Swiss Court Halts Non-Competitive Contract With Microsoft

Ade writes "Looks like the challenge to the Swiss Administrative Court concerning the government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding was successful: The court has issued a temporary injunction (note: article in German) against the Federal Office of Buildings and Logistics (BBL), effectively stopping the CHF 14M (£8M; $15M)-contract to deliver licenses and support for software used on government computers for the next three years. According to Swiss Government practices, any contract over CHF 50'000 has to undergo a public call for offers. The BBL cited 'no serious alternatives' as the reason which this contract never did."

Comments

But they may (sadly) have been right

[XanC]

If your requirement is to be able to run Windows software, then there may in fact be "no serious alternatives". Now, clearly they should step back and look at the bigger picture.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Frequency Domain]

Too many idiots write specifications in terms of products vs protocols.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[Samalie]

Sure, sometimes that non-technical bureaucrat will still go with an option that most tech-savvy people wouldn't (such as going open source), more times than not "free" + "works almost the same" is enough to get the higher-ups on board.

"Works almost the same" just doesn't cut it in the real world most of the time.

I work in IT, and I would *LOVE* to deploy Linux/OO/etc as a way to dramatically kill my budget.

The problem is, my accounting software is propriatary and does not run on Linux - Windows Only (and I've tried WINE, no dice on this one).

So fine, I'm stuck on Windows, but bring in OO.

Again, no dice...my same accounting package hooks into Office itself for reporting functions, and will not work without Office.

And I can't make it work with MySQL, so I'm stuck with SQL Server, which means I'm stuck with Windows Server as my backend. Sure, I could migrate my other server services to Linux, but for all the Microsoft that I'm absolutely stuck with there's absolutely no reason to not just have it all on Windows.

And I know what the child poster is going to say...ditch the sad propriatary accounting package and find an open license alternative. Well, we're a specalized enough industry that there is no way in hell I can get an open alternative that does more than 25% of what I'm doing today with my propriatary system.

So I'm stuck with my crappy windows application which keeps me on windows and office for the frontend, and microsoft on the back end of my network.

So its all fine and good to rally the Linux troops, and try to make inroads into the mainstream, but until they convince "real" vendors with "real" products to support Linux, its all just a fucking pipe dream.

You do know what will happen in this specific case, don't you? The Swiss will now do an open bidding process, and all the linux/open community will bid on it, and they'll be rejected regardless of the fact that it will be WAY cheaper than the Micorosoft bid, on the sole basis that some application that timmy from accounting requires won't work on Linux, and rather than wait through 3 new sourceforge projects with 11 forks over 3 years, they'll buy Microsoft.

I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek, I really do...but the Open community has a LONG LONG way to go before they becaome an accepted player at the table for any company/organization that can't afford to spend the time, energy, resources, and dollars to get programmers building them their "open" applications.

Re:But they may (sadly) have been right

[elashish14]

An awe-inspiring exemplification of the term 'lock-in.'

Re:What are the consequences of this?

[huckamania]

What a horrible system. Unless the company that originally won the bid was the wrong-doer, why should they be excluded? Sounds like something a lawyer could sue over and a bureaucrat could manipulate to game the system.