Microsoft Shoots Own Foot In Iceland

David Gerard writes "The Microsoft Certified Partner model is: an MCP buys contracts from Microsoft and sells them to businesses as a three-year timed contract, payable in annual installments. Iceland's economy has collapsed, so 1500 businesses have gone bankrupt and aren't paying the fees any more. But Microsoft has told the MCPs: 'Our deal was with you, not them. Pay up.' The MCPs that don't go bankrupt in turn are moving headlong to Free Software, taking most of the country with them. (Warning: link contains strong language and vivid imagery.)"

Comments

Re:Iceland=350,000 people. Microsoft won't notice.

[evilandi]

Yup, which is exactly what community software should be doing. It makes no commercial sense to localise software for a country's language which has less speakers than the population of Cincinnati. Even, I suspect, if you are from that actual country.

Quite what Iceland thought it was doing when it declared independence from Denmark, I have no idea (well, other than sticking two fingers up at the Nazi occupation of the Danish mainland, which I'd concede was a worthwhile gesture, if only symbolic; they should have returned to Danish rule once WWII was over). It wasn't like Denmark was some massive imperial bad guy. If you look at all the successful small countries, from British imperial islands in the sun, to rich European micro-states like Luxembourg, they all ally themselves with a larger grouping, be it the British Commonwealth or the Benelux parliament or whatever. Iceland isn't even a member of the EU! Then they go bust and it's all "oooh, can we join the EU naw plz?" and "oooh, Microsoft R being nasty 2 uz". FFS.

Re:This seems strangely familiar

[DerekLyons]

The legal basis is Force Majeure (sp?). Basically, if the economy here collapsed, something like the MCP mess would be voidable.

Sorry, but no. A collapsed economy without a significant and unpredictable outside event (like war or a major natural disaster) doesn't qualify as an 'Act Of God' (and even they don't always count, it depends on the circumstances), which is what is required to invoke Force Majeure. If the Icelandic courts do rule so, it's a very bad legal precedent as courts worldwide normally recognize such things as part of the normal business cycle. (That's why bankruptcy laws exist and why the circumstances under which you can declare bankruptcy are carefully defined.)