Microsoft Accused of Bribing Gov't Officials Moving to Open Source (Boycott Novell)

[Drew Wilson]

MICROSOFT is behaving in a very ugly fashion these days. Yesterday we wrote about the latest from Switzerland and Groklaw has found this article, on which it remarked as follows: “The article in German indicates that Switzerland signed a deal with Microsoft in a private deal, without asking for bids. This is permitted, I gather, in circumstances where the vendor is the only one who offers whatever it is the government wants. But FOSS exists.”

Another European country where Microsoft behaves very badly is the Netherlands, which Microsoft threatened to sue for 'daring' to move to Free software (and away from Microsoft). Having tried to buy off the opposition (and probably failed), Microsoft is now taking it all the way to the top. An anonymous reader showed us this report last night.

Recently, Microsoft was sharply criticised by the Amsterdam city council. It appears that Microsoft is now hitting back by running Amsterdam down in the corridors of the European Parliament. Or is it?

Amsterdam wants to lead the way in the introduction of so-called open source software in order to become less dependent on large corporations such as Microsoft. Recently, the company caused irritation by reportedly forcing an unneeded software subscription worth 800,000 euro on the municipality.

This is just business as usual for Microsoft, which lobbies and bribes on a regular basis (Sun too claims that it may be bribing). We’ve already remarked on the allegation that Microsoft is almost practically paying OEMs to drop GNU/Linux and Groklaw has just found this page.

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Why am I not surprised?

[1cooldude]

me too. Just another day at M$.:thumbsdown: