Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the it's-all-about-the-benjamings dept.
tpck writes "Corel is suing the U.S. Department of Labour for favoring Microsoft's Office software over Corel's own WordPerfect. They have already successfully sued the Canadian government for similar discrimination and won $9.9 million. "
That's it, I'm moving to Canada, where this shit doesn't....oh, they did it there too?...crap... "You should never have your best trousers on when you turn
--
"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth." -Henrik Ib
Read the article, for God sake....
by
Patman
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· Score: 5
I don't know if the poster of this article bothered reading the link, but the summary is not accurate. Corel is suing the Department of Labor because they believe that DOL made it easier for MS to win the contract then Corel. This is significantly different then what the summary posts, which basically states that COrel is suing because they are sore losers. In this case, Corel may or may not have a case - the court system will figure it out. If it's true, DOL should be smacked - especially because a large portion of their machines had WOrdPerfect licenses already. I hate money wasters.
Re:Read the article, for God sake....
by
Raul+Acevedo
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· Score: 3
You didn't finish reading the article. The very next paragraph says:
Corel also complained it couldn't provide conversion costs because the department wasn't supplying enough information.
That implies the problem isn't really the requirement to provide upgrade estimates, but that the department was slack in providing enough information to make the estimates. ----------
-- In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror,
and you would not have been notified.
From Corel's own website...
by
notsosilentbob
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· Score: 4
"Corel has taken this step to ensure that the United States Government follows its own rules for open and fair procurement," said Marcia Mills, Corel's Corporate Counsel. "This is not a matter particular to Corel, nor are we targetting our competitors -- the Department of Labor's decision adversely affects all software vendors and suppliers to the government."
A clear message to micros~1
by
Money__
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· Score: 3
While I would disagree that Corel is perhaps reaching a little to far over the border in this case, I would agree with their motives.
Trying to get a purchasing body to adhear to it's own rules of fairness is best solved in the courts, and I think Corel will do well in the case.
On the PR side of this issue, this should send a clear signal to all purchasing agents across the big and small companies alike and ask/force them to ask "are we giving the other choices a fair look?".
The more people start thinking this way (even if they're being forced to by a $10M suit) the more people will look at competing productivity apps in a better light, and competing OSs on a better light . .
This kind of thinking is good for open source, and gives quality software a chance to be judged on it's performance.
Ok. This is getting silly.
by
soulhuntre
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· Score: 4
This article's summary and the implicationsof it are downright misleading.
We have all heard over and over that/. is not a conventional news organization. Fine, I can understand that. However, that should be a reason to grant it lattitude on what topics it covers - not on the accuracy of the post.
But as a technical person I have a hard time excusing completely inaccurate information.
This is about posting a rumor and having it turn out wrong - that's fine. This is about postign a story with a summary that abolutely 100% is not in line with the article it is linked too.
It is currently so bad that there is no point in trusting the summaries.
Ken
-- --> Fight tyranny and repression.... read/. at -1!
For once, I favor the plaintiff!
by
timothy
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· Score: 5
It's a dillemma that all government spending creates: how do you pick the suppliers who will provide your (toilets / cafeteria service / word processor) *fairly*?
To my mind, in the end there are only more fair and less fair ways for govt. agencies to choose suppliers, no truly fair ones.
Why? Because unlike a private company (which can buy MS software all they want, for all I care, and more power to 'em, if that's what makes sense), government agencies are also simultaneously supposed to be stewarding the tax dollars of the taxpayers whose money allows them to function. Care to buy a toilet seat marked up by the Pentagon? Probably not -- because that 'stewardship' function often gets lost in the mix, since accountability is low / anonymity hight / consequences indirect / proof elusive.
The Labor Dept. may have sound, thought-out reasons why they want MS products: they've probably come up with a middle- or long-term scenario which says that preserving existing compatibilities is the most economical solution for them. No analysis of that kind is untainted by the assumption set of those who create it, of course -- all I'm saying is that it's likely that their analysis people say "For the reasons X, Y and Z, we need to stick with Word and Excel, therefore with Microsoft." Possibly very shortsighted, but then concrete reasons are often more persuasive than statements about principle and potential. Also, if I can *prove* (on paper, anyhow) that my answer will save you $500 a year, while your solution merely provides the *potential* to save $5,000 a year...
Arguments like "Shouldn't we be using open file formats like XML for all documents, so that the choice of application vendors becomes a fluid and mutable one?!" I bet don't get real far in the DOL.
And consider how strange it is that one arm of the US Fed. govt. is trying to chop up (or at least demote) Microsoft, while another says "Yep, these are the guys whose software we like!" Computer companies (hard and software) love Govt. sales, at least once the elaborate bidding and qualification process is over, because they know that once in the door, govt. bodies tend to re-order rather than switch vendors at the drop of a hat. Think Morton-Thiokol.
Shades of the two French senators... perhaps Messrs. Graham and Rudman would like to introduce a bill requiring that Free / free solutions be included in cost analyses for all Federal government computer purchases...
timothy
p.s. I think the Dept. of Labor should be jettisoned, anyhow. This here's just one more reason.
FWIW, I've been there a few times. In theory, Government RFQs are supposed to set out the needed characteristics; the order is required by law to go to the lowest bidder complying with the requirements. In theory this prevents corruption by leveling the playing field. In practice, bureaucrats get around it by writing the requirements to exactly match the (preselected) product.
For instance, I once saw an RFQ that specified the exact length of the power cord plus or minus a quarter inch. Amazingly, that was the length of IBM's cord, but not one commercially available. All of the other bidders had to have custom cords made (at extra cost.) The same pattern was repeated all through the RFQ.
In Corel's case, what appears to have happened was that the Labor Department insisted on several of Word's quirkier features (e.g., macro language) which almost nobody uses. Instant disqualification for everyone but Microsoft.
-- Lacking <sarcasm> tags,/. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
Right and left hand contradict
by
Bitscape
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· Score: 4
If the government wants to curb Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior, the first, and most obvious, measure to take would be to refrain from encouraging these practices by patronizing the monster. It is hypocracy to for the DOJ to put Microsoft on trial, while another branch rewards the very behavior that is to be stemmed.
Perhaps what is needed is a boycott by all government institutions of companies under investigation for antitrust violations. At the very least, they shouldn't be making exclusive deals with them.
Of course, implementing and enforcing consistancy of moral purpose with such an enormous bureaucracy is probably asking too much anyway.
In Microsoft's case, it's especially easy to suspect foul play, due to the inferior nature of their products. Why would any halfway intelligent entity sign away their productivity if some shady deal making weren't going on under the table? But then again, this is the government we're talking about.
Ugggh. The corruption just makes me sick.
I work there - pretty damned funny.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
A bit of background. These huge monolithic government departments (ie. US DOL) usually have a central office then many bureaus under them. For example, US DOL has the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), etc. that are usually in separate buildings, separate WANs, etc.
I work for one of the larger agencies and REALLY have to laugh. Main US DOL has been using Wordperfect for years and the agency I work for has always been a Micro$oft shop. We've been begging them for years to standardize on a single standard for document interchange, and now that they've come to the darkside like us and abandoned Wordperfect, they're getting sued.
Probably off-topic, but this reminded me for some reason of Enable. Enable was a powerful integrated office suite that ran on DOS and UNIX under X. Word processing, spreadsheet with charting capabilities, database, and communication components, all programmable via macros and a built-in 'report language' that reached into every component. Powerful stuff in its time. I think it was 1987 or so when my employer at the time bought version 1. The last I heard of them was a telephone conversation I had with one of thier sales reps in 1993 or so. She told me (with a certain excitement) that they had just signed a deal with Microsoft in which they agreed not to develop Enable for Windows. In return, MS would not port its office apps to X and compete against them in thier biggest market - the feds. Enable was selling tons of its product at the time to the federal government. A couple of years later Enable Software Inc. had completely disappeared. I recently found out that the former employer I mentioned is still running some applications we developed with Enable back in 1987! In MS-DOS windows under Win95! Does anybody know the rest of the story of what happened to Enable?
====== "Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
ON-TOPIC (surprise, surprise): A challenge!
by
Serf
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· Score: 3
Can I do a song, but stay on-topic? Let's see....
Got it!
(to the tune of the Beastie Boys' "Girls", though that's not too hard to figure out....)
------------
Word! All they want to use is Word! They just agreed to all use Word! Because last year they all used Word!
Corel don't think it's fair The DOL has one vendor 'stead of a pair And they counted conversion costs To make a choice that cost Corel lots....
Now some of you say: "How could they really choose this way? They must have been led far astray: It was MS they chose to pay When they were investigated by the DOJ! It not like that just started in May! And the DOL did alread[a]y, have a Corel license or two, eh?
And by the way, Proprietary formats aren't ok, The DOL should have gone to XML today. If they had done that then I bet they Would have more choices than Office 2K. But RFQ's are broken anyway, 'cause bureaucrats, they like to stay With things the way they are today.
So they use MS products to our dismay."
Word! It's big and bloated! Word! It owns the market! Word! We hate its EULA! Word! Don't get me started!
Word! All they want to use is Word! Come Y2K time they'll use Word! They should try something besides Word! Word! (x12)
------------
Yee. I spent way too much time on that.
Shameless Self Promotion: The original "Natalie man" is here.
... what appears to have happened was that the Labor Department insisted on several of Word's quirkier features (e.g., macro language) which almost nobody uses.
