09.19.10

In Search of the Full Story About Swiss Canton and Microsoft

Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 9:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft Switzerland may still be playing dirty as people in charge of GNU/Linux migrations find their way out

THE government of Switzerland was sued by many vendors for falling into Microsoft’s pocket — a tough subject which we previous covered in:

Some of the posts above contain links to other bits of evidence which show Microsoft’s unethical and at times illegal activities in the country (concerning OOXML too).

There is a new Slashdot story linking to an article in German. As expected, there is another side to this story but it is not properly explored or told (we first mentioned this story two and a half years ago or more). The automated translation is poor and details are very limited. One of our readers has looked for additional information and a discussion took place some minutes ago (log below with typos not corrected and unrelated stuff not removed to avoid distraction). If anybody can add information about this subject, please share in IRC or in the comments. We expect the matter to be discussed in the news next week (English-speaking press) and we try to accumulate as much information as possible in preparation for it. █

IRC: #techrights @ FreeNode: September 19th, 2010

Join us now at the IRC channel.

twitter	good morning	Sep 19 13:37
schestowitz	Hi	Sep 19 13:37
twitter	Slashdot had a trolly story yesterday about an apparently failed migration http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/09/18/0239243/Swiss-Canton-Abandons-Linux-Migration?from=rss	Sep 19 13:38
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Slashdot Linux Story \| Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration .::. Size~: 182.34 KB	Sep 19 13:38
twitter	any idea what that is all about?	Sep 19 13:38
schestowitz	What’s the rebuttal to it?	Sep 19 13:39
schestowitz	I didn’t see the commentrs	Sep 19 13:39
schestowitz	Someone in identica linked to this	Sep 19 13:39
twitter	I did not look into it, comments at Slashdot are not reliable or easy to look through	Sep 19 13:39
schestowitz	The story did not mention intervention by Microsoft (could be omission)	Sep 19 13:39
schestowitz	Maybe they were offered a ‘special deal’, but one needs to ask those at the scenes, not epeculate	Sep 19 13:40
schestowitz	Microsoft did this in Munich	Sep 19 13:40
twitter	Do you know the author? I’m susupicious.	Sep 19 13:40
twitter	“Open Source” at Heise	Sep 19 13:40
schestowitz	To send a “Warning” example to anyone else who ‘dares’ to show a Linux success story	Sep 19 13:40
twitter	is it another one of those fake Open Source columns	Sep 19 13:40
twitter	?	Sep 19 13:40
schestowitz	Heise is relaible	Sep 19 13:40
schestowitz	No, not fake	Sep 19 13:40
schestowitz	Worth seeing what people on the scene have to say	Sep 19 13:41
schestowitz	And to what extent this is true	Sep 19 13:41
schestowitz	There was a similar story last week in France	Sep 19 13:41
twitter	I could not tell because I don’t read German and the translated page is gibberish	Sep 19 13:41
twitter	What does come out of the story does not make much sense. The revolts are over applications, most of which probably won’t run on Windows 7 which they run back to.	Sep 19 13:42
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[royhugo/@royhugo] ♺ @jerezim: To illustrate your posts about the #GalloReport: http://ur1.ca/1obc4 #CopyrightRepression (call! http://ur1.ca/0juns) → I ♥ it		Sep 19 13:42
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: File:Gallo Report private-copyright-CRS.png – La Quadrature du Net .::. Size~: 17.86 KB	Sep 19 13:42
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: ur1 Generator .::. Size~: 1.93 KB	Sep 19 13:42
twitter	Heise also mentioned Outlook, which is a real piece of garbage. It’s hard to imagine someone making something that sucks worse than Outlook.	Sep 19 13:43
schestowitz	Lockin	Sep 19 13:43
schestowitz	But…	Sep 19 13:43
