see what needs to be complied to? Oh wait...
here it is. http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm
Unless you meant the spec for XAML, which you could find at http://robrelyea.com/silverlight/xvSpec
Or perhaps the SMPTE spec for VC-1 ala http://www.smpte.org/news/pr/view?item_key=a135f13b173a982bb71f1cd3ee4403671fcf2057
My video compression blog
I sense a disturbance in the Vortessence.
To clarify Flex a bit:
- Compiled Flex applications run in Flash Player; it's not an additional plugin.
- Flex applications use ActionScript 3, which is the same programming language that the newest versions of Flash use. It's structurally Java-like, but it's very easy to get powerful things done - for instance dynamically loading and playing a remote video stream can be accomplished in a few lines.
- Flex doesn't require the 'timeline' paradigm with binary source files that Flash had, replacing it with a solid and powerful layout language, making Flex a tool for app programmers rather than for animators. But there's huge crossover - and some workflows involve both tools because it trivially can include assets and videos from Flash.
- Flex Builder isn't free (unless you're a student) But the compiler IS free. So "Builder" is really like buying "Dreamweaver for Flex" more than like buying Flex. (Flex Builder is actually based on Eclipse, not on Dreamweaver, though)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot