Quebec Govt Sued For Ignoring Free Software

Mathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that 'Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. ... Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.' The group also has a press release in English."

Don't waste my money!

Ok, I'm not Canadian, but this applies to everyone when their local government is pissing away money for no good reason.

It's one thing for a business to choose the more expensive option, the people making the choices must eventually answer to their stockholders. Well, as a voter, I'm a stockholder in my country. Wasting truckloads of money for no good reason means I'm going to vote your ass off the board of directors.

Most of the time, alternatives such as Openoffice.org are more than adequate for the job (and usually a better choice). Sometimes there are special needs which will allow for an exception, e.g. a large investment in Excel macros that are essential and very expensive to convert.

Local schools seem to be the worse offenders. They constantly bitch and moan about lack of funds, then piss away a pile of cash on a site license for Microsoft Office so they can teach their word processing course. Openoffice.org (and a few others) are perfect for the job. They are free and the cover everything necessary to learn word processing - which should be covering typing skills and how to lay out a well designed document - not how to use a specific product.

Re:Don't waste my money!

I completely agree - our school has a phenomenal amount of money spent on Microsoft and other proprietary licenses (300+ Windows machines with office and photoshop elements, 5-10 windows servers (eugh), and the monstrosity that is SharePoint to "manage" everything... I haven't seen the bill, but it must cost a fortune. Sure, I can understand needing Windows for now - there are _some_ classes that use software other than web and word processing. But spending money on Office when OO.o does absolutely everything we use it for? Inexcusable.

Re:Don't waste my money!

School's get absurd discounts on software I believe and MS software does connect well together. For example open office updates would need to be controlled separately from MS updates (which are possibly centrally managed).

In my personal opinion it's also a lot harder to fuck up a windows network setup and windows networking is a lot more intuitive (ie: you need less knowledge to passably manage it). I've had to recently deal with a school's linux network and I feel like gouging out both my eyes with a spoon. The rats nest of possible programs, setting, distros, incompatible utilities (ie: this works with X, Y and Z but not your version of Z) and so that is possible of linux alone makes me want to gouge out one eye.

Re:Don't waste my money!

Well, IMO amateurs shouldn't be sysadmins.

Re:Don't waste my money!

Unfortunately, many professionals shouldn't be sysadmins either.

One side of the coin is that folks with honest training and experience can sift through a wide range of possible technologies, then find and properly maintain the best one for the situation. The other is that the amateurs have a motivation for easy, so seem less likely to dig themselves incredible, embarrassing, money-sucking pits...

And this is government. If you're not cynical about the kind of professionals they hire, you're not paying attention :)

Re:Don't waste my money!

Any third party app installed on windows needs to be updated seperately... A linux distro on the other hand will typically supply all the apps you're going to require and update them al centrally.

As for all the myriad of possible distros, you just standardise on a single distro across the board and use the apps supported by the distributor.
The problem of incompatible versions happens on windows too, and is often worse, even microsoft apps can have incompatibilities with each other and as soon as you throw third party apps into the mix the problem gets much worse, but the apps supported as part of a linux distro will typically be tested fairly well together. Also since the linux apps are far more likely to use documented formats, the chance of third party apps working with them is higher too.

Re:Don't waste my money!

But you can have a single copy of OO.o installed on a file server from which all the clients run the software (ro). In that case, you only need to update the software in one place.

Naturally, preferences and documents are saved on the client.

Re:Don't waste my money!

Local schools seem to be the worse offenders. They constantly bitch and moan about lack of funds, then piss away a pile of cash on a site license for Microsoft Office

I agree most secondary school IT teachers seem to think IT education == Microsoft training. But it's worse than that - in the UK, most schools actually buy all their MS stuff from a reseller such as RM Computers. Which is a giant rip because, for example with servers, they just take Windows 2003 and bolt a load of "admin tools" onto the side. They deliberately make it non-standard and harder to use so they can then charge the schools giant support contracts. It also doesn't help that most school IT techs are completely hopeless.

