...this will no doubt generate into a "my dads OS is harder than your dads OS" type situation soon, but before that happens (if I'm not too late already), can anyone explain exactly what the problem with what the Swiss did is? from what I understand, they decided they wanted to buy some software, then they went out and bought it, and then a rival company kicks up shit because they didn't get asked to tender for the deal. it probably would have been just as "scandalous" if they had to go through the (possibly) expensive and (probably) time consuming process of reviewing tenders from myriad different companies, only to come to the conclusion that the best product for them is the one they decided upon three months ago and could have implemented by now if they hadn't had to bugger about so much.

next thing you know we'll be seeing affirmative action for open source products

Here, here Geoff Mackenzie! Now AC, Redhat are well justified with their complaint no matter what company, be it Novell, Apple, Sun, whatever, was involved. Transparent public tendering is essential for when public money is spent. A private business can do what it wants, competitive pressure, share holders etc, will lessen the chance of corruption. But when taxpayers money is involved, without transparency, corruption will spread faster than swine flu. And all a corrupt public system need do for additional funds to line the pockets of its cronies is raise your taxes. (google sorry in your case bing Zimbabwe)

So AC, "better that you not comment on stories and be thought a fool than rush to comment and remove all doubt."

Don't be such a champagne socialist. They made a decision on a particular product range that is a well known and tested quantity and then went and bought it.

If I were a Swiss tax payer, I'd be impressed that a government organisation can make a decision without wasting time and money on needless bureaucracy - did you stop to think it might have been a decision driven by the technical staff themselves?

But, oh no. Not good enough for the freetards who view government contracts as something they deserve. We don't need a benefit state support system for uncompetitive software houses.

...that this is the beginning of a global challenge to governments everywhere that open their public purses to Redmond and say "help yourself".

Acknowledging Switzerland is outside the EU...and that EU rules do not apply...

There are rules in the EU that state that any large capital outlay is made against a Competitive Tender. This way the merits of each company's case can be evaluated and the best value per Euro/Pound (and whatever unconverted currencies remain) can be achieved.

Large is a relative term, it may be as low as £100k.

The Swiss choice of Microsoft as the sole supplier without due diligence is simply negligent on the part of the purchasing authorities.

If the government had bought 14M$ of Ford trucks or Toshiba Photocopiers (for example) without inviting other tenders, it would have been seen as a public disgrace.

Why should software be any different?

(and before anyone comes up with the "only Microsoft software is any good" chestnut, your chip is showing)

Mine's the high visibility one with silver stripes.

"If I were a Swiss tax payer, I'd be impressed that a government organisation can make a decision without wasting time and money on needless bureaucracy"

Clearly, that last bit would rule you at as even a prospective Swiss tax payer...

Mine's the one with Nazi gold in the left pocket, and a sheaf of red-taped papers in the right one.

Many public bodies in various countries are subject to "fair trading" rules from one source or another. MS are famous for their attempts to short-circuit or subvert them, often in collusion with greedy public officials. Often they don't bribe them outright, but offer benefits in kind, such as "factfinding" trips, use of luxurious houses in pleasant locales which just happen to be empty when said execs want a holiday etc.

Such is the way of big business sadly, beyond a certain size and hubris takes over. This isn't peculiar to Redmond, big oil companies, pharmaceuticals, arms manufacturers etc. all get away with the same. Right now, we can exclude the car industry from that list, of course, but in happier times, they'd be right in there too.

Paris, because it costs a lot to get her to put out, too.

"We don't need a benefit state support system for uncompetitive software houses."

Very true, it's about time Microsoft has to start COMPETING for their business!

They have had too many years of "state support" already.

Maybe the quality of their software will improve then too...

£24.3m contract for what exactly? Given that any new hardware they buy in the country for the next 5 years comes with Windows and that they probably have enough server infrastructure to met their current needs, then you a looking at a staggering number of say Office licenses for that sort of money; at least some of which might be met with alternatives like OpenOffice or simply continuing to use Office 2003. I don't know how many desktops this agreement covers but its is a lot of money no matter how you look at it.

And how much discount did they get over what a business gets on a select agreement? Did it reflect the size of the non-competitive contract?. The NZ government certainly found that MS did not offer enough discount this year, so after many years of rolling over govt wide licenses, they pulled out. We found in our company that using a mix of Office2007 (purchased with new hardware), OpenOffice and Google App was far cheaper than buying a site license for MS software.

I'm sure everything was above board, but part of the reason for open tenders is to be sure the contract was based only technical requirements and best value; closed awards without going to tender can hide stuff.

With public money, there is a requirement to do the best as money spent on say upgrading 100K desktops from XP to Vista could be better spent on health, education or local industry.

They know exactly what they are doing...

you don't know the swiss - democratic to the very last bone; the impression is that they have a very direct democraty (opposed to many other countries)...

but i'm just lookin at it from the other side od the EU border :)

doomed to incompatible file formats?

talk about making mountains out of molehills. Exactly how long do you think this software purchase is going to last?

At best, you're probably looking at 7 years before it's time to purchase a new suite of software. Hardly tying them eternally to redmonds coat tails.

Format incompatiblity? This is MS for pity's sake! Yes, the formats themselves are closed source, but they are also THE most universally recognised and accepted formats.

Let's not get all pissy about the .doc/.docx issue. I've seen much worse examples of format/standard/protocol abandonment in the open sauce arena.

The whole concept or terndering was brought in with the best intentions to prevent corrupt indiviuals taking back-handers.

Unfortunately, as with all buerocratic legislation, it causes the rest of us an inconvenience at best, or actual harm at worst.

I remember that we actually lost business with one company who provided the best value service, simply because the powers that be forced us to go through tender everytime we made a purchase from them.

In the end, they said it wasn't worth their time (they actually had one girl employed full-time dealing with our 'tender'), and we ended up paying more for less.

At the end of the day, closed or open source doesn't matter. You've weighed up the alternatives, made the decision, and now it's time to purchase. Oh, great. Because of the price I've got to tender.

Looks like this gonna take 3 months, not 3 days. The backups will have to wait, I suppose.

if only were just 14m swiss francs... its actually 41m swiss francs.

and there's probably more to come since some similar contracts probably haven't been unearthed yet.

meethinks we probably need them pirates to stop this nonsense, arrggh