Quebec sued for buying Microsoft software
Millions thrown down proprietary rathole
QUEBEC'S GOVERNMENT has been sued by an Open Sauce software group for buying Microsoft products while ignoring free software alternatives, it came to light Wednesday.
In a lawsuit filed on July 15th and just lately made public, Quebec's Open Source software association Facil said that the provincial government had refused to consider competitive bids from all software providers, but had instead abused a legal loophole to buy software exclusively from proprietary vendors, specifically Microsoft and Oracle.
Facil claims government buyers are getting around provincial laws requiring competitive bidding and local source preferences by misusing an exception that allows purchasers to buy directly from proprietary vendors when no other options are available.
Facil's president Mathieu Lutfy told the CBC, "It shouldn't be the rule. It goes against the public markets policy of the government, which requires them to stimulate competition and look for local alternatives. It's really an absurdity."
The Open Sauce group said Quebec paid Microsoft $25 million just between February and June, and estimates it is spending $80 million per year for Windows Vista licences alone.
Lutfy said, "Those are costs that could be saved."
Facil's lawsuit asks that the Quebec government be barred from misusing the proprietary loophole and be required to entertain competing proposals. It is not seeking any damages, but does request legal costs.
Quebec government procurement officials reportedly could not be reached for comment. µ
L'Inq
CBC
Comments
linux....
linux is great!!linux is the best!!
linux is extraordinary!!
Would be nice if the geeks stopped pushing linux so much, it sucks for the average user.
If it was so average user friendly it wouldnt need to be pushed so much.
Windows serves its purpose, why the quebec gov, used this loophole? Because retraining 1000's of employees will cost way more than the present windows licence and the next 3 incarnations of windows combined. most gov employees earn between 20 to 40 can an hour, it would take at least 200 hours of training per employee.
but no one wants to hear that cause linux is sooo great....
Support reactOS instead :P
Cry Me a River
Oh C'mon. Really? Have they ever TRIED to teach a government employee a new OS? How about a new application? It's literally like pulling teeth and unless they want to do it, they will become even more un-productive, further wasting tax-payer dollars.Add to that, when you have an existing infrastructure using Microsoft products, unless the open source alternative doesn't affect user experience and is comparable to an MS product in features, it is a no-brainer.
People can moan and complain all they want about Microsoft being behind the times, but when you're already tied into their software, you're not going to want to retrain your entire IT staff across a province to use a brand new tool that doesn't resemble anything they've used before and will require an even longer testing period before it can be used in production.
Geez, talk about desperate for attention loons....
Image
This is why my province has a crappy image... I guess that learning other operationg systems & software has no cost/implications!As if everyone was capable of changing from known to unknown software from today to tomorrow; hell I had trouble changing from XP to Vista!
Thats what happens when you give everyone the right to sue!
Nonsense and tosh.
The retraining angle is nonsense, because every non-technical government employee I've dealt with has been unable to work properly in Vista for at least a few months. In addition, every government employee that I have converted to Linux/OS X has taken at most that much time to adjust to the new platform.Anyone who thinks otherwise is either viewing MS products through rose-colored glasses, or is on the receiving end of an angry union. That's the real reason people aren't willing to change - laziness. But they still bitch and whine about paying taxes to subsidize their laziness, so it really must be stupidity.
Linux costs in the long term, Windows in the short term.
but if you're prepared to train everyone then Linux is more cost effective in the long run.They could switch to OpenOffice, it's virtually the same as MS Office.
XP v Vista, pah, Vista is still easier than Linux and nearly all your applications will run on Vista if they run on XP.
Can you imagine Linux running all your applications?
Linux isn't mainstream and Linux creators don't want it to be, otherwise Linux creators would be doing things very differently.
Retrain the fanboys
It's interesting to see the fanboys come out with the "it's oh so expensive to retrain everyone" argument. Most of the foot-dragging and "I can't use this - I demand brand M!" when employees are presented with new applications - yes, not even a new desktop - is about preserving increasingly archaic working habits for the sake of it: "I must <stamps foot> be able to copy an Access database into a Word document and e-mail it to some random punter who will be obliged to install all the same software to read the five numbers I wanted to bring to their attention!"Show the punters a better alternative and they'll complain anyway and say it's worse. Show the punters something that would require a week's course at several thousand dollars a pop, plus more adjustment, but which happens to be have Microsoft in its name, and they're all excited about it. Brand M is thereby upheld.
And I guess the fanboys don't mind a bit of public sector corruption, either...
tomax
I use all three, Windows/mac/Suse (in that order, but not so much Suse) - reality is that 90% of the machines in the WORLD are Microsoft based. There must be a reason for it. Say what you want, but the numbers are still there.All programs have their good points as well all programs suck.
Problems I see with Linux are:
1. Corporate Image - the stereotypical picture of a Linux admin/user to a majority of people/managers/decision makers is not very conducive to growth.
2. Fragmentation - ask 100 Linux prop-heads which distro is best for your office and get 101 answers.
3. Versions - everyone knocks Windows for the different versions, but how many are there for say just SUSE, in the past 10 years?
4. Training and Trainers. Not too many classes being offered, or instructors running around at the moment. Is Linux that easy to learn that these training facility and folks are not offering it full time?
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Apple won't make it because it is a cult. Period. The world is more than funny ads and young 'metro' sales/knowledge advisor's.
It is still clunky in interface, unable to rename mapped drives, restrictive usage for left handers, and closing a program doesn't really mean closing a program.
And all that hardware you bought for your other machines are now useless. Meaning non-swappable.
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Open Office? Egad, I feel like I'm back in early 90's or stuck in some Microsoft Works 3.0 vortex.
People like shiny things and Office 2007 is just that. Pain in the butt to learn, switch over to, but shiny to look at when working with it.