I speak from bitter experience, BTW.

Re:Don't waste my money!

Ok, I'm not Canadian, but this applies to everyone when their local government is pissing away money for no good reason.

WTF?! Do you even following politics?

Business is greatest influence force in politics.

This is classical form of corruption: business makes a undertable deal with local politicians so that they buy their products. The statue that all procurement deals have to be public and open to competition - is the most often ignored statue. (Also popular (in 3rd world) are preferential investments, but they are quite hard to hide and rarely happen in developed countries.)

This is essentially how politicians make money. Or you thought that they simply do their thing out of pure altruism and patriotism? [Sarcasm intended.]

Re:Don't waste my money!

From TFA: "A strategic Free Software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs. However, Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options."

If it is true they haven't even evaluated the other options the complaint is valid.

Re:Don't waste my money!

could create thousands of jobs

I'm a little fuzzy on the details from TFA but... what exactly would these jobs entail? I mean, if some govt. office is running MS Office now and have 100 employees, switching to OpenOffice would create 100 openings more? Or what?

Sounds to me like an emotional argument rather than something based on fact.

Re:Don't waste my money!

In my reading, the complaint talks about opening up bidding so that local companies can offer solutions. Maybe those would be F/OSS, maybe they would be Microsoft, more likely they would be a mixture. Really doubt anyone thought opening bidding would create openings at the _government_ office... at the local VARs seems a more likely possibility.

Re:Don't waste my money!

Right now money is being spent on licenses. This money goes out of the province (indeed out of the country) to a company that sells the software. The money is then either reinvested into building the next upgrade, a new products, used for corporate overhead or designated as "profit".

The TFA notes that the amount of money spent on software in the 6 months from February to June was 25 million dollars.

If free software could be used to replace the proprietary software, then the money could be:

1) used for other government programs
2) used for training
3) used for local support
4) used for enhancing the software for new features
5) used for lining the wallets of local entrepreneurs.

But in these cases the money stays local. Since the government almost always spends all the money that it has, in all cases except for #5 the result is that the money ends up as salaries for other employees. And since this is money over and above money that they are already spending on salaries, it means new jobs.

If we work out the numbers, let's say we give the greedy entrepreneurs a million dollars. Then let's say that the other uses result in something close to 20% for equipment and capital costs.
This leaves about 20 million dollars. At a loaded
labour rate of 100,000 dollars a years (which is generous given that we've already taken out 4 million for equipment and capital costs), this gives us 200 new jobs.

So you are right, "thousands" of new jobs is probably not realistic. But if they can really reduce the outgo of software licensing money to foreign companies, it is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of jobs would be the result.

Re:Don't waste my money!

If a government body wants to save costs, saying "it will create thousands of jobs" isn't exactly a good thing. Amazingly enough when people get jobs, they expect to be paid.

In this case, I think the meaning is "create thousands of jobs IN CANADA, as opposed to Seattle. Even if the expenditure is similar, governments should prefer to spend their money on their own constituents (who will also pay tax and return a good proportion).

Re:special needs and government

When time or special circumstance doesn't allow bids, there certainly needs to be a detailed report on the reasons one vendor was chosen over another. Someone needs to put his ass on the line and say "Symphony, StarOffice, Openoffice.org, and Gnome Office don't meet our needs" for reasons a, b, and c. When an accountant comes back to audit the department, he'll back those up or pay the price.

In theory you are correct however that is not the way Government departments work. In Australia we have a taxation year between 1st July to the 30th June and at the beginning of the tax year most Government departments receive a budget allocation. It would be a very courageous IT manager that could go to his/her department head and say we can slash our budget by upto say 60% by choosing open software such as Open Office and the savings could be spent on upgrading the IT infrastructure.