Looks like the Department of Labor thinks susceptability to macro virus attacks is a feature
-- Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What? The DOL's side makes perfect sense.
by
Uart
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· Score: 3
Would the persident of the US ride in a Japanese car? No. Would the US military start giving all of its defence contracts to Russian companies? So why would any other US agency/department use software made by a CANADIAN company??? It doesn't make sense. unless there is no, i repeat, no American company to make something that the US GOV'T needs, they will always buy American. And why not?
--
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
quirky features? HELLO!?
by
Pfhreakaz0id
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· Score: 3
Geez. Do you know how many organizations have custom software to work with word & vba? That is not, I assure you, a "trivial feature" for many folks. If they have already written said software the cost of rewriting it in wordperfect's macro language would be substantial.
This is ridiculous. If this suit were against anyone but microsoft, you guys would be howling at what a stupid lawsuit this is.
It has to happen a couple of times
by
/
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· Score: 3
Bureaucrats do have to be held accountable somehow. Even if the money does ultimately come out of taxpayers' pockets, the fact that the department lost such a suit will look bad on someone's resume and will be taken into account for internal promotions. If we take an argument similar to yours to an extreme, one could be seen as advocating not paying victims of WW2 Japanese internment camps because the money came out of taxpayers' pockets.
Anything that makes comanies or government agencies think twice before blindly buying Microsoft crap might be worth doing. The fact that taxpayers will be shafted no matter what shouldn't come as any surprise.
--
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Re:I'm gonna tell my mommy
by
humanerror
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· Score: 4
I'm not a large fan of MS by any means but I always go by the saying "If it's not broke, then don't fix it" and if the US Dept of Labor is comfortable with a product they already use, or the feel that MS has an advantage, then thats their right as a consumer.
The US DoL is NOT the consumer in this case... I am, along with every other American citizen and legal alien working in the US whose money was taken by the government by threat of force (ie: tax dollars). It is NOT their right to squander what they have stolen from us. If I have to give up 40% of my earnings to support an unnecessary bureaucracy, I damn well want that money to be stewarded in the most efficient manner possible.
They have a set of rules in place which they do not follow as a matter of course. When I was in the military, I saw this first hand. My mother has been in government service for 24 years, and I have heard the inside scoop on how government procurement works in the civil sector. This case really is not so much about Corel's bruised ego and the M$ monster as it is about bringing to light, and to court, some basic facts that most people just accept as business as usual.
An object in motion will tend to remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. A government corrupt will remain corrupt as long as it is allowed to do so.
--
--
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
Corel sues US over MS
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
I have used both Corel and MS products. Both are good products and get the job done when one needs a word processing/spreadsheet software. I happen to prefer Corel over Office and that has nothing to do with my feeling concerning Microsofts monopoly in the market. (I believe they do have a illegal monopoly by the way) I think the suit that Corel is bringing against the US government is justified and points out a far larger problem that we Linux users (and other alternative OS') have to start pointing out to the general non-techie public. In the past I have participated in various government bids and in general the winner of the bid is usually the company who can provide the best service/product for the lowest price. If anyone bothers to check pricing for these 2 products (Corel and MS) it is easy to see that the Corel Word Perfect suite is far less costly than the package that MS sells. This lawsuit is only concerned with one incident. The same scenario is repeated over and over across the United States from the federal level to the smallest town in the country. A vast majority of taxpayer funded organizations are opting into the (in my opinion) very over priced MS Office suites. This is costing all of us an incredible amount of tax money that is funneling directly into Microsofts coffers. I find this situation incredible! By all rights our appointed public officials should using the lowest priced solutions available to them. Their personal software preferences should not be a factor when they make the decision to spend tax dollars on software solutions for their agency. Instead it should be a decision based on what gets the job done at the lowest cost to taxpayers. Their jobs are to save us the taxpayer money as they do their services for the taxpayer. Corel IS a lower priced solution to the job and I believe they are justified in pursuing a suit in this situation. I also believe that we as taxpayers are justified in demanding that our government/public agencys seek out the lowest priced solutions and that should include Linux as an operating system for use in all our agencys. It is certainly a LOT cheaper than MS WIndows and NT by a long shot.
The US and Canada have a treaty known as NAFTA. Under that treaty preferential behaviour for US companies against Canadian bidders is not allowed.
In any case the Corel case would make it easier for smaller American companies to compete against other American companies as well. The nationality of Corel is a non-issue in this case. (As you would have known had you read the article.)
Regards, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Decisions made by people or laws?
by
homunq
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· Score: 4
How would you react if this story were "Packard-Bell sues over government purchase of IBMs"? In order to have IBM come in with the low bid, the government would have to do some serious fiddling of the requirements (which is what is alleged in this case). And (in a simpler world where these were the only two vendors) they darn well SHOULD fiddle the requirements - it shouldn't have to take a two-year multimillion-dollar double-blind study to prove that Packard-Bells are worthless.
(An even more realistic example would be "MS sues government for buying Palms over WinCE". From the feature tally, WinCE seems superior - until you actually try to use that junk. But I wanted to leave MS out of the issue.)
Anywhere but the government, people can buy whatever they want for whatever reason they want. And mostly, it works out pretty well. Sure, if you buy 7Up over generic lemon-lime because of their catchy "Image is nothing" campaign, you've wasted some money - but at least you aren't wasting your time trying to justify every subjective decision in terms of objective criteria.
Government purchasing rules are there for one reason - to prevent corruption. It's not that you need all those complicated RFQ processes to figure out the best, cheapest, easiest solution; the rest of the world does fine without them. It's just that when you let bureaucrats spend a lot of money that isn't theirs, you'd better have somebody to keep an eye on them - and unfortunately, we chose lawyers for the guard job.
Is this a case of out-and-out corruption? Probably not (although the previous post which mentions Al Gore has an interesting allegation). If it isn't corruption, it's just that some bureaucrat had a subjective preference for Microsoft and rigged the bid process to favor it. Much as I think they made the wrong decision in this case, I have to support their right to do that. Otherwise, our government would be eternally burdened with the equivalent of Packard-Bells and WinCE machines.
DOD HAS DECLARED MICROSOFT THE STANDARD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5
I'm amazed the US DOD hasn't been sued for it's "IT-21" standard yet. Under IT-21, Microsoft products (NT, Exchange, Office) have been declared DOD STANDARDS! Not preferred products, not winning bidders -- "STANDARDS." Individual commands are generally prohibited from purchasing any competing products. No bidding is conducted at all, unless it's about which VAR will provide support, etc. While DOJ is attacking the monopoly, DOL and DOD are helping to maintain it. I've watched this from inside the USN for three years and continue to be amazed that companies like Corel or Sun haven't gone to court with DOD already.
Re:DOD HAS DECLARED MICROSOFT THE STANDARD
by
overshoot
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· Score: 4
Interesting -- have they simply delegated the setting of DOD standards to Microsoft? When MS changes their file formats (for instance) do the old documents become noncompliant, or is the new software noncompliant, or does some O-5 somewhere draft a program to convert to the new standard, or what?
-- Lacking <sarcasm> tags,/. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
As someone who used to own a business and had the misfortunate of having to reply to RFPs on the small chance that we might have been that supplier PRESELECTED before the bid process began, I know that this happens all the time. It's not right.
Both governments, NGOs, and private business seem to often distort their RFPs for a supplier already chosen. You won't believe how often I saw RFPs that were very obviously titled towards a specific bidder.
Imagine being required to "show familiarity with the aims and objectives of the organization". When one of the bidders has worked with them in the past, they obviously have a definate advantage! I can mention countless other ones, but this having been several years ago, I forget most of the specific details.
Often government and NGOs send out RFPs only because they are REQUIRED to do so by either laws or internal policies. Most of the time, by the time the project requirements are made, they already are leaning towards a specific supplier.
I understand where Corel's lawyers are coming from here.
Disclaimer I'm biased; I now work for Corel. I don't always agree with our legal department (no one agrees with everyone all of the time), but in this case because of my own experiences I wholeheartedly agree.
This is really, seriously, distorted
by
Froomkin
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· Score: 3
Speaking as a law professor, and sometime teacher of constitutional law, I think either
your friend goes to one h*ll of a lousy school, or
(more likely) she was pulling your leg, or
I'd start worrying about her grades.
According to her, they teach the following at her school:
Laws must be written vaguely, otherwise they will have unintended consequences that cannot be addressed(!?)
It's certainly true that there is a relationship between specificity and the inability to address unexpected consequences. But it's trivially obvious that there are many times when specificity is to be preferred. In the US, also, if a law is too vague it may be "void for vagueness" or even (in an extreme case) held to violate the constitutional non-delegation doctrine under which Congress may not make standardless delegations of power to the executive.
The 'average' American must not be allowed to participate in the political system (ie, run for Congress) because they are incapable of understanding the issues involved with creating laws that run the country
This is simply nonsensense. I honestly don't think I know a single person in law teaching who believes this. I find it hard to imagine anyone saying this to a class without becoming the subject of (deserved) derision.
The rights enumerated in the Constitution were never meant to apply to the general populace, but to an 'educated' superset (she got upset when I began calling it an 'elite class') that would then make all decisions on behalf of the people
There is maybe half a grain of truth here, but very distorted. It's true that at the time of the Framing, only white males could vote, and that a small number of states still had a (relatively low) property requirement for the franchise. The property rules lasted only a few years; giving women and non-whites the vote took much longer. But it's absurd to say that only elite men were expected to vote or have rights. Leaving aside the rather significant issues of blacks and Native Americans, it is very clear (in principle, and sometimes in practice) that the rights in the constitution, including the bill of rights, were for all.
