A court has ruled that it is OK for the government to buy thousands of PCs with that other OS without public tenders preventing providers of GNU/Linux from competing. One judge disagreed but it was not enough to open the bidding process. This was a migration from XP to Vista/”7″ so it was a lot of work either way but the government did not use an open bidding process as is usual.
No doubt M$ wishes other countries did the same. Some do and some don’t. In many places the project must be opened for tenders if over a certain amount which this one probably would have triggered. There may be an appeal to a higher court and there could be a referendum if enough taxpayers revolt over the prospect of M$ making sweet secret deals with their government.
10349
8016
107
2
0
14332 
7212 
7166 
2724 
2035 
1233 
198 
7 
0 
0 
0 
0 
It will end as soon as governments will run out of money. Financial system based on debt will make it sooner or later but it is inevitable. It’s frustrating that it is taxpayers money and not theirs. I realized long time ago that people easily spend other people’s money. That’s why it is called globalization, they conquer us financially killing local companies. I am awaiting with patience when will this damn system fail so that people realize that money’s value is based on people’s faith in it. After all, printed money is worth as much as the paper it is printed on.
We have a writer who died last year. He tend to write : “when there ain’t money, they start to think.”
I guess that’s the way how goverments in Europe and N.America and all over the world will do sooner or later. What they haven’t done so far is educate more people who can do Linux and FLOSS and teach Linux and FLOSS. I don’t see very bright future for Microsoft ecosystem.