Swiss Open Source Decision Going Microsoft's Way

hardsix writes "The recent legal wrangling between a group of open source supporters led by Red Hat against the Swiss government's decision to award an IT contract solely to Microsoft appears to be going Microsoft's way. A Swiss lawyer close to the case claims that a preliminary ruling has rejected the open source group's request to overturn the Microsoft contract however the case is still ongoing and there is still room for appeal. 'The Administrative Court hasn't made its final ruling yet but even if it finds in favor of Microsoft, there is still room for appeal. No matter what the ruling will be, an appeal will likely be filed to the Supreme Court, whose final word will have substantial significance in the future for public authorities with regards to computing services,' said Swiss legal firm BCCC AVOCATS. Open source supporters argue there has to be real political will for open source projects to succeed in the public sector."

Comments

Re:Freedom

[robot_love]

Read the article. No public tendering process was made. The contract was handed straight to Microsoft. Therefore your comment is irrelevant.

Trying to avoid mentioning Munich?

[harlows_monkeys]

Open source supporters argue there has to be real political will for open source projects to succeed in the public sector

In the article, it was one person who said that--an official of the Munich LiMux project. I can see why one might want to just attribute it to "open source supporters" rather than associating with that ongoing clusterfuck of a mismanaged Linux migration.

Re:They Did Not 'Look At The Options'

[Yfrwlf]

Good essay. I find it easier to simply say: several governments around the world have adopted Linux, there's no reason the Swiss government couldn't as well.

Oh, and also, STFU Microsoft shill. ^^

P.S., All governments should adopt open source policies, regardless of what software they choose exactly, and there is no question about that AT ALL. You don't have a zillion different branches of your government each pay $$$$$ for closed source software, that's just lame beyond belief. You instead pay money to developers to either make something, or improve upon existing software, if what you need doesn't exist yet, and you do that for a tiny fraction of the price.