It's less clear that political power was originally intended to be democratized. Only the House was a really democratic body; Senators were selected by state legislatures, and the President by an Electoral College - both measures designed to avoid having too much control by the unwashed. The dominant political theory of the day was more republican than democratic - rule should not be by direct democracy for fear of rule by the mob, by "passion". Hence the compromise of SOME highly democratic power in the House, including the ciritical power to initiate taxation (because tax without consent of the governed was wrong), but not what they thought of as too much.
Of course, all that was a long time ago, and the extent to which we should consider ourselves bound by the less than perfectly democratic intentions of a bunch of what some call "dead rich white guys" is controversial, especially in light of the large number of relevant constitutional amendments that make our system far more (formally) democratic today.
A. Michael Froomkin, U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087 Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
sue the US government for not using GraymalkinOffice 99. The midget programming army in my employ toiled endless midget-hours to produce this fine office suite. It does everything for you automatically. Need a report typed up? It will do it without you needed to even be there. Spreadsheets? Presentations? National debt consolodation? It's all done for you. How can anyone DARE think of using anythung but a 100% midget produced product? I mean come on man, you've gone completely sideways if you think our product doesn't whip Microsoft in the bum. Corel doesn't know what is going on, they ought to be suing Microsoft for daring to compete. Is GraymalkiSoft next? Time for the squirrel lawyer legions to hope into action.
Slashdot Mirror
That's it, I'm moving to Canada, where this shit doesn't....oh, they did it there too?...crap...
"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn
"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth."
-Henrik Ib
I don't know if the poster of this article bothered reading the link, but the summary is not accurate. Corel is suing the Department of Labor because they believe that DOL made it easier for MS to win the contract then Corel. This is significantly different then what the summary posts, which basically states that COrel is suing because they are sore losers. In this case, Corel may or may not have a case - the court system will figure it out. If it's true, DOL should be smacked - especially because a large portion of their machines had WOrdPerfect licenses already. I hate money wasters.
Not much more detail, but some:
"Corel has taken this step to ensure that the United States Government follows its own rules for open and fair procurement," said Marcia Mills, Corel's Corporate Counsel. "This is not a matter particular to Corel, nor are we targetting our competitors -- the Department of Labor's decision adversely affects all software vendors and suppliers to the government."
Trying to get a purchasing body to adhear to it's own rules of fairness is best solved in the courts, and I think Corel will do well in the case.
On the PR side of this issue, this should send a clear signal to all purchasing agents across the big and small companies alike and ask/force them to ask "are we giving the other choices a fair look?".
The more people start thinking this way (even if they're being forced to by a $10M suit) the more people will look at competing productivity apps in a better light, and competing OSs on a better light . .
This kind of thinking is good for open source, and gives quality software a chance to be judged on it's performance.
This article's summary and the implicationsof it are downright misleading.
/. is not a conventional news organization. Fine, I can understand that. However, that should be a reason to grant it lattitude on what topics it covers - not on the accuracy of the post.
We have all heard over and over that
But as a technical person I have a hard time excusing completely inaccurate information.
This is about posting a rumor and having it turn out wrong - that's fine. This is about postign a story with a summary that abolutely 100% is not in line with the article it is linked too.
It is currently so bad that there is no point in trusting the summaries.
Ken
--> Fight tyranny and repression.... read
It's a dillemma that all government spending creates: how do you pick the suppliers who will provide your (toilets / cafeteria service / word processor) *fairly*?
...
... perhaps Messrs. Graham and Rudman would like to introduce a bill requiring that Free / free solutions be included in cost analyses for all Federal government computer purchases ...
To my mind, in the end there are only more fair and less fair ways for govt. agencies to choose suppliers, no truly fair ones.
Why? Because unlike a private company (which can buy MS software all they want, for all I care, and more power to 'em, if that's what makes sense), government agencies are also simultaneously supposed to be stewarding the tax dollars of the taxpayers whose money allows them to function. Care to buy a toilet seat marked up by the Pentagon? Probably not -- because that 'stewardship' function often gets lost in the mix, since accountability is low / anonymity hight / consequences indirect / proof elusive.
