US Army Signs $471,000,000 Deal for Microsoft Software

zero_offset writes "According to this article at Yahoo, Microsoft will provide software for 494,000 Army computers during the next six years. At roughly $950 per computer this clearly involves more than just the OS, although the article unfortunately doesn't provide details, and I was unable to find any references to this on the Microsoft website." The great things about this deal: the Army is going through a reseller, when clearly they have the purchasing power to buy direct; and most of the computers they purchase are normal consumer machines which will be purchased with Windows and Office already installed, so the Army will be paying twice for each machine.

Yet another 'Bitch about MS'

[yatest5]

story. Does anyone think that there should be a greater reason to post stories here than as an opportunity for 300 comments dissing MS? Sigh, let the bitching begin...

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[heir2chaos]

I agree with you that about the price of Linux, but there's obviously something more there than an operating system. They may have had a need, that their bureaucrats didn't see and open source solution for.

This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Meat Blaster]

The Navy already uses Windows almost exclusively for its day-to-day computing, and it seems to be working out alright. Admittedly, it isn't cheaper out of the box, but I could see the total cost of ownership easily being lower given that they can procure much of what they need rather than depending on somebody in house to design it.

They aren't a business. They can't afford to code up every little thing when they need it and they need to know that they can depend on somebody else to fix any problems that might come up. It's a variant of the "Who do you sue" problem. Microsoft's stuff is easily usable and ultimately gets the job done, which lets them focus on what's important.

I'd hate to think that our fighting forces are futzing around for weeks on end trying to figure out how to get fonts to anti-alias, let alone getting the whole "enterprise" to work. Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional streamline enterprise activities.

Re:Yet another 'Bitch about MS'

[Farnite]

Does anyone think that there should be a greater reason to post stories here than as an opportunity for 300 comments dissing MS? Sigh, let the bitching begin...

No, I don't think there needs to be any greater reason than this current one, it is a big deal that the army spends a TON Of money like this on microsoft software, and I think it's a poor decision on their part.

Re:Good News

[garcia]

you're absolutely insane. If anything, these are to better help smart bombs attack people.

Remember who is currently in office and what his goals seem to be.

It's 1/2 a billion and that's not enough to curtail bombing.

Is The OS Actually Included?

[Flamesplash]

Can we actually assume that the base OS is actually included in the $900+/comp. price? I think it's a little premature to assume so. Something not mentioned though is that this probably covers OS and software upgrades which can be expensive potentially

I wonder if this basically is some sort of site license for all MS products for the Army.

Minority Preference?

[Lester67]

Microsoft is not a minority owner company. I'm curious to know if the "reseller" is listed as one.

If it is, that's why the Army *HAD* to use a reseller.

Re:Good News

[anthony_dipierro]

This is almost 1/2 a trillion dollars that won't be spent on "smart" bombs.

1/2 a billion dollars, right?

Anyway, wouldn't you rather the military use expensive "smart" bombs than cheap "dumb" ones? It's not like a lack of funding is going to stop them from entering into conflicts in the first place.

Re:uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

I have numerous work and personal machines (6 or so) all running XP Pro and I cannot think of the last time any one of them crashed (back through w2k).

Most of my friends' issues aren't from the major vendors like Dell but rather self-built PC's that utilize a mishmash of buggy motherboards and the like.

RedHat and the other major distributions seem to release major revisions far more frequently than does Microsoft. To get any meaningful support on those systems you would have to actually buy the distribution or hire someone to help if you aren't capable. Free isn't that easy.

In the end I would take Microsoft anyday... and if anything goes severely wrong, there is always someone to hold accountable. You and I might not have the leverage, but the US military backed by a half-billion dollar contract sure will. Where is that accountablility with free software?

Yea, details not provided

[GMontag]

although the article unfortunately doesn't provide details

My suspicion is that there are enough details left out that the author and editor could print an alarmist article.

Further suspicion is that there are MANY MORE aspects of this contract tha have been conveniently, or ignorantly, omitted.

Little things, like perhaps Smartsoft has the better GSA rate for MS software than MS itself does? Maybe Smartsoft underbid their supplier and is providing professional services in addition to the software? Who knows, since no link to the contract award is provided and no refrence to what sort of purchase this "story" is referring, or avoiding to refer.

You guys see this all the time with the $2B/aircraft stories, that conveniently leave out all of the special tools and other pricy items that come along with each Squadron delivered with only the "journalist" obscuring the real cost of the airplane since those costs are published buy the GAO with regularity. How is this any different or even news?

irrelevant

[dh003i]

It's still OUR 400 million dollars. We could have gotten the same thing for much much less, if a FS/OSS solution had been used.

Its 6 years folks.

[mac123]

$953/computer / 6 years = $158 per year.

If this includes SQL, etc, all future releases, its likely a good deal as far as MS licensing costs go.

Re:Idiots

[dspfreak]

Hmmm... cut the military budget in half to get a national health care system? That would be a trick, since we already spend more on medicaid and medicare than we spend on the military.

