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My wife and I were fighting like hammer and tongs. She won, she had the hammer - Tommy Cooper
Microsoft megadeal gets second chance
MICROSOFT has been granted a second six-month extension on the megadeal it struck in 2004 with the UK government, and which ran out in January.
The reprieve had been arranged in order to accommodate negotiations over a new deal, according to a statement by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the government's procurement sheriff.
The new deal should have come into effect in January. But the 2004 deal was given a six month extension in January because negotiations over the new MOU had over-run. The January extension was agreed under the same terms as the last MOU. Having failed to agree a new deal, the OGC said it had won a second extension, which will come into effect on 1 June.
The latest extension was made under new pricing terms, it said. It refused to say whether the new terms were better or worse for the government. The National Audit Office said in 2003 that government spent about £100 million a year on software licences and that the first Microsoft MOU, agreed in 2002, would save an estimated £100 million over three years.
But the OGC said in 2006 that the last memorandum of understanding it signed with Microsoft was saving the government a mere £1 million a year on software licences.
The OGC refused to supply more information. Microsoft has been falling out of favour in government as open source software, which is free to purchase, gains more political favour. The Conservative party has committed to adopting more open source software, while prime minister Gordon Brown implied last week that he was warming to the open source model.
Microsoft is also struggling to renew a similar deal to supply software to British schools. The OGC said that it did not expect to have negotiated a permanent new deal before the year was out. It gave a cryptic explanation for the delay.
It would be a "new generation agreement designed to better meet Government's needs", it said. It neither said what these needs where nor why they had, apparently, changed. But it did say the negotiations would "include wide stakeholder involvement".
As it was not prepared to divulge any but cursory details, we can assume those stakeholders do not include the tax payers who pay the bills. µ
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Your government needs secure open standards and open source solutions, not proprietary closed-source, insecure protocols and software that cost you many millions of pounds of hard-earned tax money. 

Why should you trust a proprietary Microsoft *black box* which is a proven insecure money pit, over something which is either free or of minimal cost, which has been proven to be highly secure, and is based on code which can be audited and reviewed by your citizens to judge its worthiness to be trusted with your precious data. 

You and the government that serves YOU need software that supports ISO standard ODF format NOW (not *maybe sometime in 2009 or so* for MS office). This is the same government that stated it was transitioning to open source to make better use of your money...what has suddenly changed??? MS vowing to support ODF *eventually*? I do hope Microsoft does not think that your government is stupid enough to fall for this. Give me a break. But then, there is always the *Microsoft palm-greasing techinique* (TM). If you find your MP suddenly driving a shiny new sportscar, it is time to get yourself a new MP.

You can be sure that, if Microsoft is re-involved with YOUR data, that both it and your tax money (along with your standard of living) will suffer as a result. Act now and contact your member of parliament, and personally give him or her an earful. And cut the Microsoft cord which is strangling your government institutions.
An open letter to the Open Source Consortium (sent May 23, 2008):

Microsoft *allegedly* is winning some government contracts and passing their standards though ISO via bribery, or what might be more politely termed *monetary contributions*, or disproportionately large price cuts made to disadvantage open source companies. If true, these dirty little secrets seem to *allegedly* work quite well for them, behind closed doors. But I feel the only reason for the *closed-source, closed doors* negotiations is that there is no money to be found on the other side of the door. Yet. 

Perhaps you could consider altering your home page at www.opensourceconsortium.org to indicate that some of the contributions to your organization will go into a trust fund, to be used to make contributions to political organizations, boards of education, and other government bodies who sign contracts with your member open source companies instead of accepting documented grants and other incentives from closed-source vendors. You could publicly account for all contributions and show the progress toward a given level of funds required for a given contract. Then there would be no further reason for negotiations to be done in a manner which is not open to public scrutiny. Whatever a closed-source company is offering can be publicly announced, and public contributions made to your organization after publication of the competing closed-source offer (via your web page and internet news sites). Millions of people, each contributing one dollar or what they feel is necessary to the trust fund, would allow you to match or come very close to closed-source vendor offers.

In terms of *contributions* to individuals; a *whistle-blower* bonus could be set up. Any public official who provides you with documented evidence of offers from large corporations (for example, Microsoft) which can be validated, could receive a contribution for publicly announcing such correspondence (this could be based upon a given percentage of how much refusing the offer has saved taxpayers AFTER an open-source solution is substituted and implemented). This would keep everything above-board, as well as offering public acclimation (and potential increases in voter support) for those who elect to disclose this type of information.

I will be the first to contribute if such a fund is set up. Presently from what I can determine, your membership is centered in the UK. As I live in Canada, I would also hope that the Open Source Consortium could rapidly expand their operations to include chapters in the rest of Europe, the Americas, and throughout the world.
If the OGC sets up some more kickbacks from Microsoft, justified by statements of ambitious but ultimately minimal "savings", then their rebranding really will have been worth the money if only to communicate their value to the actual "stakeholders".