The Labor Dept. may have sound, thought-out reasons why they want MS products: they've probably come up with a middle- or long-term scenario which says that preserving existing compatibilities is the most economical solution for them. No analysis of that kind is untainted by the assumption set of those who create it, of course -- all I'm saying is that it's likely that their analysis people say "For the reasons X, Y and Z, we need to stick with Word and Excel, therefore with Microsoft." Possibly very shortsighted, but then concrete reasons are often more persuasive than statements about principle and potential. Also, if I can *prove* (on paper, anyhow) that my answer will save you $500 a year, while your solution merely provides the *potential* to save $5,000 a year
Arguments like "Shouldn't we be using open file formats like XML for all documents, so that the choice of application vendors becomes a fluid and mutable one?!" I bet don't get real far in the DOL.
And consider how strange it is that one arm of the US Fed. govt. is trying to chop up (or at least demote) Microsoft, while another says "Yep, these are the guys whose software we like!" Computer companies (hard and software) love Govt. sales, at least once the elaborate bidding and qualification process is over, because they know that once in the door, govt. bodies tend to re-order rather than switch vendors at the drop of a hat. Think Morton-Thiokol.
Shades of the two French senators
timothy
p.s. I think the Dept. of Labor should be jettisoned, anyhow. This here's just one more reason.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
FWIW, I've been there a few times. In theory, Government RFQs are supposed to set out the needed characteristics; the order is required by law to go to the lowest bidder complying with the requirements. In theory this prevents corruption by leveling the playing field. In practice, bureaucrats get around it by writing the requirements to exactly match the (preselected) product.
For instance, I once saw an RFQ that specified the exact length of the power cord plus or minus a quarter inch. Amazingly, that was the length of IBM's cord, but not one commercially available. All of the other bidders had to have custom cords made (at extra cost.) The same pattern was repeated all through the RFQ.
In Corel's case, what appears to have happened was that the Labor Department insisted on several of Word's quirkier features (e.g., macro language) which almost nobody uses. Instant disqualification for everyone but Microsoft.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Perhaps what is needed is a boycott by all government institutions of companies under investigation for antitrust violations. At the very least, they shouldn't be making exclusive deals with them.
Of course, implementing and enforcing consistancy of moral purpose with such an enormous bureaucracy is probably asking too much anyway.
In Microsoft's case, it's especially easy to suspect foul play, due to the inferior nature of their products. Why would any halfway intelligent entity sign away their productivity if some shady deal making weren't going on under the table? But then again, this is the government we're talking about.
Ugggh. The corruption just makes me sick.
A bit of background. These huge monolithic government departments (ie. US DOL) usually have a central office then many bureaus under them. For example, US DOL has the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), etc. that are usually in separate buildings, separate WANs, etc.
I work for one of the larger agencies and REALLY have to laugh. Main US DOL has been using Wordperfect for years and the agency I work for has always been a Micro$oft shop. We've been begging them for years to standardize on a single standard for document interchange, and now that they've come to the darkside like us and abandoned Wordperfect, they're getting sued.
Pretty funny stuff.
Guess you have to work there...
Probably off-topic, but this reminded me for some reason of Enable. Enable was a powerful integrated office suite that ran on DOS and UNIX under X. Word processing, spreadsheet with charting capabilities, database, and communication components, all programmable via macros and a built-in 'report language' that reached into every component. Powerful stuff in its time. I think it was 1987 or so when my employer at the time bought version 1. The last I heard of them was a telephone conversation I had with one of thier sales reps in 1993 or so. She told me (with a certain excitement) that they had just signed a deal with Microsoft in which they agreed not to develop Enable for Windows. In return, MS would not port its office apps to X and compete against them in thier biggest market - the feds. Enable was selling tons of its product at the time to the federal government. A couple of years later Enable Software Inc. had completely disappeared. I recently found out that the former employer I mentioned is still running some applications we developed with Enable back in 1987! In MS-DOS windows under Win95! Does anybody know the rest of the story of what happened to Enable?
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Can I do a song, but stay on-topic?
Let's see....
Got it!
(to the tune of the Beastie Boys' "Girls", though that's not too hard to figure out....)
------------
Word!
All they want to use is Word!
They just agreed to all use Word!
Because last year they all used Word!
Corel don't think it's fair
The DOL has one vendor 'stead of a pair
And they counted conversion costs
To make a choice that cost Corel lots....
Now some of you say:
"How could they really choose this way?
They must have been led far astray:
It was MS they chose to pay
When they were investigated by the DOJ!
It not like that just started in May!
And the DOL did alread[a]y,
have a Corel license or two, eh?
And by the way,
Proprietary formats aren't ok,
The DOL should have gone to XML today.
If they had done that then I bet they
Would have more choices than Office 2K.
But RFQ's are broken anyway,
'cause bureaucrats, they like to stay
With things the way they are today.
So they use MS products to our dismay."
Word!
It's big and bloated!
Word!
It owns the market!
Word!
We hate its EULA!
Word!
Don't get me started!
Word!
All they want to use is Word!
Come Y2K time they'll use Word!
They should try something besides Word!
Word! (x12)
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Yee. I spent way too much time on that.