What normally happens in the above scenario is the upgrade never happens because there are few people in authority that will sanction this since they perceive that the old hardware is good enough because you normally can extend the life of the current equipment with open software and the IT managers budget is slashed. Of course when the time comes to replace the ageing equipment the IT manger is accused of overspending.

Most IT managers are well aware (or should be aware) of this double standard and to keep their jobs and credibility take the easy way and buy Microsoft products since all senior department heads know about Microsoft and appear quite amenable to a three or four year hardware and possibly software update cycle even though in the long term it is much more expensive, however this can be easily and consistently budgeted for with only an acceptable increase per year.

Actually it is very easy for IT department heads to justify proprietary software over open software since they only have to point to many Microsoft and so called unbiased web sites that show Microsoft software has a much better Total Cost of Ownership than open software. The "How to Lie with Statistics" technique.

Do I think this is right? I don't but that is Government business politics for you.

En franÃais

Plus d'info en francais [waglo.com] et sur le site de l'association FACIL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre [facil.qc.ca].

Re:Tech support.

Most large organisations including government provide 90% of their own tech support. Microsoft, in practice, provides none. At least it's like that where I am. The only "support" they provide is helping to ensure all of the machines are licensed properly.

So if a local government can't figure out that they can take save the $25 million they have spent on licenses by training their IT staff or supporting local business, they really aren't intelligent enough to be working for the government.

That whole support argument is bullshit, as is the TCO argument that gets bandied about.

Re:Tech support.

Bull. Paid tech support for custom/specialized apps is one thing (the company I just left made a very significant percent of their revenue from support and maintenance), but that's just not the case for MS Office. And having paid for MS software in the past, I'll let you know that the only "support" I ever got was from someone named "John" in $randomOutsourcedCountry when I needed to re-activate the damn thing because apparently a system upgrade is a novel thing that nobody had tried before.

Ironically, those 'support' issues went away when I stopped paying for MS software, and obviously also haven't been an issue since I stopped using their stuff entirely.

Don't get me wrong - support is a legitimate concern for some software, even some from MS. But when it comes to Office software, that support is coming from the IT guy, not Microsoft.

Re:Tech support.

Depends on the IT guy's skills in explaining things - or, indeed, 'selling' the open-source solutions. Obviously I'm generalizing here, but most IT people aren't overly business-savvy, so they're often of little help when it comes to explaining why X solution is better than Y. Management doesn't care that CrapSoftwareY is talking to a set of cobbled-together Access tables where DecentSoftwareX functions off of a proper relational database unless the IT guy evaluating the software can explain the BUSINESS benefits of one over the other (and "users won't end up going batshit insane over file locking when trying to hit stupidfile.mdb over a samba share" won't cut it).

Open source guys can evangelize all they want, but if they really want to see adoption, they'll need to sell it. Not via cold calls, but at least throw some copy online that the IT staff can use when they're pitching it against whatever half-assed proprietary product that's backed by a sales department. And let me tell you, MS has a damn good sales department. /used to work in software sales, and outselling open-source is trivially easy for those reasons

Re:Tech support.

Each license bought allows for tech support from Microsoft.

Typically very little tech support from MS is included with the license. That's the "beauty" (for MS) of their pricing schemes; it's basically a money pit. First you get hooked on the software, then the support, then the proprietary formats help keep you locked in. It's like quicksand.

Is there any such tech support from open source developers? Usually not.

Again, incorrect. There are a several good open source vendors who offer excellent support. But quite often OSS shops find they need very little outside support. I would expect most schools to fall in that category, though I have no personal experience working in that sector.

Re:Tech support.

That's the "beauty" (for MS) of their pricing schemes; it's basically a money pit.

Actually, it's really just a way for them to legally cook their books. While they never provide support* on any of their consumer products, they're still allowed to have a ton of unearned revenue since they only recognize 1/12th of the purchase price each month, or however long you're supported for. Assuming it's one year and a copy of Windows is $300 (I was at Staples today, and apparently it is at least for some version of XP), that means that after a month, they've got $25 of earned revenue and $275 of unearned revenue on the books. Basically, it fucks with the numbers and makes them look richer than they really are.

