Bonum Certa Men Certa

Improper Conduct Identified as Cause for Disappointing Acceptance of FOSS in EU Authorities

Like a rigged auction

Tickets in a basket



Summary: European watchdog on unfair procurement that excludes everything but Microsoft; more pressure on the UK government to pay attention to FOSS

DESPITE pressure from US politicians (see Cablegate cables like this one), the European Commission gave Microsoft something that it deserved for breaking laws. The Commission hardly punished Microsoft, but at least it tried; Microsoft fought back with lobbyists, smear campaigns, and other dubious moves, including PR/spin. But at the same time the Commission had problems of its own. It took had become a prisoner of Microsoft. We wrote about this in previous years, so we see no need to cover this again



The investigative journalist Mark Ballard has done a good job researching for his article "European Commission buys Microsoft for 20 years without competition". To quote some key parts of the report:

The European Commission has been buying Microsoft software since 1993 without an open and public competition to assess alternative products, according to documents released to Computer Weekly.

As a result of striking its sixth successive uncontested deal with Microsoft in May this year, the Commission has ensured Microsoft will have dominated the desktop computing environment of European institutions for 20 years without allowing a single rival to compete for the business.

Documents released to Computer Weekly will raise questions about a procurement regime that allows a sole supplier to reign unchallenged for so long using legal exceptions meant only for extraordinary circumstances.

They will also raise questions about the validity of the official justifications the Commission used to secure its purchasing arrangements with Microsoft, called "negotiated procedures", the last of which concerned approximately €50m of software licences for 36,000 PCs and their supporting infrastructure across 42 European institutions, including the European Parliament and Court of Justice.

Karsten Gerloff, president of lobby group Free Software Foundation Europe, said the ongoing Microsoft arrangement was a "disgrace" for the European Commission (EC).

[...]

Graham Taylor, chief executive of Open Forum Europe, a lobby group backed by Google, IBM, Oracle and Red Hat, said they treated the negotiated procedure with "extreme caution" and failed to understand why the Commission had used it to prevent competition in desktop software.


Hopefully articles like these will pressure for change.

Only recently we saw some reports on growing pressure for the UK government to actually fulfil its Open Source software promises. Here is another new article which addresses this same topic almost 2 weeks after it all began in the British press:

Following a number of freedom of information requests, it was recently revealed that government departments were ignoring open source in the face of proprietary software, despite promises by Cabinet Officer Francis Maude.

Maude had declared there would be a “level playing field” for open source as a way to slash public spending. Yet it is evident that significant sums are still finding their way into the pockets of big firms.

TechEye contacted Tom Watson who was keen to express his support for open source in government IT, and showing support on a parliamentary level to further its use. While there is clearly support for open source, why has it been so difficult to actually bring about the necessary changes?

Gerry Gavigan at the Open Source Consortium believes that the government has failed to put guidance in place which would ensure an environment where open source can thrive.

He told TechEye that the problem with open source is from a lack of force from the Cabinet Office in putting open standards and interoperability in place.

“When you look across government it is hard to see any strategic decisions being made,” he told us.

“The government needs to make an overriding decision on the implementation of open standards before open source software can gain a foothold. Without this using open source software can actually cost more.”


Good luck to Gerry Gavigan and others who do good work to make the UK more Free software tolerant. As it stands at the moment, the UK remains one of the most Free/open source software-hostile counties in Europe, based on some older ladders.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025