Feb 17
2010
The Romanian Communications Ministry will pay EUR 90.18 million for the right to use 163,427 Microsoft licenses
A friend of mine (and one of the most active FLOSS supporters in Romania – Razvan Sandu) took the time to translate in English an article that deserves being read by more people.
I promised I’ll publish it, see below:
“This is a translation of the original Romanian article, published on February 11th, 2010 by Capital Online magazine.
The Romanian Communications Ministry will pay EUR 90.18 million (including VAT) for the right to use 163,427 Microsoft licenses – for around 30 public agencies, including some ministries. The payment will be done in nine equal batches, until 2012.
The provider of the right to use the licenses is the business association between D-Con.Net AG, D-Con.Net GmbH, Comsoft Direct AG, Bechtle Holding Schweiz AG, Dim Soft SRL and Microsoft Romania, the only provider that participated to the bidding organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI) in July 2009.
The contract was signed a month later.
The first batch of payment will be done during this year, according to MCSI data obtained by Mediafax.
“For the acquisition of rights of use, the manufacturer will provide a number of minimum 50,000 hours of consultancy and support, at no cost (…). These hours will be used by the purchasing public agencies (…). The provider will offer these consultancy hours during the entire period of the framework contract, establishing in each subsequent contract the number of hours that are necessary“, says the bidding specification.
According to Government’s Order 460/2009, the act in which the Government mandates MCSI to held the public bidding, the majority of computers and servers that get those licenses belongs to Ministry of Internal Affairs – 43,417, Justice – 25,247, Public Finances – 20,395, National Defense – 17,733, Public Health – 13,348 and Agriculture – 9,554.
In 2004, the Romanian Government and Microsoft signed a contract that stipulated using the products of the American company for five years. The clauses stipulated the use of about 50,000 Microsoft licenses for 54 million USD – that have been already paid.
Together with the amounts that were to be paid in 2009, totalizing $57.86 million, the value of the 2004 contract arrived at $111.86 millions.
Microsoft is the biggest international software manufacturer.
SOURCE: Mediafax“
Last year at eLiberatica, we raised some questions about this contract. Of course, without any result… At least, the world should know. And spread the word. Here is the link to eWEEK article Romania Issues €100 Million To Microsoft Without Bids.
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I suspect some bribing / backroom dealing / dishonest behavior was involved in this transaction.
That’s why it makes sense to keep our FLOSS conferences clean (ethically sponsored).
Microsoft has no business sponsoring a FLOSS conference. Let’s keep them at arm’s length.
Dan, we can make many suppositions. The real problem is that nobody there is asking the government about these things. Nobody is really taking actions to make these contracts transparent. The people are finding about it only after the deal is closed. And we talk here about ten and hundreds of millions. Public money from the pockets of Romanians. At least if the country would be so rich that could afford it…
Related to sponsorship, as far as I’ll be in charge organizing eLiberatica, I can promise you no sponsor would influence somehow their position at the event.
On the other side, I still consider that any legal organization should be allowed to sponsor eLiberatica as far as this will not influence in a way or another the honesty of the conference or would favor them.
Regarding Microsoft, they have the right to come and present their facts, is the single way for FLOSS community to meet them and tell them what they think. Remember, they are on our territory there. And I see this like a positive fact. How do you want to change them if you don’t speak to them?
> Related to sponsorship, as far as I’ll be in charge organizing eLiberatica, I can promise you no sponsor would influence somehow
> their position at the event.
> On the other side, I still consider that any legal organization should be allowed to sponsor eLiberatica as far as this will not
> influence in a way or another the honesty of the conference or would favor them.
Lucian, please understand that the FLOSS-promoting effect of any Linux/Open-Source conference is to a very large extent diluted by having Microsoft on the sponsor list. It’s like listening to your doctor telling you about how you should quit smoking because it’s bad for your health … and then going outside together for a cigarette. That’s cognitive dissonance.
> Regarding Microsoft, they have the right to come and present their facts, is the single way for FLOSS community to meet them and
> tell them what they think. Remember, they are on our territory there. And I see this like a positive fact. How do you want to
> change them if you don’t speak to them?
Lucian, thinking that you will somehow be able to “change Microsoft by talking to them” is a very, very dangerous mindset.
Not only will it get you nowhere, but you are playing right into their hands.
It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to attempt to destroy FLOSS (or at least slow down its adoption).
Do you think Microsoft might change course if you talk to them? Look at what they’re really doing behind the scenes, while sponsoring FLOSS conferences and sweet-talking the Linux community about interoperability and other “candy”:
http://slashdot.org/~christian.einfeldt/journal/223179
> The real problem is that nobody there is asking the government about these things. Nobody is really taking actions to make these
> contracts transparent. The people are finding about it only after the deal is closed. And we talk here about ten and hundreds of
> millions. Public money from the pockets of Romanians. At least if the country would be so rich that could afford it …
I completely agree.
I believe a well-organized legal entity taking the government to task on behalf of the Romanian free software community can make a real difference.
My hopes are that ProLinux can be that entity.
[...] response to comments about Microsoft sponsoring [...]
Hi Dan, thanks for your comments. I thought that is better to clarify these in a separate article "Some clarity about eLiberatica and Microsoft (again)"
please consider FSF’s Website windows7sins.org. in india also microsoft poisoning Education by promoting its products
$90M/163K seats >=$550 per seat, and the great majority of users will only be using Win7 + M$ Office. This does not include what upgrading / replacing machines to run Win7 properly is going to cost.
I suspect that the only “facts” presented by M$ to the bureaucrats and politicians were the size of the payoffs each will get after RO pays for the licenses.