We've got our own open source versus Microsoft stoush
going on in New Zealand, with the government as a key
player.
What's interesting to note ... is how little trust and
credibility Microsoft is able to bring to bear in this battle.
What triggered it was the government and Microsoft
failing to agree on a blanket three-year central software
licensing deal, named G2009.
Initially, the New Zealand Open
Source Society (NZOSS) cautiously greeted the negotiations' collapse as
a victory, but then it dawned on them that it wasn't quite so
easy. Microsoft now gets to talk to the various government agencies
individually, who may or may not spend their budgets with the
Redmondians. The difference is, there won't be a centrally
negotiated low price as there was with G2006 this time (NZOSS
disputes that the G2006 negotiations saved much money, but that's
another story).
The enraged NZOSS claims Microsoft products do not represent
best value for money compared to open source ones, and points out the big
savings on not having to pay licensing fees and dealing with issues such as poor
interoperability.
Microsoft counters this by saying licence fees are a small
fraction of IT budgets in general, and that it saw the
interoperability light many years ago and now plays nicely with
others. Besides, what's wrong with earning money by selling
software?
Both sides are correct to some extent, and I don't envy the
government CIOs caught in the crossfire.
What's interesting to note, however, is how little trust and
credibility Microsoft is able to bring to bear in this battle.
Microsoft has some good and clever people working for them in NZ
that I rate highly. They're not zealots, most use open source and
participate in discussions openly and frankly, but the M sign on
their foreheads means they're hobbled from the beginning in every
argument.
Microsoft tends to be
its own worst enemy, something the open-source movement is able to
amplify with ease.
I wrote about this years ago, when Microsoft was burning through
user trust and expectations with all the arrogance Bullhorn Ballmer
and other Microsoft top brass could muster.
At the time, I felt it would be extremely hard if not impossible
to regain user trust and I think I was right. Microsoft tends to be
its own worst enemy, something the open-source movement is able to
amplify with ease. The media coverage around the G2009
negotiations is a case in point.
How much does this matter though? Can the open-source movement
capitalise on the lack of trust? That's far from certain. Workers spending 10-hour days in front of screens and IT managers don't
tend to care about ideology, and besides, it's not their money
that's being spent. And, Microsoft knows that.
