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. "
Read the article, for God sake....
by
Patman
·
· 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.
From Corel's own website...
by
notsosilentbob
·
· 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."
Ok. This is getting silly.
by
soulhuntre
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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.
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
Re:I'm gonna tell my mommy
by
humanerror
·
· 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
Decisions made by people or laws?
by
homunq
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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.
Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
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
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.