decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more... 		decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

You won't find me on Facebook

Donate

Donate Paypal

No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.

What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments

Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:12 AM EDT

A member of the EU Parliament, Heidi Rühle, representative of the Green Party, has presented a question regarding whether or not Microsoft should be considered as having failed to fulfill the conditions to participate in public procurement procedures in Europe, as laid out in Article 93(b) and (c) of Financial Regulation. Here's her web page, in German, telling about it. One computer translation of one paragraph:
Here the question arises whether Microsoft can be excluded in the future from all advertisements of public jobs - no matter, whether it concerns new software for the public library of a town or the mechanism of a database for a federal authority.

Here's Heise's coverage in German, and happily for us in the US, here's the form [PDF] in English. Heise says the EU Commission has six weeks to respond in writing to such a question from a member of Parliament.

Of course, if the EU Commission wants to find a way to avoid such a penalty, no doubt it can do so. We saw how creative rule-bending/creating can be in the ISO. But the very fact that this question is being placed on the table is remarkable in itself, don't you think? Something significant has shifted in Microsoft's universe. And if they are afraid to make such a move, due to the ubiquity of Microsoft software and their dependence upon it, might that alone not inspire some deep thoughts about the wisdom of doing something about that vulnerability?

Here's the text of the question:

*********************************

TEXT:

On march 2004, the Commission adopted a decision declaring that Microsoft had seriously violated EU competition rules by abusing the dominant position in the software market, causing a huge damage both on competitors and consumers. On 17 September 2007, the Court of First Instance (CFI) rejected Microsoft's appeal (Case T-201/04). Microsoft has not appealed the CFI ruling, which can be deemed to have the force of res judicata. Following the 17 September 2007 judgment, the European Commission imposed on 27 February 2008 a substantial fine (899 million euros) on Microsoft for its non-compliance up until 22 October 2007 with its obligations under the Commission's March 2004 Decision to provide interoperability information on reasonable terms.

While Microsoft's behaviour had negative effects on millions of offices in companies and governments around the world, this fine for flouting the European competition law represents the highest amount ever imposed in fifty years of EC Competition law for abuse of dominant position. Furthermore, this fine follows a previous one of 280.5 million euros that was imposed in July 2006 essentially for the same reasons.

Pursuant to article 93 (b) & (c) of the Financial Regulation, which implements article 45 (2)(c) & (d) of Directive 2004/18/EC on public procurement, candidates or tenderers shall be excluded from participation in procurement procedures if: (b) they have been convicted of an offence concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata; (c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify;

Considering that Microsoft continued to abuse its powerful market position after the Commission's March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices, and given the fact that it is already the third time in four years that the Commission had to impose fines or penalty payment for non-compliance with a Commission decision, and bearing in mind that the 17 September 2007 CFI judgment has the force of res judicata, does the Commission consider that Article 93 (b) and (c) of Financial Regulation, read in conjunction with article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18/EC, could be applied to Microsoft in this particular case and with regard to any ongoing or future public procurement procedure? If it is the case, could we therefore consider that Microsoft does not fulfill the conditions to participate in such public procurement procedure?

Here's how Article 93 reads:

Article 93

1. Candidates or tenderers shall be excluded from participation in a procurement procedure if:

(a) they are bankrupt or being wound up, are having their affairs administered by the courts, have entered into an arrangement with creditors, have suspended business activities, are the subject of proceedings concerning those matters, or are in any analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for in national legislation or regulations;

(b) they have been convicted of an offence concerning their professional conduct by a judgment which has the force of res judicata;

(c) they have been guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means which the contracting authority can justify;

(d) they have not fulfilled obligations relating to the payment of social security contributions or the payment of taxes in accordance with the legal provisions of the country in which they are established or with those of the country of the contracting authority or those of the country where the contract is to be performed;

(e) they have been the subject of a judgment which has the force of res judicata for fraud, corruption, involvement in a criminal organisation or any other illegal activity detrimental to the Communities' financial interests;

(f) following another procurement procedure or grant award procedure financed by the Community budget, they have been declared to be in serious breach of contract for failure to comply with their contractual obligations.

2. Candidates or tenderers must certify that they are not in one of the situations listed in paragraph 1.

Articles 95 and 96 are interesting too, as they say any entity that is being banned will first have an opportunity to present its side of things, and the ban lasts for five years:

Article 95

Each institution shall establish a central database containing details of candidates and tenderers who are in one of the situations described in Articles 93 and 94. The sole purpose of the database shall be to ensure, in compliance with Community rules on the processing of personal data, the correct application of Articles 93 and 94. Each institution shall have access to the databases of the other institutions.

Article 96

Administrative or financial penalties may be imposed by the contracting authority on candidates or tenderers who are in one of the cases of exclusion provided for in Articles 93 and 94, after they have been given the opportunity to present their observations.

These penalties may consist:

(a) in the exclusion of the candidate or tenderer concerned from contracts and grants financed by the budget, for a maximum period of five years;

(b) in the payment of financial penalties by the contractor in the case referred to in Article 93(1)(f) and by the candidate or tenderer in the cases referred to in Article 94 where they are really serious and without exceeding the value of the contract in question.

The penalties imposed shall be in proportion to the importance of the contract and the seriousness of the misconduct.

  


Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement | 389 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections thread
Authored by: cybervegan on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:23 AM EDT
Please post any corrections as a reply to this thread, detailing what the exact
error is, and where it occurs, with some surrounding text so that PJ can find
it.

regards,
-cybervegan

---
Software source code is a bit like underwear - you only want to show it off in
public if it's clean and tidy. Refusal could be due to embarrassment or shame...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off-topic Discussions
Authored by: ankylosaurus on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:25 AM EDT
Please remember to make links clickable...

---
The Dinosaur with a Club at the End of its Tail

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks
Authored by: ankylosaurus on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:26 AM EDT
Discussions about items on the RHS of the Groklaw home page...

---
The Dinosaur with a Club at the End of its Tail

[ Reply to This | # ]

WHOOOPSSS!!
Authored by: ghost on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:35 AM EDT
This is SERIOUS...

Now, they do fulfill the criteria for fitting into the paragraphs, and they are
under continued investigation for other actions within EU.

This would mean that taken all in all, Microsoft could loose a market
potentially as big as roughly half the US market (excluded the private sector
from the total market) if the public sector procurement within EU is banned.

It would be a drastic step to take, and it would as likely as sadly be the first
in the history of EU if it happened, but then, it couldn't happen to a nicer
bunch.

Through their actions over the last years, they put themselves in the position,
and has nobody else to blame for it, and i think it would be a very good thing
if it actually did happen, as Microsoft really needs a big slap, and being told
that enough is enough.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:56 AM EDT
Oh, GOLD!

Here's to hoping this happens sooner than later... I think I'm moving to
Europe...

=D

[ Reply to This | # ]

Won't happen, but still nice
Authored by: Winter on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:57 AM EDT
It will not happen this time. The damage to the public sector would be too big.
Too many public offices depend on MS software to ban them.

However, the effect of this is to put procurement and ICT officers on notice
that MS might turn out to be a liabillity (I know, it already IS). So they will
have an incentive to start diversifying away from MS.

This move would mesh nicely with the large scale shift to untwine the EU from
the US economy. And MS is still seen as a primarily USA representative (which
tried to browbeat the commission). On the other hand, Linux, OO.o, and KDE
started out as European projects.

Rob

---
Some say the sun rises in the east, some say it rises in the west; the truth
lies probably somewhere in between.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It'll all blow over
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 07:20 AM EDT

A tree hugger hates Microsoft. No different than a long-haired
smelly.

MS will just get another fine and a severe frown. Write the check
and get on with it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Alternatively, mandate ODF?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 07:39 AM EDT
The green party in the EU has been working for a free information Infrastructure
for some time and with some success. They could possibly be bought off with a
move in this direction, say by mandating ODF in the covered contracts.

Perhaps, the requirement that all EU documents, websites and email follow truly
open standards.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Microsoft doesn't actually do it
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 07:56 AM EDT
the ISVs do the handling on government tenders etc...

and expect a storm of protest from the "pro-choice" lobbyists...the
one's who're all for choice being that of microsoft products only...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: trtl on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 08:06 AM EDT
Just to make it clear: this parliamentary question only deals with procurements from the EU-institutions concerning the EU-budget. So, procurements from member-states are excluded. For them, only article 45 of Directive 2004/18/EC applies.
The difference is that the EU Directive (which has to be converted to state-law) states you *may* exclude candidates or tenderers for the reasons stated. The EU Financial regulations cited state that the EU *shall* exclude candidates or tenderers.
So the impact depends on how the directive has been applied nationally. For example, the dutch Besluit Aanbestedingsregels overheidsopdrachten (Directive for procurement of government tenders) makes it optional to exclude exclude tenderers, not mandatory.

[ Reply to This | # ]

MS Partners
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 08:25 AM EDT
Would this apply to Microsoft Partners as well. There are innumerable businesses
that push MS products. It would be unfair for them to be excluded unless they
also acted in bad faith.

