Summary: Moves reported in the news suggest that the industry's notorious bully is no longer able to force shops, governments, and businesses to use Windows

AN encouraging announcement made last month in racketware.info suggested that France was waking up to some problems with Microsoft's practices and following this important milestone, what was mentioned about a week ago in a blog was that the French government's procurement process had come under fire. OSOR has caught up with that:

On 29 December 2010, the Administrative Court of Lille vindicated an open source software publisher which challenged a tendering process by ruling in favour to annul the tender of a budget, accounting and financial management software package launched on 28 September 2010 by three public institutions.

The tender was ruled illegal because abusive technical specifications imposed the storage of data with a software package in an Oracle database and the provision of Business Objects Universe for the generation of statements and reports of financial data.

Meanwhile, further north in the UK the BSA is scaring some more businesses that allegedly used Microsoft software without a licence. They are being penalised severely:

A label company near Chester has handed over €£24,800 after it was caught by the Business Software Alliance using unlicensed copies of Microsoft Office.

The BSA was contacted by a whistleblower who asked them to investigate the company. Disgruntled ex-employees are a common source of BSA tip-offs.

This is important because the BSA'a aggression can help persuade more businesses to stay away from Windows and Mozilla's Asa, whom some people accused of defending B0ng search, explains "why Microsoft still sucks" in a new post which states: "Requiring a $200 OS upgrade to get a decent browser is either evil or terribly irresponsible. There's just no excuse for a software company with the resources that Microsoft has to abandon hundreds of millions of users like that." The tide sure is turning because Microsoft's bundling practices are being attacked, governments can no longer get a free pass when they choose Windows, Microsoft resorts to sending thugs to businesses in order to extort money for allegedly-unlicensed users, and even Asa -- who at times defended Microsoft -- is getting fed up on the face of it. The market has matured. Nobody really needs Windows anymore and Windows profits declined sharply. ⬆