Of course this isn't at all specific to Microsoft - most companies that provide some sort of support contract do the same (Best Buy extended warranties? Oh yeah). I'd suggest they abuse it a bit more than most, but what do you expect?

*you know what I mean here - I'm sure there's the odd instance of it happening, but by and large the only time you get them on the phone is for an activation problem.

$25 million

Each license bought allows for tech support from Microsoft. Is there any such tech support from open source developers? Usually not

If they went to FOSS, they could take the 25 million they spent on M$ licenses (in 08 alone!) and pay local Quebecois to provide support. In fact, that's their whole grounds for bringing the case to court.

From TFA: "Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options...the regulation implies that public markets have to enhance the local economic development as well as the Quebec technologies....From February to June 2008...sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars"

Sounds like good case to me. My parents actually worked in the kind of local government that would be using this software, and I'm here to tell you, the transition would go fine. The fact is, most of them barely bumble their way through no matter WHAT software they use (on their outdated machines). All they use is a word processor, email, and maybe a spreadsheet and simple database. Just the basics.

This from TFA actually kinda scared me...scared because I'm worried about how far the US is falling behind other countries when it comes to tech: "In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has decided to forbid the use of proprietary software in the public sector."

Re:$25 million

"In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has decided to forbid the use of proprietary software in the public sector."

Actually, I don't think that is correct. What I know is that a motion has been passed that requires the government to consider alternatives, and give preference to open software when it is equally suitable. The government subsequently ordered a lot of software from Microsoft, without investigating alternatives. This stirred up some commotion, after which a motion was adopted that requires the government to carry out the previous motion. I don't know what has happened since then, but I don't think forbidding proprietary software actually happened.

Re:Tech support.

I don't really know. I do know public education contains some of the most laughable IT staffs in existence, though.

I would take a guess that it's all about the feeling of security. Managers (or whatever government equivalent) are going to feel safer with business solutions rather than open-source alternatives because of support for bugs or other problems. If MS Word screws up, you call Microsoft. If Open Office (using it as an example) screws up, what then? There's no business guarantee that OO will respond in a timely manner to the problem.

I've worked in a school so I've got a bit of experience here.

Laughable IT staff or not (and there is a glimmer of truth in that), managers (or whoever has the role of managing IT - often a teacher) does indeed get the warm fuzzies from buying as much as possible from big companies like Microsoft.

Furthermore, there's another angle. It's fairly common to find that the companies that supply schools (and here I'm talking about primary/secondary level education in the UK) don't tend to supply many businesses and vice versa. The companies that do supply schools will tell you that this is because they specialise in education and can offer better support more appropriate for schools. Many of these companies have been supplying schools for many years and are more-or-less 100% Microsoft shops. Guess what they put in?

Anyone who's any good at IT and has worked in a school will know that this is complete bullshit and that there are dozens of small consulting companies would love to have a few school contracts and could do a perfectly good job for a lot less. However, in the valley of the blind and all that.... there are plenty of schools that believe they're getting a good deal because they don't have anyone on staff who knows enough to tell them otherwise.

Re:Please Rate the Canadian Justice System

They have a distinct legal system from the rest of Canada.
No, I'm not kidding.

I'm not sure why you'd consider this odd. I can think of at least two OECD countries with varying internal legal systems, besides Canada. In the USA, Louisiana is the only U.S. state partially based on French and Spanish codes and ultimately Roman law, as opposed to English common law [wikipedia.org]. In the UK, Scotland [wikipedia.org] has its own unique legal system - right down to three possible verdicts in a jury trial ("Not proven"). I believe, though I can't find a reference right now, that New York had a feudal-based system of property law until the late 19th century (unlike Scotland, where the feudal system gasped its last breath in 2006 or so... I got a letter from my "feudal superior" a year or so back)