Re:Yet another 'Bitch about MS'

[leifm]

Yeah, I am beginning to tire of it as well. Microsoft owns this computing paradigm like it or not. Nothing lasts forever, someday they will fall back, so lets just use our Linux boxes, keep MS at bay and either a) shut the fuck up or b) work on bringing on the next computing paradigm, whatever it may be.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't that I would like to see the Army laboring to use free software, but how considering how much damage one simple worm did to M$ based networks, do you really want the defenders of our country relying on that OS? Seems to me you could shutdown the network with a carefully worded email... scary.

Re:Good News

[destine]

...This is almost 1/2 a trillion dollars that won't be spent on "smart" bombs. Although I am not for the us military in general, I am all about it wasting it's money. Each $ wasted could be a life saved.

Personally I would rather see the money spent on smart bombs that minimalize civilian casualties. While I'm no lover of war, when it's necessary, I personally think killing less innocent people is good. So them spending huge amounts of money on insecure microsoft software seems like a terrible thing to me. Sure if we don't have any weapons we don't go to war, but we do need to defend ourselves. And that's half a billion dollars that isn't going into research giving real technical people jobs. Instead, it's going to Microsoft who will not hire new people because of this, but will most likely use half a billion dollars to destroy other smaller companies that get in it's way. So instead of creating jobs in research and development we are giving loads of money to a known abusive monopoly holder who will most likely use it to put good people out of work. I think the smart bombs have a smaller casualty rate personally.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Mac Degger]

"They aren't a business. They can't afford to code up every little thing when they need it and they need to know that they can depend on somebody else to fix any problems that might come up."

'scuse me, but a company that makes it's own multi-million dollar AAA computer game /for recruiting purposes/ AND gives it away /should/ be coding their own stuff.

Not only that, but the armed forces /are/ a business. They work with budgets, have an IT department, hell, they even have an electronic warfare department which handles computer attacks too.
Furthermore, when you use these systems to deploy nukes and other highly damaging weapons, do you want a stable system or do you rely on windows?

And before you ask, yes, I'm running winXP, because it costs shit for me via the university and it's stable enough for me. It would be a different situation if I where directing lethal ordinance...but I'm not.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Navy already uses Windows almost exclusively for its day-to-day computing, and it seems to be working out alright." Have you read about the $7 Billion NMCI project?

Re:Paying twice?

[73939133]

I RTFA and I saw NO reference to anyone paying twice. The article does not state this deal is for the OS and office, so you, Michael, should not assume anyone is paying twice.

Can you come up with a reasonable collection of Microsoft software that costs $950 per machine (on average)? I can't.

"Paying twice" seems like a pretty reasonable guess to me. That is, incidentally, also the situation in which many corporate customers are. Basically, the license you pay for with the machine doesn't quite cover enough.

Of course, the Army may be able to negotiate with some big PC vendor not to include an OEM license, but that usually doesn't help either because the vendors usually also pay Microsoft for all shipping units, one way or another.

Re:Microsoft hardly creates jobs

[jspectre]

Actually, you're wrong. Think about all the support people who will be needed for all those machines. There's going to be a lot of IT people needed in the Army now to install and support all those systems. Either military personnel or outside contractors.

*nix is great if you need computer systems that are secure, work and are cost effective. But while it's a very good server OS it probably wouldn't meet the Army's needs very well on the desktop.

Windows* boxes are wonderful if you want to spend a lot of money on software, hardware, people to maintain those systems, maintain their security and get half the work done in twice the time. Hopefully the Army won't be using it for servers, or anything else important. I'd hate to have to reboot my tank in the middle of a battlefield.

The money won't be used to create jobs at Microsoft directly but it sure will create a lot of them indirectly.

Personally I'm a little disappointed with where my tax dollars just went.

Re:Good News

[gamgee5273]

What, you think that the more MS makes the more people it needs? This isn't a car company, son! The same team is making Office whether or not it ships five copies or 5,000,000 copies. You don't need more people to create the software. And the duplicating and boxing is done by machines, so don't even think there are more jobs needed in that area.

Go back to college and take Econ 101 again.

And they privatization saves money?!

[release7]

For 471 large, the DoD could directly hire the most brilliant software minds in the country to create their own operating system and office suite and any other necessary software. What's more, the OS could be released into the public domain and made freely available to the public (perhaps without any classified code).

Instead, the DoD is at the mercy of some large corporation, obligated to spend 1/2 billion in a few years to patch all the bugs.

What a waste.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Cyclone66]

A computer game isn't as difficult to make as military spec software. If the game crashes or has backdoors or exploits, PEOPLE DON'T DIE.

Who's paying?

[theolein]

Why, you are silly. Indirectly you pay for this with your taxes. You are supporting a huge corporation that truly has no need of government handouts.

Congratulations.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[Tim Macinta]

They aren't a business. They can't afford to code up every little thing when they need it and they need to know that they can depend on somebody else to fix any problems that might come up.

