Comments

• Needs Sunlight

  2013-02-23 11:53:08

  It's very clear where M$ is heading with these lock-downs. I think even the Australian government might be able to see it at this point. It would be a major breach of trust for them to go down that road, given where it heads. Perhaps they can be prosecuted for heading down that road, but it would be better to avoid the trap and the litigation in the first place. The obvious ways out are LibreOffice, Calligra or Google Docs, each with the help of the OpenDocument Format.

• NotZed

  2013-02-23 21:47:04

  I think you're completely misreading the article about the Australian gov. They're completely utterly and totally a 100% microsoft shop - and this new "one contract for the whole country" thing is even worse, as it will mean no deviation from the central authority.
  
  All they did was consolidate multiple contracts into one - and just like those late night advertisements for debt-consolidation services - such a move is just another scam for further lockin.
  
  100M are just the savings ... which must be a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the annual flushing of money down the drain for the actual contracts.
  
  The article even states:
  
  "but said cutting costs further by using open source software is not his preferred tactic,"
  
  Which is political speak for: anything non-microsoft is absolutely not on the agenda, all we are doing is negotiating with microsoft and nobody else. And then he mentions some nonsense about byod - what a joke. Australia is still about where the world was 10 years ago - linux is used, but mostly in minor server roles or unix replacement. But in general, all desktops - microsoft, all email - microsoft, all intranet - microsoft, etc.
  
  What's even more offensive is that just on those (presumably annual) savings alone, they could easily fund enough development of openoffice to fix any supposed problems, wine to run any of their legacy crap, and even a linux distribution to run it on. One that looked and worked like microsoft windows xp more than microsft windows 8 ever will ...
  
  No wonder they've been having so many security problems of late.

• Needs Sunlight

  2013-02-24 09:24:23

  A proper cost analysis would have TCO include exit costs and cost of vendor lock-in. The lock-in in the new office software brings those costs to new extremes. What the Australian government is trying to do is dig a deeper hole than has ever been dug before. The quote, “but said cutting costs further by using open source software is not his preferred tactic,” shows they are well aware of that. Sadly, that statement puts them in a worse bargaining position. And even if Australia were able to push acquisition costs to near zero by threatening a credible open source strategy, the ongoing maintenance burden of M$ software coupled with the high exit cost, still make it a losing proposition.
  
  If they throw more money into the newer, deeper, M$ money pit, it is because a rat or two is selling out their country there.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2013-02-24 09:35:14

  NotZed, thanks for the correction.