Shameless Self Promotion:
The original "Natalie man" is here.
Looks like the Department of Labor thinks susceptability to macro virus attacks is a feature
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Would the persident of the US ride in a Japanese car? No. Would the US military start giving all of its defence contracts to Russian companies? So why would any other US agency/department use software made by a CANADIAN company??? It doesn't make sense. unless there is no, i repeat, no American company to make something that the US GOV'T needs, they will always buy American. And why not?
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Geez. Do you know how many organizations have custom software to work with word & vba? That is not, I assure you, a "trivial feature" for many folks. If they have already written said software the cost of rewriting it in wordperfect's macro language would be substantial.
This is ridiculous. If this suit were against anyone but microsoft, you guys would be howling at what a stupid lawsuit this is.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Bureaucrats do have to be held accountable somehow. Even if the money does ultimately come out of taxpayers' pockets, the fact that the department lost such a suit will look bad on someone's resume and will be taken into account for internal promotions. If we take an argument similar to yours to an extreme, one could be seen as advocating not paying victims of WW2 Japanese internment camps because the money came out of taxpayers' pockets.
Anything that makes comanies or government agencies think twice before blindly buying Microsoft crap might be worth doing. The fact that taxpayers will be shafted no matter what shouldn't come as any surprise.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I'm not a large fan of MS by any means but I always go by the saying "If it's not broke, then don't fix it" and if the US Dept of Labor is comfortable with a product they already use, or the feel that MS has an advantage, then thats their right as a consumer.
The US DoL is NOT the consumer in this case... I am, along with every other American citizen and legal alien working in the US whose money was taken by the government by threat of force (ie: tax dollars). It is NOT their right to squander what they have stolen from us. If I have to give up 40% of my earnings to support an unnecessary bureaucracy, I damn well want that money to be stewarded in the most efficient manner possible.
They have a set of rules in place which they do not follow as a matter of course. When I was in the military, I saw this first hand. My mother has been in government service for 24 years, and I have heard the inside scoop on how government procurement works in the civil sector. This case really is not so much about Corel's bruised ego and the M$ monster as it is about bringing to light, and to court, some basic facts that most people just accept as business as usual.
An object in motion will tend to remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. A government corrupt will remain corrupt as long as it is allowed to do so.
--
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
I have used both Corel and MS products. Both are good products and get the job done when one needs a word processing/spreadsheet software. I happen to prefer Corel over Office and that has nothing to do with my feeling concerning Microsofts monopoly in the market. (I believe they do have a illegal monopoly by the way) I think the suit that Corel is bringing against the US government is justified and points out a far larger problem that we Linux users (and other alternative OS') have to start pointing out to the general non-techie public. In the past I have participated in various government bids and in general the winner of the bid is usually the company who can provide the best service/product for the lowest price. If anyone bothers to check pricing for these 2 products (Corel and MS) it is easy to see that the Corel Word Perfect suite is far less costly than the package that MS sells. This lawsuit is only concerned with one incident. The same scenario is repeated over and over across the United States from the federal level to the smallest town in the country. A vast majority of taxpayer funded organizations are opting into the (in my opinion) very over priced MS Office suites. This is costing all of us an incredible amount of tax money that is funneling directly into Microsofts coffers. I find this situation incredible! By all rights our appointed public officials should using the lowest priced solutions available to them. Their personal software preferences should not be a factor when they make the decision to spend tax dollars on software solutions for their agency. Instead it should be a decision based on what gets the job done at the lowest cost to taxpayers. Their jobs are to save us the taxpayer money as they do their services for the taxpayer. Corel IS a lower priced solution to the job and I believe they are justified in pursuing a suit in this situation. I also believe that we as taxpayers are justified in demanding that our government/public agencys seek out the lowest priced solutions and that should include Linux as an operating system for use in all our agencys. It is certainly a LOT cheaper than MS WIndows and NT by a long shot.
The US and Canada have a treaty known as NAFTA. Under that treaty preferential behaviour for US companies against Canadian bidders is not allowed.
In any case the Corel case would make it easier for smaller American companies to compete against other American companies as well. The nationality of Corel is a non-issue in this case. (As you would have known had you read the article.)
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
How would you react if this story were "Packard-Bell sues over government purchase of IBMs"? In order to have IBM come in with the low bid, the government would have to do some serious fiddling of the requirements (which is what is alleged in this case). And (in a simpler world where these were the only two vendors) they darn well SHOULD fiddle the requirements - it shouldn't have to take a two-year multimillion-dollar double-blind study to prove that Packard-Bells are worthless.
(An even more realistic example would be "MS sues government for buying Palms over WinCE". From the feature tally, WinCE seems superior - until you actually try to use that junk. But I wanted to leave MS out of the issue.)