Wait a minute... they just agreed to purchase half a billion dollars worth of software and you're saying they can't afford to hire people to oversee the customization and support they might need with something like Linux? For probably a lot less than half a billion dollars they could hire Linus himself and probably have more than enough left over to hire Alan Cox, RMS, and pretty much whomever else they please.

It's a variant of the "Who do you sue" problem. Microsoft's stuff is easily usable and ultimately gets the job done, which lets them focus on what's important.

If you have your own IT department custom rolling Linux distributions for you, you are going to get things that just work and are easy to use. The iRobots that debuted in Afghanistan ran Linux and I don't think anybody complained about needing to anti-alias fonts or that they were too hard to use. In fact, the soldiers had a very easy time learning to use them and found them to be invaluable. The point is, the military has successfully used Linux, they did get excellent support from a vendor, and they certainly didn't pay half a billion dollars for it.

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[lth]

"US Army Signs $0 Deal for Linux Software"

Would you care to guestimate the cost of training users? Employing linux administrators? converting existing data? Support?

Do you really think planners in business and the government base their decisions solely on what it costs to aquire the software?

Sorry to pick on you - your post was obviously a joke, but also a misconception IMO.

Result of an Audit?

[dsmoses]

I wonder if this may be somehow tied to an audit. I remember reading articles a couple year ago regarding Microsoft auditing companies and strong-arming them to buy more licenses to cover the accountability.

For 494,000 computers, I doubt the Army was able to keep track of every single on of its licenses. This may be a convenient way for both sides to look good. Army "consolidates" its IT purchasing, and MS gets a large government press release.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[ratboy666]

$471,000,000 is not "futzing around for weeks". That kind of money buys a major development effort. Or, makes Microsoft very rich. Really, if anti-aliased fonts are important, you can sure get them for a lot less than that! Pretty much whatever you want, actually. What is amazing is that free software has come so far in so little time. Of course some pieces have "corporate sponsorship" or have been donated (OpenOffice.org comes to mind).

What I find sad about this story is that a small injection of funding into the open source pool could have given comparable results, with the additional benefit that everyone would have an improved system to base on. The injection may have been as little as 10,000,000 US but it sure would have helped.

In a sense you are right -- MS offers seamless (at the UI level) integration, and they make damn sure that the GUI functions work (other stuff may be badly broken, but the "user experience" rules). Because these are among the LEAST important aspects of computing for most people who contribute to open software (my list has functionality, stability first; if you want it pretty, pay me, because I can live with text interfaces), it would take an external influence to improve these factors. And a cash payout would have worked.

What level of "enterprise" does Microsoft do well? A hint: they don't. It really is UI flash. MS operating systems don't support major transaction processing systems; they don't support major on-line bidding sites or email. We don't know if they scale well.

It's a sad story; let me call my broker and buy some more MS.

Ratboy.

Taxes

[theolein]

I just made a post on you paying for this with your taxes, and now realise that the biggest, by far the biggest iraony in this "deal" is that Microsoft gets tax breaks like there's no tomorrow.

I read with humour, the angry pro MS crowd who regularly vent their anger here on /. about the bias here, because those very same people fail to see the irony in paying for this deal indirectly with their taxes, and this to a company that hasn't exactly been paying huge dollops of taxes on it's yearly multi billion income.

If your country ever does collapse, it will be because you have a government that thinks it can generate money from thin air, very much like the horde of dotbomb failures did.

Re:Cost analysis

[ichimunki]

Jebus Crisis. Just make the ashtray out of metal, then it won't break at all. And what are they doing smoking in a sub anyway, can you say very tight environment with a limited supply of air?

Not that this invalidates your basic premise, that many military-grade goods are specially made to military spec and therefore justifiably cost more. However, I have to wonder how any Microsoft product meets the kind of quality standards set for even a simple ashtray.

Re:Microsoft hardly creates jobs

[ortholattice]

For a fraction of 1/2 billion, the Army could fund whatever cleanup or new features are needed in OpenOffice.org, etc. to satisfy their requirements. And then they'd have the software free forever after, and of course the rest of the world would benefit from it also. And it would create the jobs needed to perform this development. Everyone (except Microsoft) would win: taxpayers pay less, and the economy gets a boost with these new jobs.

Sadly, it seems instead that it's all going to Microsoft. The money will probably mostly go to pad their $40 billion (or whatever it is now) in the bank.

Re:Cost analysis

[GMontag]

Interesting that West Wing used (plagiarized is too strong) a bit from the VP Albert Gore, Jr. "reintventing government" tour of the early 1990's. When on "Late Night with David Letterman" his props were a big glass gov't standard ashtray, a big nail, a hammer and a block of wood.

He then went on bust the ashtray and explain how the pieces would be evaluated to decide if those types of ashtrays would be purchased by and for the feds.

I am pretty sure that the Letterman show was not the only stop on the tour.