Even if this is more than political grandstanding, at best would only exclude MS
directly. Unless I'm mistaken, MS resellers probably do most of the real work in
these deals.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 08:26 AM EDT
I'm not sure how helpful this is - even if passed (flap, oink) I think it would

create more chaos than progress - most likely just delaying lots of IT projects

while MS dragged it through the appeal courts and probably causing lots of
collateral damage.

Ultimately, all Microsoft have done is what any big business does if they can
get away with it: and they have gotten away with it because - over the last 25
years - corporate and government customers have given issues of portability
and "second sourcing" issues in IT contracts less thought than they
would
when procuring toilet rolls. Kill off Microsoft without fixing this and the
danger is that Sun, IBM or somebody will simply take up the reins.

Of course, IBM started the whole mess back in 1981 when they launched their
mediocre, me-too Personal Computer and created the meme that it was
some sort of open standard (it wasn't: the first PC cloners had to reverse
engineer the BIOS and have their day in court to prove that they'd done this in

clean-room conditions). A single dominant vendor does not a standard make!

So what's really important now is not to dram about some wish-fulfilling
corporate death sentence against Microsoft but ensure that proper
interoperability requirements are enforced - E.g. OOXML is not accepted as an
"open standard", that networking is compatible with CIFS, not just
MS's latest
version of SMB, that websites don't just work in IE, etc.

The fact that an ISO number doesn't make an open standard, and that
mandating an ISO number can be bad, is not news: anybody who worked in a
UK/EU institution during the late 80s can attest to the grief caused by the
requirement to use the vapourware OSI networking protocols for everything
(which actually forced people into the arms of one of a very few vendors)
rather than TCP/IP** or even DECNet (proprietary, but at least there was a
choice of vendors...!)

*Interesting thought experiment: if software patents had been around in the
late 80s

** which was all designed by a bunch of black T-shirt wearing hippies using
a horribly informal "request for comments" system that left all the
important
technical decisions up to engineers, didn't even enforce proper declarative
language or military paragraph numbering and even included jokes (shudder)
so it obviously can't be a proper standard despite being the most
phenomenally successful example of interoperability in the history of
forever...












[ Reply to This | # ]

Ah, but we can dream, can't we?
Authored by: CraigAgain on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 08:48 AM EDT
. . . and who knows? It just might happen.

---
Don't change your dreams to fit reality. Change reality to fit your dreams.

[ Reply to This | # ]

EU Article 93 makes fines more than a "cost of doing business"
Authored by: ansak on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:04 AM EDT
I have to agree with the majority of people who have posted this far (cynics, all of us) that probably nothing is going to come of this, this time. But it should open the door, either to a ban of Microsoft in upgrades and gradual exclusion, or to expose the law as a sham in the face of big money. Only a law like this, duly enforced, can make a big offender view repeated fines as more than a "cost of doing business."

I can't believe Microsoft saw this coming.

cheers...ank

[ Reply to This | # ]

Microsoft was thinking: cost of doing business
Authored by: DannyB on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:11 AM EDT
Maybe Microsoft thought that ignoring court orders and gaming the system was
just business as usual. Eventually they would have to pay fines. Just a cost
of doing business.

Maybe Microsoft didn't foresee that there could be much larger consequences?
Larger than just paying fines.

Could others within the EU have such rules that could be used to exclude
Microsoft based upon the three times the EU has had to fine Microsoft?

Having Microsoft excluded would be sweet. On several fronts. It would force
the EU to ween themselves from the vendor lock-in addiction. Ultimately this is
good for the EU because it increases competition resulting in lower prices. It
also takes business away from Microsoft, lessening their ability to destroy all
forms of competition and choice. This is good for everyone outside the EU.

And yet, the EU has a new active investigation into the OOXML mess which could
have further consequences.


---
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:23 AM EDT
i think that this along with the investigation of the m$ "open
document" ISO farce maybe enough to force the m$ monster back across the
atlantic....

[ Reply to This | # ]

Heartburn
Authored by: BC on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:26 AM EDT
Will MS or won't they be excluded? I don't know. It will be interesting to
watch.

BUT...

There is guy, and he was focused on buying a search engine, today he's going to
wake up with heartburn. I find that all kinds of amusing! :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

An Appropriate Punishment for the Crime
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:31 AM EDT
That seems like a fitting punishment. If you've been convicted as a monopolist -

found guilty of using your position of power to take advantage of people in the

country you were convicted - it makes sense that a proper punishment would
be that you are no longer allowed to be hired for public works projects.

that seems like it would parallel felony disenfranchisement. obviously
corporations can't hold public offices (yet), so they should be prohibited from

public procurement processes, contracts, committees, and lobbies for a period
no shorter than their observation period.

