Nigerian Government Nixes Microsoft's Mandriva Block 327
An anonymous reader writes "After trying to bribe a local supplier with a $400,000 marketing contract, Microsoft has still apparently lost out in trying to woo Nigeria's government to use Windows over Linux. Microsoft threw the money at the supplier after it chose Mandriva Linux for 17,000 laptops for school children across Nigeria. The supplier took the bait and agreed to wipe Mandriva off the machines, but now Nigeria's government has stepped in to stop the dirty deal."
Waiting for apologies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
The Nigerian official was furious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just an hour back there was this story about MSFT including some game vendor's malformed copy protection driver for six year into every damn computer in the world. What percentage of them played that software? Why a corporate server that might end up in a blade rack without even have a dedicated monitor or mouse got this driver? Why are the corporations not demanding full disclosure of what dlls are needed and what are not? Why isn't there a third party service that will advice corporations which components of Windows could be safely removed by looking at the company policies and use patterns?
As long as the customers accept everything dished out by MSFT patiently, there is nothing we can do to make it change. Education of the customers is the most important thing if we are going to rescue computing from this monoculture.
Serves them right. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A new low...amazing (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft > Nigeria
naa... more like
Microsoft >> Nigeria.
Remember kids, a Nigerian scam artist steals from the ignorant, but only Microsoft steals from everyone (Nigerians included).
Dirty? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not a lawyer, in Nigeria or anywhere else, but is this deal really "dirty"?
The article tells us little:
"After public statements from Mandriva officials implied the marketing deal is legally questionable, Microsoft said last week that it complies with international law and the law of the countries in which it operates."
Mandriva can "imply" that the deal is "legally questionable", but this tells us nearly nothing about the actual legal situation.
Setting aside reflexive Microsoft-bashing, this may be a case of business as usual, legitimately within the scope of the law.
Until someone clarifies the matter by citing actual law, "dirty" seems like an overstatement to me.
-kgj
Re:A new low...amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Should this actionable against Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
"If this were done in the US, would it be considered illegal?"
The next question would be:
"If yes, then should Microsoft be prosecuted?"
Further:
"If not, then why not?"
And for all the Microsoft apologists:
"Is this sort of behavior acceptable from your favorite software vendor/publisher/distributor, business partner? And if so, why is it acceptable? If not, please elaborate?"
Now, now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "dumping", and in the U.S., is illegal when conducted by a monopolist. It also tend to violate a variety of world trade rules.
Furthermore, even if one can construe a scenario where it is legal (international run around the law?), it is extremely underhanded and a waste of government resources (they'd be paying for Windows and Linux).
As such, here are the issues:
1. It's probably illegal, and should be, but I'm not a lawyer.
2. Even if its not illegal, its shady business. And it demonstrates more and more than no sane company should get into bed with Microsoft, because Microsoft will do anything and everything to screw you.
"Lobbying" (Score:1, Insightful)
Not illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the statement "Microsoft complies with law" is demonstrably false. The courts have spoken.
Re:Should this actionable against Microsoft? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who would've guessed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought corruption was only a 3rd world probl (Score:5, Insightful)
I must admit that I thought corruption was a problem of the 3rd world alone. But now, we see that a [major] US corporation was perpetuating corruption.
Finally got tired of living under a rock, huh?
Re:It's just tipping (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dirty? (Score:1, Insightful)
And trying to gut your competitor by convincing part of the chain to swap part of his product for your own, through bribery, is pretty immoral even if it's perfectly legal thanks to Corporate America.
Re:Ummm (Score:4, Insightful)
Evil, NO. Unethical, YES. No one likes a cheater.
What is your definition of competition? A kickback or bribe includes any item intended to improperly obtain favorable treatment. Why didn't Microsoft just lower the per unit license cost to match Mandrakes? Are you saying that on a level playing field, Windows looses to Linux?
From the article:
Mba-Uzoukwu wrote that Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows.
Where have I heard this before? Oh Yeah, the anti-trust hearing:
In addition, Plaintiffs are concerned that there is some confusion among OEMs relating to the application of certain portions of the MDA to OEM advertisements for computers containing non-Microsoft operating systems. Pursuant to the MDA, Microsoft provides marketing funds -- in the form of discounts on the price the OEM pays for each copy of Windows -- to OEMs whose print advertisements and websites promote Microsoft's operating systems in a manner specified by Microsoft.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f205700/205751.htm [usdoj.gov]
Enjoy,
Re:Wow, just wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Microsofts standard way of bribing, you mean. Offering 'marketing incentives' is the way they've done everything from get people on certain ISO boards to making sure PC makers dont install Linux.
They seem to get away with it on some technicality, even if they couldn't get away with giving actual money directly.
In the end it's a legal grey area. For some companies and some situations it would be perfectly fine, but in the case of the convicted monopolist, I dont think there's any doubt that it's their practice of getting around legal language prohibiting certain anti-competetive behaviour.
And morally, it's reprehensible and easily equatable with bribery. Both for those accepting the money and for those giving it.
Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
If you worked for me, and i gave you the task of "Book me the best value business-class flight to australia"...