Keynesian economics

[br00tus]

Keynes said that if the economy is in the dumper, one way to get the economy moving again is by the government spending money (that people with capital don't want to invest). FDR tried this during the Depression but there was enormous resistance by the wealthy to the socialistic programs - then WWII came about and government spending went to the then nascent armaments industry - which had less resistance from the wealthy, since it was coming directly from them. Since WWII, a lot of money has been pumped into the economy through the defense industry, and fat defense contracts have paid for everything from R&D that created the Internet, to technology used by Boeing from to build non-military jets. The government is pumping money into the economy by this method - the downside is it is a "trickle down" way of doing it, sort of like the current tax cuts skewed towards the wealthy, thus the idle rich will see a lot more money than workers.

Re:About $200,000,000 wasted

[aurelian]

Uhh.. hello Captain America, where do you think Redhat is from then?

Re:A soldier's perspective

[Cheeze]

yeah, because linux doesn't have a native GUI you think it's use would be hard to understand? Someone that's been running linux any amount of time could setup a machine for you that would have a GUI with only buttons for office apps, internet, and mail. It would also have the added benefit of native remote monitoring and administration, both of which the military would gain benefit from.

If the army mandated a free operating system, they could modify the operating system to only provide the services that the army NEEDs. The problems you described do not happen with a properly configured system. If the system is setup correctly, the end user would not have the ability to make changes that would require downtime to fix. You have been trained by the Windows crowd to just accept downtime and failures as part of normal operation.

I would guess even someone in B. CO 1/509th Abn could figure out. No offence intended.

This is insulting to Americans

[bigberk]

In the USA, education is a mere 14% of the military budget -- pretty sick, isn't it?

Children are losing out, and with that money Microsoft is growing. Now isn't that disgusting?

Re:Anyone here use Win for anything other than gam

[notque]

Is there anyone on Slashdot that hangs onto Windows for anything other than games?

Work.

Re:There's more to this story, I guarantee it.

[chundo]

What...are you FUCKING kidding? This is basically worst-case scenario when it comes to security. Anybody remember M$ offering their source to China? Hello, McFly?

Whereas Linux source code is entirely beyond China's reach?

-j

Re:Army of One...

[mofochickamo]

I get your joke (and think it is funny) but in fairness to Microsoft neither NT 4.0 nor XP need to be rebooted once per day. In fact, I used to run NT 4.0 at work and the only times I had to reboot was when I installed software (but not because the system became unstable... well, maybe 3 times over 2 years I got the BSOD). I now run XP and it is also very stable (only got the BSOD immediately after I installed a driver that the OS warned me about).

However, now that I think about it, maybe Microsoft releases their updates at specific intervals to try and force a reboot at least every couple of weeks without making it look like the system is unstable... hmmmm, hand't thought of that.

Anyways, don't hate on me, I also run Linux, I mean GNU/Linux (I make RMS proud), at work and at home. Also, I don't think this was a wise move for the Army. Like others have said, they coulda contributed a hell of a lot of funding to OSS. They could have just opened up their own shop and hired some great OSS people to work fulltime on their own projects. Oh well, would have been nice.

You are shitting me, right?

[twitter]

This is a thinlly disguised economic stimulus package, or they got robbed. Software merrit and pricing would never lead to a deal like that.

They are site licensing the server products, almost the entire product line. Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc etc etc ad nauseaum.

Indeed, I feel ill. What exactly does all that shit provide that free software does not? Vendor lock-in? Great.

The details aren't being disclosed because MS doesn't want their other customers getting pissed at the ball breaking that the Army gave them

Nuts. I've never heard of a non-clasified public purchase with a NDA. It's my half a billion dollars, I want the details. Only crooks who sell crap have to hide their details. You would think they would be happy to give anyone buying half a million computers a similar deal.

There's no excuse for buing into more Microshit right now. Computer hardware has been more than adequate for general purpose desktop computing for the last six years. If the software those computers came with is no longer up to the task, I suggest looking at alternate software. There are a few other good American companies that could use this kind of shot in the arm but would provide a much better product:

• Red Hat [redhat.com] has far superior server and desktop software and support.
• Sun [sun.com] also has all three and a great Productivity suit for much less than M$ Office [sun.com]
• Debian [debian.org] software quality and updating sheme are hard to beat. Yes, Star Office runs just fine on their stable distro.

We can be sure that Dell, Gateway, etc would be happy to work with any of the above software firms for this contract.

The fact of the matter is that the US Army took a half a million computer order and got themseves treated like some dinky midsized company with a thousand desktops. Next thing you know, they will be on the three year upgrade cycle [com.com]. They did it because they were told to do it that way or they were incompetent. Either way, it's un-fucking-forgivable. They have a whole, ummm, Army of technically qualified people!

Re:Anyone here use Win for anything other than gam

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Is there anyone on Slashdot that hangs onto Windows for anything other than games?

A better question is why do people on Slashdot still hang onto IE? Windows I can understand, because many of us are at work when we are posting, but why IE? I would guess that 95% of the posters on here are using IE, and that doesn't even take into account the lurkers and people who only view the front page.

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[Master Bait]

It's not a great deal, it's a lousy deal. For that kind of money, they could have bought Corel outright and would have OWNED everything outright AND have a lot left over to commission many many more video games for kiddies. Now they won't own anything but a limited-time, non-transferrable lease.