Anywhere but the government, people can buy whatever they want for whatever reason they want. And mostly, it works out pretty well. Sure, if you buy 7Up over generic lemon-lime because of their catchy "Image is nothing" campaign, you've wasted some money - but at least you aren't wasting your time trying to justify every subjective decision in terms of objective criteria.
Government purchasing rules are there for one reason - to prevent corruption. It's not that you need all those complicated RFQ processes to figure out the best, cheapest, easiest solution; the rest of the world does fine without them. It's just that when you let bureaucrats spend a lot of money that isn't theirs, you'd better have somebody to keep an eye on them - and unfortunately, we chose lawyers for the guard job.
Is this a case of out-and-out corruption? Probably not (although the previous post which mentions Al Gore has an interesting allegation). If it isn't corruption, it's just that some bureaucrat had a subjective preference for Microsoft and rigged the bid process to favor it. Much as I think they made the wrong decision in this case, I have to support their right to do that. Otherwise, our government would be eternally burdened with the equivalent of Packard-Bells and WinCE machines.
My verdict: just another silly lawsuit.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
I'm amazed the US DOD hasn't been sued for it's "IT-21" standard yet. Under IT-21, Microsoft products (NT, Exchange, Office) have been declared DOD STANDARDS! Not preferred products, not winning bidders -- "STANDARDS." Individual commands are generally prohibited from purchasing any competing products. No bidding is conducted at all, unless it's about which VAR will provide support, etc. While DOJ is attacking the monopoly, DOL and DOD are helping to maintain it. I've watched this from inside the USN for three years and continue to be amazed that companies like Corel or Sun haven't gone to court with DOD already.
Both governments, NGOs, and private business seem to often distort their RFPs for a supplier already chosen. You won't believe how often I saw RFPs that were very obviously titled towards a specific bidder.
Imagine being required to "show familiarity with the aims and objectives of the organization". When one of the bidders has worked with them in the past, they obviously have a definate advantage! I can mention countless other ones, but this having been several years ago, I forget most of the specific details.
Often government and NGOs send out RFPs only because they are REQUIRED to do so by either laws or internal policies. Most of the time, by the time the project requirements are made, they already are leaning towards a specific supplier.
I understand where Corel's lawyers are coming from here.
Disclaimer I'm biased; I now work for Corel. I don't always agree with our legal department (no one agrees with everyone all of the time), but in this case because of my own experiences I wholeheartedly agree.
Speaking as a law professor, and sometime teacher of constitutional law, I think either
It's certainly true that there is a relationship between specificity and the inability to address unexpected consequences. But it's trivially obvious that there are many times when specificity is to be preferred. In the US, also, if a law is too vague it may be "void for vagueness" or even (in an extreme case) held to violate the constitutional non-delegation doctrine under which Congress may not make standardless delegations of power to the executive.
This is simply nonsensense. I honestly don't think I know a single person in law teaching who believes this. I find it hard to imagine anyone saying this to a class without becoming the subject of (deserved) derision.
There is maybe half a grain of truth here, but very distorted. It's true that at the time of the Framing, only white males could vote, and that a small number of states still had a (relatively low) property requirement for the franchise. The property rules lasted only a few years; giving women and non-whites the vote took much longer. But it's absurd to say that only elite men were expected to vote or have rights. Leaving aside the rather significant issues of blacks and Native Americans, it is very clear (in principle, and sometimes in practice) that the rights in the constitution, including the bill of rights, were for all.
It's less clear that political power was originally intended to be democratized. Only the House was a really democratic body; Senators were selected by state legislatures, and the President by an Electoral College - both measures designed to avoid having too much control by the unwashed. The dominant political theory of the day was more republican than democratic - rule should not be by direct democracy for fear of rule by the mob, by "passion". Hence the compromise of SOME highly democratic power in the House, including the ciritical power to initiate taxation (because tax without consent of the governed was wrong), but not what they thought of as too much.
Of course, all that was a long time ago, and the extent to which we should consider ourselves bound by the less than perfectly democratic intentions of a bunch of what some call "dead rich white guys" is controversial, especially in light of the large number of relevant constitutional amendments that make our system far more (formally) democratic today.
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
sue the US government for not using GraymalkinOffice 99. The midget programming army in my employ toiled endless midget-hours to produce this fine office suite. It does everything for you automatically. Need a report typed up? It will do it without you needed to even be there. Spreadsheets? Presentations? National debt consolodation? It's all done for you. How can anyone DARE think of using anythung but a 100% midget produced product? I mean come on man, you've gone completely sideways if you think our product doesn't whip Microsoft in the bum. Corel doesn't know what is going on, they ought to be suing Microsoft for daring to compete. Is GraymalkiSoft next? Time for the squirrel lawyer legions to hope into action.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.