Comments on: Red Hat Sues Switzerland Over Microsoft Monopoly

By: LUGBZ & FSFE to Province of Bolzano – please don’t waste money on Microsoft | Bristol Wireless – community IT services, help and training in your aerial

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:41:24 +0000

[...] also running the risk of accusations about the improper handling about procurement processes. The protracted lawsuit against the Swiss Federal Administration, which is still ongoing, provides an example of the possible legal [...]

By: Razvan

Razvan — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:11:16 +0000

The Swiss case is so public because people gets habituated of getting their news from the Western world.

Please see what Microsoft did in Romania – the same abuse and commercial monopoly:

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/news-it-infrastructure/romania-issues-100-million-to-microsoft-without-bids-1000

So we expect a common position of Europe against Microsoft – not because it is an aAmerican company, but because THEY ARE DOING EVIL.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:56:34 +0000

I am a swiss tax payer and I am happy such illegal behaviour are pointed out. Companies such as RedHat, Mandriva, Canonical, Novel, and others should certainly be able to come up with economically valid offers.

By: 2pretty4prison

2pretty4prison — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:44:17 +0000

whether you’re pro os or not, or anti ms or not, the point is the following:

there is a legal procedure to evaluate the better offer. the better offer gets the contract. if a part of the swiss administration does not follow this procedure, then this is dodgy and needs investigation.

that said, all reasons the administration might have had for ms could have had their weight in such a procedure, which makes not very understandable indeed why they didn’t follow the official and legally sound procedure.

this is simply not the transparency the taxpayers are entitled to. this transparency will not have to be established by a body of jurisdiction.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:47:06 +0000

2 Me: This isn’t about suing some people. This is about suing state administrative spending taxpayers money. Taxpayer has the right to have his money spent in the most efficient way. Giving contract out of bureaucratic decision is certainly not the most efficient way. Could be that the Microsoft solution would be the cheapest, at least on short term (on long term I doubt it). But still it’s not some state bureaucrat who should decide only upon his personal preferences and laziness. In fact, it’s not only Red Hat who should sue but also the Swiss citizens whose money is handled in a dodgy way.

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:43:11 +0000

There was no bidding process, okay. It’s illegal to give contract of that amount without bidding process, right. But don’t you think that in this case, the government saved us – open source vendors or consultants – a lot of burden? What’s the point in bidding for something that will anyway get attributed to Microsoft, because a guy behind a desk will ensure to properly weight his evaluation matrix in order to backup the choice of the vendor he already decided to go with or his boss told him to choose? I don’t think that there is any point. As long as open source vendors will not offer free training in a paradise highland with each release of a product, purchasing will continue to go proprietary.

By: -ias-

-ias- — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:36:51 +0000

How can you say that unix/linux is childish?!?

Did you try to compile something in the shell?

The problem is about available applications. Almost every companies keep focusing only on microsoft OS…

If something is childish, be sure is it Dynosaur Microsoft.

98 % supercomputers in the world working on unix/linux systems…

Be grown…

-ias-

By: Me

Me — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:06:49 +0000

Ok…this is really getting out of hand. Red Hat is suing because the Swiss Govt. decided to choose Microsoft and did not choose to “bid” the contract.

This is absolutely absurd! So are you going to sue people for deciding that they want a Saturn without looking (or bidding out) other cars?

Come on guys! I use open source, but this is a bit childish.

While open source has some good alternatives, in many cases it does not compare to some of the Microsoft or commercial packages. Sorry if the truth hurts, but sometimes you have to choose what gets the job done.

Linux is does not meet everyone’s needs and falls short in many areas. It is still a geeks OS and while you can get it to bend and shape to meet certain needs, Microsoft (Apple, Adobe,etc) meets the needs of most every user.

I am sorry but grow people.

By: SomeGuy

SomeGuy — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:31:21 +0000

This is not about Windows vs Linux. Windows releases new version of Windows every 4 years which employees have to be trained anyway. The problem is that they did not offer anyone *else* to bid for this project.

By: Gis Bun

Gis Bun — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:38:26 +0000

Hmmm. Let’s see. The government [probably] uses Windows right now and they want to stick with Windows. Last I checked, there is only one Windows OS. On the other hand, if they had Linux already, there are many distros out there.

If Red Hat could supply the government with Windows support why don’t they?