The whole US government is such a huge consumer of software, that they could save a tremendous amount of money by contracting with public universities to maintain their own Linux or BSD distro.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[1010011010]

Why does the Army need MS Office? The U.S. government went to a lot of trouble to define and adopt standards like SGML and POSIX -- only now to get locked into proprietary solutions from a criminal software house?

Re:uh oh

[macdaddy357]

No one has yet mentioned security, but it will be a big problem. Microsoft software is about as secure as an unlocked door. The enemy, and terroists will exploit this. Here is further proof that there is no such thing as military intelligence.

Re:Anyone here use Win for anything other than gam

[DigitalJEM]

hehe... I like that comment. Windows is actually a fairly good OS. While everyone complains about it, it does work, most of the time. Too bad "most of the time" isn't good enough for "most people". Then again, if switching OS's on your computer were as easy as switching cell phone providers, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt a very long time ago. :-)

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[buysse]

Actually, in a twisted way (that fits well with Reaganomics), it does make sense for the govt to buy expensive, closed-source software. They are stimulating the economy by government spending.

Disclaimer: I don't agree with this decision either, but that may well be a political reason. Open Source doesn't put more money in to the economy, sadly. More expensive might be good.

Some numbers

[pmz]

...$471,000,000...494,000 Army computers...

A FAQ I found at www.navy.mil says there are 480,000 active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army.

I know there is a bureaucracy beyond just the soldiers, but one of sufficient size to require more computers than there are solidiers??? Also, this deal appears to be just for the Army--not other DoD agencies that do a lot of stuff for the Army.

From the Yahoo! article: Keith Hodson, a Microsoft spokesman, said the contract could help the Army reduce its costs and "validates the Army's belief in our security model."

This isn't exactly something to validate a citizen's belief in the Army's security model!

Additionally: "We look at the Army deal as incremental evidence that Microsoft continues to outperform as a business and that the longer-term, subscription style business model is indeed gaining significant traction," Di Bona wrote in his report.

As final proof of its global power, Microsoft is now taxing the U.S. Government!

Re:How quickly we all forget...

[Edmund Blackadder]

If an application crashes and brings down your whole damn network, then the problem is not with the application it is with the OS.

So the issue was quite clearly with the substandard OS.

Why Windows? Why not !!!

[YrWrstNtmr]

Reading various comments here, I thought Iâ(TM)d stick my nose in. [background â" former USAF Windows programmer]

Wait a minute... they just agreed to purchase half a billion dollars worth of software and you're saying they can't afford to hire people to oversee the customization and support they might need with something like Linux?
Fools
Waste of tax dollars
Use a FOSS solution!
Linux would be way better
Simple corporate welfare
Shame on the military for using Windows in the first place!
BSOD
Crashing missiles
blah de blah de blah

Hereâ(TM)s a shocker. Windows may be more cost effective for a huge organization that already is using Windows. Let me repeat thatâ¦

Windows may be more cost effective.

How so? They already use it. Switching to Linux for the desktop would take several years, and be considerably more than $0.5B. With the possibility of it going very, very wrong. Not all Win -> Linux conversions go smoothly.

Why so long and costly? There are literally thousands of custom apps, large and small, that the Army runs on. Already written and in use. Everything from creating ID cards to allocating training munitions to various units. Currently, they run on Windows. What do you think they use now? Pencil and paper?All of these would have to be rewritten in some way. 2, 3, 5 10 years ago when all this stuff was being written, guess what? A viable Linux solution was but a wet dream. You had but 2 choices, Apple or Windows, for regular desktop deployment.

Now...of course you cannot roll out a whole new desktop environment all across the Army on the same day. There will be considerable overlap. So you also have to ensure interoperability between old and new as you roll out. The Army cannot stop business for the several years while this is going on.

You also have to ensure that all of your current hardware is supported. Are there Linux print drivers for the ID card printers? How about the digital camera for that?
Can we build a Linux solution to interface with the hospital patient records db? Sure...but we already have a Windows solution that works, and works well.
Can Civil Engineering find a Linux CAD solution, equivalent to AutoCAD, to design the plumbing and electrics for a new dormitory? Haven't seen one.
What about Public Affairs and the imaging shop? Are there Linux drivers for the digital Nikons they use? Oh..we have to have those written. But there are already native Win drivers for those...supported from the factory.
Laptops. Will Linux work on all the various laptops (with their custom mouse and video drivers) the Army deploys? Maybe...maybe not. But Windows already does. They might well have to buy a whole fleet of different laptops, if Linux can't be made to run effectively on the ones they have.

Linux may well be more stable, secure, and crash (slightly) less. But this is basically desktop use. So what! This is regular desktop use. It just doesnâ(TM)t matter if it is not the most absolute secure system on the planet. These systems are not facing the outside. And not running life critical apps. They don't steer missiles with Win2K.

Take all that into account (and this is but the merest tip of the iceberg) and staying with Windows might well be cheaper than trying to switch.

