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Red Hat Challenges Swiss Government Over Microsoft Monopoly
An anonymous reader writes "'Linux vendor Red Hat, and 17 other vendors, have protested a Swiss government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding. The move exposes a wider Microsoft monopoly that European governments accept, despite their lip service for open source, according to commentators. The Red Hat group has asked a Swiss federal court to overturn a three-year contract issued to Microsoft by the Swiss Federal Bureau for Building and Logistics, to provide Windows desktops and applications, with support and maintenance, for 14M Swiss francs (£8M; $15M) each year. The contract, for 'standardized workstations,' was issued with no public bidding process, Red Hat's legal team reports in a blog — because the Swiss agency asserted there was no sufficient alternative to Microsoft products.'"
For anybody interested how this interacts with all the pro linux movements from the EU recently, well its completely orthogonal Switzerland is not a member of the EU.
Btw i believe the issue here is the lack of bidding process not that the contract went to Microsoft, like if all the contracts for costly wars in the midle east were given to a particular company without offering them up to any of the competition, good thing shit like that doesn't happen...oooh!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Nowhere did the summary say EU.
European != EU.
Just be aware that Switzerland is NOT an EU member, so only Swiss laws does apply.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Like the USA, Switzerland is a federation, much smaller, but beautifully formed. The Kantons (18?) are the main source of power, not the federal government. And Direct Democracy means that the equivalent of Presedential signing is a referendum on legislation AFTER is is passed by the Bundesrat. Actually the referendum is negative, ie it vetos what the pols passed.
This is _why_ Switzerland is not in the EU, last time the pols tried it was thrown out by a 87% majority and that was the second asking so it wont come back for 30 years. Switzerland is in EFTA and has a bilateral treaty with the EU and is implementing the Shengen accord. Less strict frontier controls. If a question is decided at referendum it can normally be asked once again, but if voted down it is rude, and pointless to bring it back so pols cant saw, or piggy back the way they can in the US.
Many parts of Switzerland do use open source, The City of Zurich (Stadt Zürich) uses it extensively, as does Academia. Kanton Zürich provides tax preparation software free for Linux, Mac & M$Win.
Responding to a troll perhaps, but I've never had a scanner that doesn't work with linux. Xsane is pretty solid.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
(contd. sorry for the hickup)
Mr MÃrz was a bank manager and his policy could be summerized to "once the coorporates do well, the wealth will trickle down to the people (Obama)". With that he gave a free hand to the Swiss banks and they brought the system close to a grounding. Amazingly the people here failed to realize this and after the initial battering he seems to hold on.
Reportedly Mr MÃrz personally interfered when the government tried to move towards Open Souce three years ago and nullyfied the whole thing http://www.inside-it.ch/frontend/insideit?&site=ii&_d=_article&news.id=8470 (German)
Well it is only one department, at least one other department has a different approach. The Swiss Department of Public Instruction, which has the motto "Long Live Free Software" and is responsible for IT policy in Swiss schools, has encouraged Linux boots in the interests of leveling the playing field for students unable to afford new computers with the latest Microsoft software, a policy in place since late 2008.
... could someone like RH claim that they could provide a solution that'd be 100%-compatible with the existing MS environment at a lower cost? I seriously doubt this would be the case.
Microsoft can't truthfully claim this, either. They certainly can't claim a lower cost than MS, but they can't even claim 100% compatibility, either.
That doesn't stop them from making the claim, though...
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
it makes sense they'd go directly to MS rather than go through a public bidding process when they want to upgrade.
Many countries have laws that require a public bidding process when any governmental organization procures some good or service. You can't just ignore that when planning to make a large procurement, because that means that tax funds could be spent on a suboptimal solution.
Of course, that may happen anyway, but a public bidding process lowers that risk somewhat.
Just be aware that Switzerland is NOT an EU member, so only Swiss laws does apply.
Don't be too sure of that; they are part of the Schengen and have various other treaties with the EU.
Because that is the unfortunate reality in most of Europe, not only in EU countries.
One that hath name thou can not otter
When I installed Linux my Canon scanner just worked.
When I installed Windows, it told me I needed to install a driver. What does that mean?
Exactly. Switzerland states that only MS will do, but how can you truly know what's available without a public bid?
Put identity in the browser.
The Swiss like their operating systems like their cheese -- Plenty of holes.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I'll put on my pedantic hat and remind everyone that Switzerland makes lots of cheeses, few of which contain holes.
What you're thinking of is that yellowish waxy product made in Wisconsin or California that vaguely resembles emmenthaler. By contrast, appenzeller and gruyere, for example, are similarly popular, and have no holes.