schestowitz	They need to invest to escape it	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	Similar story in Vienna	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	Question is, why was the CIO resigning?	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	Was he pressure like Quinn for example?	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	Microsoft often puts some moles around these people and then cause them trouble	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	Gates Foundation does the same thing	Sep 19 13:44
schestowitz	They toss out those who stand in its way	Sep 19 13:44
twitter	Lockin is trouble but the sooner you get out, the more you save.	Sep 19 13:45
twitter	and it’s not so bad	Sep 19 13:45
schestowitz	Or cut their research funding	Sep 19 13:45
schestowitz	Well…	Sep 19 13:45
schestowitz	All I can say is, if you find out something beyond what /, say, let us know	Sep 19 13:45
schestowitz	It’s a Heise/Slashdot information ‘monopoly’ on this story	Sep 19 13:46
twitter	I’m working in a Windows office and I’m able to get what I need from legacy apps through Windows terminal services.	Sep 19 13:46
schestowitz	I didn’t get to see an independent report… yet	Sep 19 13:46
twitter	OK, thanks, that’s what I wanted to know. There are a lot o missing details and the problems I mentioned above.	Sep 19 13:47
twitter	Windows 7 will bring all sorts of pain to places using XP. I can’t imagine how nasty a move from gnu/linux to Windows 7 would be.	Sep 19 13:48
twitter	I’m told that both samba and rdp are broken in Vista/Windows 7, so gnu/linux won’t work in a place like that – complete shut out.	Sep 19 13:49
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[glynmoody/@glynmoody] Redefining the Great Wall – http://bit.ly/axmhF9 “more accurately translated into English as ‘The Great Town’”: interesting #china		Sep 19 13:49
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Redefining the Great Wall .::. Size~: 91.21 KB	Sep 19 13:49
twitter	ok, comments from Slashdot. Maxwell’s Demon says, “Note that 80% of the users were satisfied with the new desktop, and a further 10% just complained about transient problems.”	Sep 19 13:53
twitter	Another big mistake, they made the decision to migrate in 2001 but only started to migrate in 2006. That gave the Microsoft people lots of time to make trouble.	Sep 19 14:00
schestowitz	<twitter> OK, thanks, that’s what I wanted to know. There are a lot o missing details and the problems I mentioned above.	Sep 19 14:01
schestowitz	I haven’t even mentioned this yet	Sep 19 14:01
schestowitz	Not a single article in English	Sep 19 14:01
schestowitz	twitter: maybe you can accumulate this info	Sep 19 14:01
schestowitz	Then write an article with link to backing claim	Sep 19 14:02
schestowitz	To post a rebuttal to this piece, which is in German only	Sep 19 14:02
schestowitz	Readers would appreciate the other side	Sep 19 14:02
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[richslxh/@richslxh] @pookito I think it would be a shame to see an established distro like Mandriva disappear. It has a sound community.		Sep 19 14:02
twitter	I can look around, but I think information will be lacking in English.	Sep 19 14:02
twitter	Like I said, it’s very trolly.	Sep 19 14:03
schestowitz	There’s already one thing of importance	Sep 19 14:14
schestowitz	Like how many people were pleased	Sep 19 14:14
schestowitz	But I don’t have links	Sep 19 14:14
schestowitz	And it needs to be suimmarised concisely, I think	Sep 19 14:14
schestowitz	Then we can published a more complete story	Sep 19 14:15
twitter	I hate Slashdot’s nasty java script. It does not work with Konq 3.5, so I have to pull up iceweasel.	Sep 19 14:17
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[richslxh/@richslxh] @pookito So far it looks like they’re getting pretty organised and the future looks good if they can maintain the same standard.		Sep 19 14:22
twitter	Here’s an interesting comment from an AC. The problem with Linux and (F)OSS in Switzerland is manifold:- Microsoft has a strong lobbying group in Switzerland that figuratively “bought” several members of the parliament (even members of the socialist party, e.g. Mrs Pascale Bruderer, who worked for Microsoft Switzerland for a couple of years)	Sep 19 14:23