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[dnoyeb]

Corporate America calling Master Bait!! Hello!!

If you don't use your $$$ you loose your $$$. If the US Army suddenly shifted to Linux, their budged would get massacred by congress.

Re:About $200,000,000 wasted

[Malcontent]

For that kind of money the Army could have hired the entire development teams of KDE, Samba, postgresql, and apache.

Imagine having that kind of support at your fingertips.

Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

[jafuser]

I'm sure a great deal of Americans will be outraged at this waste of money

Hardly. Most (read 95% of) Americans don't get "outraged", unless the second daily showing of Friends gets pre-empted or the local Starbucks changes the brand of creamer they use.

Apathy doesn't even begin to describe the scale of blind contentment here in the US...

Did [Linux company] bid on this contract?

[Cthefuture]

Seriously, did Redhat or any of the other big Linux players bid on this contract (IBM?)?

If not, then shame on them. Maybe they didn't know the deal was going down, but often these RFP's are public information.

That money would have gone a long, long ways towards making Linux the best OS out there. It's almost there now and just about any current distro would work fine, but that money could've been used to quickly fix any minor problems still plaguing Linux (eg. get rid of all text based config tools). As others have mentioned, they could've hired on the best Linux developers available to make everything 100% perfect. I don't think that little extra development would've taken any extra time out of their current schedule and would create jobs for many people along with increasing security, decreasing M$'s monopoly, and bettering open-source as a whole.

As well...

Let's keep Pentagon spending in perspective!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey,
While we're whining about US military propping up M$ with a cool 500 mil, let's not forget the pentagon can't account for 2.3 trillion dollars of taxpayer money!

"Its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends"

They have know idea where it goes (or secretly know but won't disclose!)

Source:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/ 29/eveningn ews/printable325985.shtml

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[MojoMonkey]

He's right on track here. As a software developer for the Army we are CONSTANTLY tackling this problem. You have to remember how are operating these systems. They ARE NOT CS degrees or engineers. In fact, most do not have anything higher than a High School diploma or equivalent. We field for operational systems, both Heavy (mounted in humvees, and lights (rugged laptops)) that are being used by enlisted and junior grade officers. These guys don't give a shit about learning the wonders of the bash shell, they only want to use what they are comfortable with. And for 95% of the graduating class that's windows. We used Solaris for years with Ultras for heavys and tadpoles for lights. Guess what, they are being phased out do to complications of getting a grunt straight out of bootcamp using them. In fact, the first thing we did to try to ease the use of the solaris machine was dump CDE in favor of FVWM with a windows theme.

You guys have to remember that there is a HUGE digital divide out there and getting soldiers with out much education comfortable with computers tends to be quicker and easier with Windows. This believe it or not does NOT boil down to money.

write

[geekoid]

write you representivities at how appalled you are at this. tell them your concerns that at a time of finincial hards ships, they are pay a 1/2 a billion dollars for something that could be done for at least half that.
write your news papers. When the public finds out that the Army is wasting this kind of money when there children are have school days cut, and programs slashed from undernieth them. Write every newspaper you can think of, large and small. Make this an issue.

Re:Keynesian economics

[tweek]

My original statement still stands. I don't care about those people. But just to throw some interesting stuff your way:

Fool.com [fool.com]

Look at it this way, the high income earners are the ones who invest in the economy. These are the people that buy stocks and start companies. The ones that give jobs to others. Spurring the economy does not happen by giving someone $300 whereby they go buy a new television.

You also state that they take it from the workers who are creating wealth. You don't have a right to work. You are free to go elsewhere and find a job if you don't like the current one. You aren't being forced at gunpoint to work there. Oh wait, white-collar work isn't as admirable as blue-collar work? Despite the fact that the white-collar managers and CEO's are the ones who EMPLOY the workers.

Eschelons above reality

[Infonaut]

anyone higher than brigade levels has no fucking clue what a battalion needs, and even then they don't really know.

Amen to that. When I was an Infantry officer I encountered the same thing. I figured, "Hey, in the *real* world of Corporate America, things must be more efficient. After all, since everyone is trying to save or make money, nobody will put up with this sort of wasteful bullshit. There are no Mad Minutes in Corporate America. There's no federal accounting that forces you to spend it or loose it.

Then I started working in Corporate America, and found out that I was dead-wrong. Nobody literally gets on the firing line to blow off ammo before the fiscal year ends, but I've seen so many instances of ass-covering, ego driven "strategies" and just complete incompetence out here in the private sector. In fact, I've come to realize that while the Army's procurement system does suck ass through a straw, in many ways the overall efficiency of the Army (at least at the unit level) is far greater than that of most corporations.

The military periodically gets nailed for million-dollar hammer episodes and the like, but believe me, staggering incompetence is not the exclusive domain of Uncle Sam.

