Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement

[torledo]

Before we get too carried away, this is one EU minister posing a question in light of microsofts non-compliance. What is the likelihoood of that being agreed to by the commision...

 

Also is it not anti-competitive to bar public athorities the option of Microsoft.

 

This sounds less like a witch hunt more like a EU official moralising. Phew.

[CyberNerd]

What is the likelihoood of that being agreed to by the commision...

 

a quote from a post on the Groklaw thread:

 

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.

[torledo]

a quote from a post on the Groklaw thread:

 

Maybe i should get out more, but in practice wtf does that mean ?

[Diello]

Maybe i should get out more, but in practice wtf does that mean ?

 

Groklaw - Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement

 

Basically that only EU-specific tenders are affected, what, e.g. the UK Gov tenders for isn't covered by any ban..... I think, anyway!

[localzuk]

A monopoly would mean there wasn't viable competition - OS: OSX, Linux, UNIX, Media Player: iTunes, Winamp. IIRC from the US IE case, it wasn't that there wasn't competition, it was the other companies griping that if users were provided with something "out of the box", they'd use that as it did the job, and not look at alternatives. Ubuntu comes with OOo as standard, part of the install, yet I can choose to install Abiword if I so choose.

 

Ah, no. They were charged with abusing their position by the EU and US courts due to the fact they bundled their software and then didn't provide any information on how to create software that did the same thing via the same API's. ie. They didn't allow the same access to the system. *That* is abusing their monopoly.

[SYNACK]

All sounds a bit thick to me,

EU: You know that solution that works well for you and you have invested time and money into training and development with.

Citizens: Yeap Windows right?

EU: Yea thats the one, by the way you can't buy it anymore and you'll have to spend untold time and money to swap because we say so.

Citizens: Seriously, that will kill of some businesses on switchover costs alone as we have to redevelop our products and pay our Tech staff in actual money unlike the education sector. What is this going to do to the economy, what about those businesses and organizations that will have to waste a huge portion of their budget to comply.

EU: Oh you mean you guys, the citizens, yea. As it happens we don't really care about you, just our overly showy moral standpoint.

 

The problem I think is that it has become a self fueling fire, the EU wants to display its power by winning against MS (which the US couldn't even really do) and MS are just looking at the unreasonable demands and wondering how insane they are going to get.

 

I do agree that MS needed a good kick in the right direction but the EU is just going nuts trying to exert and prove their influence against the big bad successful business.

[localzuk]

The procurement rules are not for businesses. They are for member governments who put things out to tender.

[SYNACK]

The procurement rules are not for businesses. They are for member governments who put things out to tender.

 

Yea but it limits what the companies can tender with, for example a large scale bit of software or training program type of thing that is designed to include MS products. All of these places will need to retool to handle government stuff. That and you may end up with two distinct pools of solutions, one for government and one for businesses. It would depend on how low the costs and how high the interoperability would be on the government type options and their quality as to whether this would be taken on by business.

[webman]

Should it come round in 10 years time that we are mainly on EduBuntu or using karoshi will we see the same attitude from the EU?

 

If Edubuntu or Karoshi ever use closed standards designed to prevent interoperability with third parties and abuse their monopoly, then yes, probably.

 

However, I don't think that is very likely.

[GrumbleDook]

As previously mentioned, MS do not directly respond to invitations to tender as they would get caught in wrangling about this. Instead companies tender using MS solutions. For the EU to stop the inclusion of particular technology in an invitation to tender coming out of government body of a member state would break their own procurement rules.

[Shwaa]

Exactly, and if look at this, it is talking about Microsoft the company, not its software. From what I read of this, it is not saying that Microsoft software cannot be used, just that the company itself cannot be directly involved with any public procurements. There is nothing in this that is stopping, say, Capita from providing a solution that happens to use Microsoft products.

 

Anyway, it's too early to tell what will happen as after all, all that has happened so far is that one MEP has asked a question.

 

BTW, I wouldn't start calling it a witch hunt until the EU starts pulling MS up on odd obscure stuff that it lets other similarly sized companies get away with.

[localzuk]

Yea but it limits what the companies can tender with, for example a large scale bit of software or training program type of thing that is designed to include MS products. All of these places will need to retool to handle government stuff. That and you may end up with two distinct pools of solutions, one for government and one for businesses. It would depend on how low the costs and how high the interoperability would be on the government type options and their quality as to whether this would be taken on by business.

 

Ah, but wouldn't this force Microsoft to be more open about it's interoperability? If it's customers couldn't do business with governments, they would have to change to non-MS stuff. This would mean huge losses in income.

[cookie_monster]

@ SYNACK

 

Hahaha this subject aside you're absolutly right about that but that's the E.U. for you, it should be great but it's a shambles due to (you guessed) the twin pillars of corruption and greed.

[SYNACK]

Yea, I have to admit to the common slashdot crime of skimming a little too quickly over the source material. My bad. I do still think that the EUs overall dealings with the MS are getting OTT and I am glad to hear that others think this as well.