twitter	- Microsoft’s tentacles even reach out to the Federal Council (Microsoft has strong ties to the current President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs Doris Leuthard)	Sep 19 14:23
twitter	- Mr Stefan Meierhans, Swiss “Preisüberwacher” (“Mr Price”, chief of one of the Swiss antitrust authorities), is a former PR expert and lobbyist of Microsoft Switzerland. He was appointed by Mrs Doris Leuthard (surprise, surprise).	Sep 19 14:23
twitter	- A couple of days ago, Mrs Leuthard announced the establishment of a new eEconomy Board [e-economy.ch] organization that is supposed to offer IT advice to the Swiss government and its related organizations. The appointed chief of this organization is the current CEO of Microsoft Switzerland, Mr Peter Waser. Other representatives of big US closed source software vendors are part of the board, but not a single representative of a local ope	Sep 19 14:23
twitter	end interesting comment	Sep 19 14:24
twitter	Maxwells Demon again, “The windows data base they were speaking about was a product named “Konsul” (a proprietary data base developed by a swiss company). No, I didn’t hear about that data base before either (I had to google it to find out it was a swiss product, although I suspected it due to the name), and of course it got lost in the Google translation.”	Sep 19 14:26
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[mohanpram/@mohanpram] “Sent from Ubuntu” signature to be added to all mail sent from Evolution? http://ur1.ca/1obu3 (via @omgubuntu)		Sep 19 14:30
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[pietercolpaert/@pietercolpaert] http://ur1.ca/1obud – Report of the #iRail meet-up 17th of September. Thanks for showing up, we’ll keep you posted		Sep 19 14:30
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: “Sent from Ubuntu” signature to be added to all mail sent from Evolution? .::. Size~: 30.07 KB	Sep 19 14:30
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: iRail meet-up: Report « Bon sans nom .::. Size~: 24.8 KB	Sep 19 14:30
schestowitz	twitter: could you summarise all these points?	Sep 19 14:31
schestowitz	I can make a reader’s article based on that today	Sep 19 14:31
schestowitz	To counter the AstroTurfing I see with this story	Sep 19 14:31
schestowitz	Switzerland’s govt. was sued	Sep 19 14:31
twitter	often quoted troll hairyfeet talks about how cheap windows is, how wonderful AD is and how gnu/linux is only good for niche applications.	Sep 19 14:31
schestowitz	For signing illegally a Microsoft deal	Sep 19 14:32
twitter	hmm, I’m short on time and don’t think I can get it done today.	Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz	OK, maybe later?	Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz	It’s maybe a case …	Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz	Never mind	Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz	I’ll use what you put here	Sep 19 14:32
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[royhugo/@royhugo] it seems like folks at #diaspora forgot the principle “release early, release often” http://is.gd/fhZ2l		Sep 19 14:32
-TRIdentica/#techrights-[gbraad/@gbraad] watching #Discovery’s Into the Universe with #StephenHawking on our !dreambox http://is.gd/fhZ52		Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz	And summaris that	Sep 19 14:32
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: Trouble with Diaspora – Steve’s Blog .::. Size~: 35.29 KB	Sep 19 14:32
TechrightsBot-tr	Title: http://file.status.net/identica/gbraad-20100919T133202-h9fenwy.png – Identi.ca .::. Size~: 8.97 KB	Sep 19 14:32
twitter	thanks, I’m busy moving.	Sep 19 14:32
schestowitz_log	ok	Sep 19 14:33
twitter	I’ve lived in this house for nine years and have lots of junk to pack.	Sep 19 14:33
schestowitz	I’ll use the quotes and all	Sep 19 14:33
schestowitz	From the logger	Sep 19 14:33
twitter	check you latter, thanks for all the good work.	Sep 19 14:33
schestowitz	I’m putting the log aside to arrange later	Sep 19 14:33
schestowitz	Lots of posts next week…	Sep 19 14:33
twitter	I do make time to read. :)	Sep 19 14:33