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[cmacb]

I had the same experience. I never figured out if it was corruption, or just incompetence. These machines are DEFINITELY being purchased with Windows licenses already in place. Microsoft basically tells the government rep: "if you want a decent volume purchasing agreement from us you have to agree to license Windows for every PC separately". For this you get N copies of Windows, N copies of Office, and a FEW copies of some backend software like Exchange, IIS, and a few MSDN subscriptions thrown in for good measure. The Microsoft reps moan and groan and convince the government people that they have really made a great deal. The article mentions an 89 percent profit margin...I'd guess its closer to 98 percent. You don't even get a copy of the media for each machine. A few hundred CDs and an signed piece of paper and another Microsoft sales rep laughs all the way to the bank. Congratulations American taxpayer.

PS: When it was mentioned that these machines came with Windows already install and they were essentially paying for it twice the government agent said somjething like "Well we have to wipe these machines and re-install for security reasons, so that existing copy doesn't really count".

Nobody's that stupid right? So it HAS to be corruption. Makes me sick.

Re:Did [Linux company] bid on this contract?

[Dan Crash]

For that kind of money, why isn't the Army creating their OWN Linux distro? They could've started with the NSA's security-enhanced Linux [nsa.gov] and customized it from there. A half-billion dollars ought to be enough to build an operating system that would make OS X look like DOS. (Actually, I imagine it would cost much less to create their own distro -- perhaps only 10% of the Microsoft deal.)

What's more, the Army would have total access to the code, they could make changes as needed, and they'd never have to spend another dime on OS licenses.

I can't see any way that this deal makes sense. What a waste. Until I hear better, I'm considering this theft by cronyism [reference.com].

Re:Yeah Buddy!

[jafuser]

I remember doing some volunteer work for the school system, and at nearly the end of the school year I was asked for suggestions on what to spend the remainder of the department's budget on. They didn't care what it was for or how much it cost, as long as it could be justified as being applicable to the department.

The whole reason for this being, if they don't spend their entire budget one year, they will get cut the next...

Its not about the OS/Apps, its about SOP's

[timmfisk]

Its true that the average GI can get things done quicker with an M$ OS, but that is on his home PC. While at work though, its about following a SOP (Standard Operating Proceedure) which renders this whole issue MUTE. All you military folk out there should speak up on this. I see so much crap about the fears of having a GI running a computer through a bash prompt... DUH, wake up, do you actually think that Uncle Sam would train everyone on the finer details of *nix? DUH!!! Its about a front-end app that the GI will be working with which means moving a mouse around, plugging in data, just like you would with an app like Excel, or even a Web browser. ITS NOT ABOUT THE OS, its about training.

Re:uhhhh, open source can't be classified...

[mink]

Actually if the Military doesn't re-distribute whatever GPL software they modify to the outside they can clasify and close off the software all they want.

But dont let that get in the way of your conspiracy theory that open software gets in the way of government spooks.

Re:Anyone here use Win for anything other than gam

[Krojack]

If you had to pay to speak in english would you continue speaking in it or would you change to another language like spanish, russian or chinese which would be 100% to speak in?

I don't know a single word in those lanugages but I would be willing to learn if it was free.

Re:Paying twice?

[Zeinfeld]

Don't get me wrong, I actually watch FOXNews. But it disturbs me that many people don't recognize or admit the slanted nature of the news they provide (and MSNBC as well), and that FOXNews encourages this.

My parents came over and were somewhat surprised to find that I have FoxNews and the Christian channels blocked with the child filtering features of my satellite box. On the other hand none of the porn channels is blocked.

I explained this by saying I don't let offensive content in the house. I find biggotry and lies to be offensive.

expected

[Anonymous Coward]

So the corporate whores are in bed with the federal government. What else is new? I bet the most republicrats would give tax dollars to the fortune 50 if they could get away with it. The US military's primary purpose (other than terrorizing the world) is to get cash and technology to Big business.

Or maybe...

[anonymous loser]

they just need the software, did an evaluation, and concluded that to switch over to OSS at this juncture would cost them way more than $471 million thanks to all of the training necessary combined with the very high cost of trying to migrate hundreds of thousands of existing systems and data to a completely different standard.

The DoD and other government entities learned many years ago that they were paying top dollar for hammers and IT work like suckers, and they instituted a lot of very stringent policies that directly address that problem. When they do any kind of major purchase like this you can be sure they have studied it extensively, and sent out RFPs (Request For Proposals) to several competing bidders, fairly evaluated all of the proposals, and selected the winner. $471 million contracts do not get handed out on a handshake anymore because too many people got their ass handed to them in the 80s, and the government took steps to rectify the situation.

Nowadays when bidding on government proposals, you typically have to bid at much lower service rates than you would to a private company, because the proposals are very competitive, and the goverment doesn't want to look like suckers.

Neiter does my mom...