[ Reply to This | # ]

That may be BIG
Authored by: marcosdumay on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:44 AM EDT
A few years from now, Microsoft started pushing "software as a
service" kind of contracts, where you pay every year for your software, but
you have upgrades and can change the number of licenses freely. That is an
interesting deal for public bodies, since making new contratcs is hard. So, most
of them accepted.

As a consequence of that, if the EU can't renovate its contracts with Microsoft,
they may need to replace their entire infra-structre (probably not Windows, but
Office, SQL server, development tools...), instead of just not aquiring new
stuff.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: David Gerard on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:45 AM EDT
Don't forget to submit this story to Slashdot. I have.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament?
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:59 AM EDT
Whether this gets very far depends largely on the political standing of the
Member posing the question.

Perhaps a European reader of Groklaw can give us some context on this particular
Member and the standing of the party in the European Parliament.

I know in the US there are a number of Members of Congress who do similar things
regularly but have little effect in the long run.

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Rule already exists many places
Authored by: rkhalloran on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 10:09 AM EDT
Many government entities have rules in place against dealing with proven (i.e.
convicted) monopolists, though many allow exceptions with a supermajority vote
(2/3). Looks like the EU proposal would actually make it stick.

The trickle-down effect to suppliers, contractors, etc. would potentially be
HUGE. Adoption by member countries could possibly impact procurement for
schools, with the result of students learning Not-Windows in the classroom and
taking that to the workplace; scary thought for MS.

Just raising the question shows how much MS' reputation has slid recently, and
couldn't please me more.

SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!

---
-----
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 10:29 AM EDT
Sounds like M$ needs to increase the R&D budget for their
Rule Bending and We ALWAYS Get Our Way department.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Neelie Kroes is tough girl
Authored by: Bart van Deenen on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 10:36 AM EDT
You know what's so cool: Neelie Kroes used to be an accomplished large business CEO, only later did she go into politics. She has been several times around the block in business circles, and is totally unimpressed by Microsoft and such...
Go Neelie!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: pfusco on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 11:44 AM EDT
One interesting sidebar to this that I havent seen expressed yet is that
"if" this does go down then wouldnt that facilitate the development of
Open Source exponentially?


---
only the soul matters in the end

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 11:54 AM EDT

It was stupid to begin with, so this muddy situation is well deserved - for the EU.

A lot of mindless "religion" is spread, sometimes under the cover of the law. It's one thing to impose fines, quite another to dictate pricing and product design/software engineering. The latter should be of particular interest to the Open Source group, since that somehow runs counter to the real mantra of "open", and the former, well, to any business with dreams of success.

A lot of comments are posted about, "slapping MS", "good for MS", etc., but the fact is that MS is not Microsoft alone. That is an ecosystem, a major part of which is 90%++ of the worlds desktops.

One can again spew mindless religion and say how evil that is and it should be taken down. Maybe it should. But as the saying goes, "be careful of what you ask for, you might just get it".

"Taking down" MS, isn't just taking down Microsoft. It will drastically affect the ecosystem that lives around it. Now replace "ecosystem" with "market" or "industry", then I think people will have a better grasp of it.

So if you're in IT, or some technology ecosystem, er, industry in the EU, do watch what you ask for. There's a reason why great ideas, services technologies exist today (Google, Yahoo, iTunes, Amazon, etc). Know what that is? A platform that serves as the market. The PC desktop, 90%++ of it, just happens to be Windows. It's what makes you viable. Perhaps, the reason you even have a job....

Sure, I understand that alternatives exist today and that it will happily take over. Maybe.

We can all live in theory, until reality bites.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Heise's coverage
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 12:19 PM EDT
Heise has also an English version of their site, To view
Heise's article in English use the following link :

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/106338

[ Reply to This | # ]

(e) looks pretty relevant too
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 01:14 PM EDT
Why stop halfway?

[ Reply to This | # ]

EU can choose the penalty, if any
Authored by: dwheeler on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 01:59 PM EDT
By the plain text of the language it appears Microsoft DOES meet Article 93's
conditions for exclusion.

But even so, look at Article 96: "Administrative or financial penalties may
be imposed...", which can be (a) exclusion up to 5 years or (b) financial
penalties. In short, the EU does not HAVE to exclude them for up to 5 years...
it's just that they CAN. They can also just financially penalize them, and
that's more likely.