Let's say the best value would be Qantas, and they would fly me direct to australia business class for $4000...
But you received a bribe from United, who paid you $1000 to buy a ticket from them instead...
Their ticket costs $6000 and has a stopover half way, and thus takes longer.
You would benefit from the $1000 bribe, United would benefit from a sale. I would lose out on my time and $2000, because you used my money to buy me an inferior (slower) service that costs more.
You didn't do your job properly.
You wasted my money for your own personal benefit, you effectively stole from me and gave it to United, in exchange for a cut of it back.
Taking a bribe to spend someone else's money is fraud, and should be prosecuted accordingly. Also whoever actually took the bribe is not doing their job properly regardless of the law, and should be fired.
Re:Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used XP for quite some time now, willingly (I'm too lazy to deal with wine, drivers and the like and I like Portal...) and with exceptions of power outages or certain installs, I've managed uptimes in the 100+ day realm. Current record's 180 that was ruined by an above outage.
Course, the obvious difference between me and a regular user is I use common sense when surfing the net. No fancy animated cursors, no banzai buddy, no new.net shit.
Windows XP, in my personal experience, can be a very stable, reliable operating system. And for me, it just. works. Now if you've got someone doing all the above shit, of course you're going to tank your OS. BUT if they wanted to do all the same crap on a Linux box, I'd bet they'd find a way to tank that too. All boils down to the user.
That in mind, I'm not touching the Exchange comment. I know better.
Re:Dirty deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are other forms of anti-competitive behavior that are also in the "what's not fair" even if consumers may not be aware of it. Price fixing and dumping come to mind.
The perfect market you seem to have in mind doesn't exist and cannot exist.
Microsoft controls somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of desktops worldwide. That's a textbook monopoly, and the rules changes for monopolies. Note that merely being a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal, but it does mean that the allowable range of actions changes. If Apple has a secretive, closed development model, it's not creating problems for consumers, but when Microsoft does, it does effect consumers.
Now go back to Redmond, you pathetic Microsoft shill.
Re:Wow, just wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems I have with it are more of a technical point of view, about how it's not very solid, hard to troubleshoot, how to cure it if it gets borked (especially by spyware or trojans), and how stupidly hard it is to reinstall and make the new install workable. The inability to transfer software from one installation to another is very annoying. The way everything is stored in monolithic files which can only be edited through the MS interface (the registry) is a constant issue. If it gets corrupted or deleted, you're fucked. There are ways to recover, but it's not simple, and doesn't always work.
Comparatively, on a Mac OS X machine, I can backup 3 folders and I get everything: apps, data, configurations. If a pref gets hosed, it's a single text file which I can consult, edit, or delete (similar to how it is on Linux which I also like a lot). I can rebuild an OS X machine in little more than an hour, whereas Windows reinstalls take easily 3 hours including the entire patching process (which even starting from SP2 is over 100 updates now), and most software isn't even installed at that point, where with OS X, 99% of the software that I backed up is functional.
It's not quite as good, but almost on a Linux machine. grab $home,
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
You sir, are a moral pygmy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's just tipping (Score:3, Insightful)
If he's actually cleaning things up, I hope he somehow escapes harm for a long long time - Nigeria does need a big clean up, and given the amount of oil and other stuff it has it could actually do very well if all the money just wasn't draining away due to corruption.
Re:Wow, just wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
The really big surprise isn't the "incentives". It's that the American government intervened to *stop* the "incentives". Now, that could just mean that they didn't get their cut, but...
there... just adding some perspective...
Re:"Lobbying" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Personally... (Score:0, Insightful)
I've personally kept an XP system up for almost a year when it was shut off, not by crashing, but by a power failure in my house during a bad storm. I only reboot to install security updates if I personally consider them to apply directly to me. The majority of the time, security flaws are already blocked by my NAT router and/or firewall.
Having said that flaimbait as a random AC -- I do actually use Linux (Ubuntu 7.10 these days, used to be Debian unstable) on my main machine. The vast majority of the problems with Windows, however, are entirely based on the stupidity of its user base. That's not necessarily Microsoft's fault - with 95% of the user base, they're bound to have the most idiots as well. Theres a thousand things you can bash Windows (or Microsoft in general) for - but stability due to spyware is not one of them anymore. You can have the most secure prison in the world, but if someone leaves the keys in the lock it's all for nothing.
Re:IT Job Protection (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Personally... (Score:2, Insightful)
I completely agree, but why the hell would you give the keys to any old person who walks into the prison? You can agrue now that you should just turn off admin privileges and you can no longer run into this sort of problem, but how many people who use Windows know how to do that, not only that but how many people do you think know that it is even possible? I like Linux because (at least in the distros I have installed and used) you aren't admin to begin with, and being a Linux noob it was a pain to figure out how to become root and do various things. This hopefully prevents the "idiot user" from destroying anything and if they try to figure out how to become root they get plenty (in my case at least) of warnings of why they need to be VERY careful. Just my two cents anyway.
Re:Wow, just wow! (Score:4, Insightful)