[binary paladin]

Linux can be tedious to set up but I'm so sick and tired of hearing, "But Windows is so much easier. Bash is too hard. Config files are too hard." My mom uses Linux, you know why? Because I set her computer up. It boots into a GUI and a nice clean windowed environment with graphical icons to let her get into all the programs she needs. Is Mozilla Firebird more complex in Linux than in Windows? Is it more complex than IE? My dad still uses Windows because unlike my mom who finally decided to stop being a luddite my dad's been using one for years and has apps he's used to. Still, that's all he knows. When he needs a new email account set up, the background changed or whatever, who does he call? Me. Whether it's a check box or a config file he's gonna call me. My point? Either you're the type that can tweak a computer in which case it doesn't matter if it's a config file or something in a preferences menu because you're trained enough to figure it out or you're the type that's gonna call a tech. I'm sitting here using Xfce4 right now and I almost never touch the shell for standard, day to day operations. I do for certain file management tasks, network troubleshooting and compiling but is the average yutz gonna do that? No. Ultimately we're talking about an organization who has no problem spending MY money on a $400 toilet seat, so why should they even worry about evaluating an alternative? I can see using Windows because they're used to it. That makes sense. But I'm so sick and tired of hearing crap like, "These guys don't give a shit about learning the wonders of the bash shell." There is NO NEED TO EVER SEE A CLI IN LINUX! The Windows GUI isn't any "easier." Clicking an icon and running a program is pretty much the same in both arenas.

Re:Why Windows? Why not !!!

[Daniel Phillips]

Windows may be more cost effective.

How so? They already use it.

Another way of saying the same thing is: "Penny wise, pound foolish".

Not that I even agree with your premise that it would cost more to switch immediately.

Re:I've heard this one a million times...

[JesterXXV]

What's hard about it, you ask? It's different. Since before Windows 95 I've grown accustomed to expecting certain behaviors from my OS and it's UI. This includes everything from window behavior to more complicated stuff like setting up a network.

Am I just curmudgeonly? Maybe, but I also just haven't had a) the time or b) the motivation to spend time getting used to all of these factors. In a certain sense, I'm betting that the more hardcore Windows users find it more difficult to switch than the less experienced users, simply because certain expectations have become so innate that even the slightest difference requires a significant effort to get used to.

Disgusting

[Ogerman]

One-tenth of that $471,000,000 would be easily enough to pay people to bring OpenOffice or KOffice well past the quality level of MS Office in a short amount of time.

Think about it! One-tenth of that amount would mean 471 Open Source programmers paid $100,000 for a year.

And yet all those tax dollars are instead being funneled into the Microsoft "Black Hole of Software License Fees" where they will never be seen again and where they will certainly not benefit the public interest. And that's just one-tenth of the contract! What about all that other money?! They could spend another four-tenths on XFree86, KDE, various security-related projects, etc. and STILL have half the contract amount left over to migrate existing army-specific software to Qt or other superior cross-platform toolkit able run native on both the new platform and any old Windoze machines that haven't been converted yet.

I propose that we need a large non-profit Open Source consulting firm that specializes in large corporate and government contracts such as these. (Non-profit in the sense of the programmers are the only ones being paid.)

Re:I've heard this one a million times...

[tuba_dude]

I got hooked on DOS (and MS products after that) since I was six (14 years ago). I think I qualify as a hardcore Windows user... Sorry, qualified...I switched last year. The hardest part about switching was learning how to use google for information. networking not working? Easy, go to the nearest working machine (library, in my case) and get more info. Your window behaviour argument is a little off tho. Gnome and KDE windows both react almost exactly like Windows, and if they aren't close enough, you can change them with (usually) pre-installed tools.

The only person I know that couldn't 'get used to' a desktop linux distro was my mom, who had trouble using the computer if the "My computer" icon wasn't in the corner.

Re:Paying twice?

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

That says more about you than the content that you're apparently afraid of.

Re:Yea, details not provided

[Neutron Bob]

I'm really curious how much of that contract is for actual product and how much is for consulting and maintenance for actually building the system.

I used to work for a company that made business software and would often sign deals with organizations like the Army and Navy for multiple thousands of seats of our product. A good part of the contract was for all the consulting and maintenance we'd provide to them to get it all set up and any further help they would need for the next year or so. Its not a bad model, because after their initial year of maintenance ran out, we'd get to renew that part of the contract for another large sum of money and repeat.

Re:Disgusting

[civilengineer]

Correct me if I am wrong, but 471 programmers at 100,000 per year is only 47,100,000 isn't it?
The total MS is getting is 471,000,000. They can hire 4710 OSS programmers for the same rate not 471

US Govt now Largest MS Customer?

[ablair]

Neally half a billion to MS for licenses & equipment in this one agreement alone? I'm glad I don't live in the US, but if I did I'd seriously consider contacting my congressman [house.gov] or senator about this deal. From the few details made public so far, it looks like the DoD really didn't negotiate that hard for the best deal for taxpayer $$$. I'd be more than a little steamed, considering that with a purchase of this magnitude there is a great deal of negotiating power, now that there are secure alternatives; power that apparently wasn't used. It almost sounds like a subsidy. Would Americans let this issue fade away without investigation?

It will be a VERY tough job to patch all system

[DotSpider]

Can you imagine if a serious hole is found in M$ software, how can the army patch all computers in a short time?!