An EU government should be asking pointed questions of itself, such as:
"Have I given a foreign company so much control over my infrastructure that
I have lost my sovereignty?" The answer is "yes", but no one
will want to hear that answer, so they'll do their best to not ask the question
:-). The problem is not that they use suppliers - we ALL need suppliers - the
problem is that they've become so dependent on a particular supplier that
they've lost their freedom of action in the process.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Article 93(e) also applies
Authored by: johnE on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 03:30 PM EDT
(e) they have been the subject of a judgment which has the force of res judicata for fraud, corruption, involvement in a criminal organisation or any other illegal activity detrimental to the Communities' financial interests;

Convicted of abuse of monopoly in several jurisdictions. That surely is "detrimental to the Communities' financial interests", n'est ce pas?

--johnE

[ Reply to This | # ]

EU must place an injunction on OOXML use in public sector until EU investigation is concluded.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 04:35 PM EDT
There is a serious question mark about the ability of OOXML to be implemented by
those government and public organisations without a major anti-competitive
impact on the market, and without illegally locking in and forcing expenditure
on overpriced Microsoft products by consumers, the private sector, and the
taxpayer.

Since the lock-in built into is very strong and since ISO is widely adopted
among government and public organisations, the EU needs to act to ban totally
OOXML's use in public and government, until the EU investigation and any
remedial action is fully complied with, otherwise Microsoft monopoly extension
by OOXML will be a 'fait accompli' by the the EU takes the case through the
courts.

There is very strong evidence against Microsoft and for OOXML being a monopoly
enhancing, vendor specific and market distorting format. Since many EU public
organisations use and rely on specification of and compliance with ISO standards
as a means of ensuring compliance with legal requirements for free competition,
and fairness in tendering, I believe there is not only a strong enough case, but
a moral and legal compulsion for an immediate court injunction placing a
moratorium on use of OOXML in any form in the EU public sector, until the EU
investigation is and any compliance of legal rulings is concluded.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 05:34 PM EDT
Some people have already read this famous EU financial regulations ?
exclusion of participation in EU public procurement procedures never implies
sales exclusion !!
actually :
Currently Microsoft never appear in principal contractor and rarely participate
in his own name to public procurement, he will be appear like an IT
partnairship to an contractor.

Great business pattern: externalize Risk and internalize Profit --)

EU public procurement can continue to buy MS softwares via another contract
(level of indirection can solve any issue !!!)
qed


Before take the shortest way (but here the simplist way), think if this way is
simply adequate...

actually, to exclude MS products from EU public procurement, and to avoid some
dead lockin the better way is to promote usage of true open standards.
NB True Open standards not OSI like standards (--) this a troll)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Keep things in perspective, please...
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:09 PM EDT
From reading some of the comments here, you would think the EU were expelling MS
from Europe and ridding all EU computers of things Microsoft. That is not the
case.
This is merely noting that Microsoft, according to EU rules, is prevented from
bidding on EU Government IT procurement tenders and is a request for
confirmation that these are the rules and that Microsoft have indeed run afoul
of them.
In and of itself, it is not busting any of Microsoft's ballons. Rather, it is a
pin-prick, but one that may cause the hot Redmond air to seep out at a slow but
steady pace.
It's real value is that of having put the issue on the agenda, forcing EU
entities to take a stand. As such, these must either confirm that Microsoft is
indeed in violation (and therefor excluded from biding), cite rules to the
contrary (and be prepared to have the courts decide), or allow MS to be in
violation.
The first is the intent behind raising the issue, the second is where MS will be
spending yet more millions on 'experts', legal eagles, and astro-turfers, and
the third is rather inconceivable (though possible).
Given MS friends in high places, my money is on MS trying to fight it rather
than reform and comply.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is Microsoft really a "candidate or tenderer"?
Authored by: devil's advocate on Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 09:17 PM EDT
I don't think so, and hence this regulation doesn't apply to them.

[ Reply to This | # ]

irregardless
Authored by: pfusco on Friday, April 11 2008 @ 07:53 AM EDT
its exponentially light years ahead of its time.

Seriously, you guys need to invest in a life. Im told it will help with the nit
picking and nattering that youre displaying here. Its just a word or two. Who
the heck cares if it is used "oh so improperly".

Peace out (or is that being used poorly also?)

---
only the soul matters in the end

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 12 2008 @ 11:15 AM EDT
Darn, I read that too quick.

I thought it said, Microsoft should be executed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 12 2008 @ 11:24 PM EDT
My opinion on this is that Microsoft has made it's bed and now has to lie in it, but it's not beyond salvation.

There are indeed some very bright, talented, and honorable folks that work at Microsoft. But for Microsoft to turn its prospects around, it needs to purge the old guard in leadership, starting with Ballmer.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.06 seconds