So much for your holey theory. ;-)
Bullshit. DO your homework. HP printers/scanners all work under Linux. I've not had a need to search for other drivers, but I'm sure there are more.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Just be aware that Switzerland is NOT an EU member
But we did democratically vote and sign several bilateral treaties.
RedHat challenges to see if they could use the implications of some of those treaties and ask for a public bid.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In fact I can go further and inform you that Swiss law is the only real issue here.
Switzerland did not enter into the EEA-agreement and only has bilateral agreements with the EU on trade etc.
All EU related law is processed by the EFTA Court (not the EU equivalent).
The Schengen agreement only relates to travel.
See more at http://www.efta.int/
He's been promising an operating system, GNU Hurd, for a long time.
He's been promising an operating system called GNU, and Hurd is the name of its kernel. Since it's the canonical (but not the Canonical :D) version of GNU, it needn't be called GNU/Hurd.
Also, RMS suggests that you use a slash in "GNU/Linux" such that "GNU" isn't understood as an adjective. If the FSF made their own distro, it might be reasonable to call it "GNU Linux" to distinguish it from other distros (and since GNU is already in the name, calling it "GNU GNU/Linux" probably isn't necessary). Just like it's appropriate to refer to "GNU Emacs" to distinguish it from other Emacsen such as XEmacs.
This March deposition in Novell v. Microsoft is an insult to the court, the Law, and any intelligent reader. It's time they threw the book at this liar and thief.
you had me at #!
Somebody in the procurement department either
(a) Has a report from someone in their IT Department that erroneously states that they need won't work with Linux, and therefore has to be excluded from the procurement process.
or
(b) Has a report from someone in their IT Department that correctly states that they need won't work with Linux,
Regardless, they are required to put it out for tender. Even if they think only one company is capable of supplying a service, it has to go thruogh an open specification and bidding process. Deciding on the vendor for a multi-millon dollar contract on the basis of a memo from some IT guy is not good government. It creates a huge incentive for corruption.
Well, in fact it's a modification of VNC
no, its a secure x windows implementation, not at all VNC, and considerably better, faster than VNC (and I still like/use VNC)
The Admin and the Engineer
"The Swiss like their operating systems like their cheese -- Plenty of holes." - by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25, @05:12PM (#28087709)
Then, why didn't they choose Linux? It too, has had its share of "holes", such as this list below:
-----
Root Password Readable in Clear Text with Ubuntu:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/0525254
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Is This The Biggest Linux Security Breach? REDHAT SERVERS HACKED:
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=827351
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UBUNTU SERVERS HACKED:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/08/15/1341224.shtml
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SuSE Linux LPROLD BUFFER OVERFLOW:
http://www.novell.com/linux/security/advisories/2003_014_lprold.html
-----
Weakness In Linux Kernel's Binary Format:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/10/03/2122220.shtml
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Ubuntu May Be Killing Your Laptop's Hard Drive:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/1742258
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KDE Heap Overflow Vulnerability Found:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/21/0936249
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Critical Security Hole in Linux Wi-Fi:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/15/1515259
-----
Bitten By the Red Hat Perl Bug:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/29/1423201
-----
Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL SSH Keys Guessable:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/05/13/1533212.shtml
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Ext4 Data Losses on Linux:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/19/1730247
-----
Longstanding Linux IO Wait Bug:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/15/049201
-----
Intel Cache Poisoning Is Dangerously Easy On Linux:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/22/1815226
-----
Major Security Hole In Samsung Linux Drivers:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/07/18/0319203.shtml
-----
Want more? I'll produce them, upon request... (especially ones that are indicative of USER LEVEL app problems, or those in hardwares)
AND, sure - Some of those from my lists above MAY be fixed by now (hopefully @ least), but THAT is NOT THE POINT - THIS IS:
Linux, BSD, MacOS X (all *NIX, in general/in other words) have/have had THEIR problems too...
So, please - don't try to make it sound as if only Microsoft's Windows NT-based OS family has them, because they ALL do & it also largely depends on the skills, determination, & efforts of those ADMINNING those OS & their networks as well, period...!
(What you have to hope for, is fast patching!)
APK
P.S.=> The "Pro-Linux" penguin crowd here NEVER FAILS TO AMAZE, with their "straight out of PRAVDA" propoganda (telling 1/2 the story to make Microsoft look poorly, but "StRaNgELy" always omitting THEIR OS' own downsides & such over time)...
Now, of course, the owners of /. here know 1 thing, &