Taiwanese Parliament votes Against Microsoft

linumax writes "Taiwan's parliament has voted to end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year. The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island's law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said. Local newspaper Commercial Times said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan. Officials at Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission declined to comment."

how much

[hjf]

how much do you want to bet that the gov't sites are only acccessible via internet explorer?

Timing?

[Device666]

The refered article says: "Local newspaper Commercial Times said however that the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan. Officials at Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission declined to comment." Why now then, and not 10 years ago? What's the drip of water that flooded the bucket? (Dutch saying translated to bad english).

OSS is gaining momentum

[l0ungeb0y]

Way to go Taiwan! I expect many more Countries to move their Government IT infrastructures over to OSS in the year ahead.

I'm sure I am not the only one snickering at the irony at the comment about potential Fair Trade violation -- against MS, which is an Internationally convicted Monopolist.

Which begs the question, are Taiwanese Lawmakers so stupid to make laws that prevent their Governemnt from having a real choice for purchases, or are MS's lobbyists also very active over at the WTO?

Two Part Strategy For Dealing With The MS Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like the common strategy to deal with the Microsoft problem:

1) Draw a box around all existing Microsoft software infesting the government or company in question. Forbid the growth of any Microsoft software outside this box.

2) Once the Microsoft infestation has been contained and growth halted, slowly start purging the existing Microsoft software and formats with clean and open solutions like OpenOffice, OpenDocument, Apache, Linux, BSD, XML, etc...

Hardware companies?

[TeknoHog]

I wonder what this means for Taiwanese hardware makers that, until now, have only provided Windows drivers.

Re: And replace Windows with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding to parent's post:

requiring custom solutions and ports, thus spending a lot more money in the process.

And why not spend this extra money on a domestic company supporting/porting to linux? I really don't understand why their goverment should export money to the US when there are very good alternatives...

Re:Two Part Strategy For Dealing With The MS Probl

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the two points, however there is an important third component to ridding a company or government of Microsoft products.

3. Purge any and all employees who are loyal to Microsoft and not the organization for which they work.

This is one area that seems to get overlooked too often when discussing organizations that are struggling to rid themselves of Microsoft products. In my experience it is not the actual document formats or application retraining that is the stumbling block to migrating to open systems, but very often one rogue IT manager or employee who can best described as a "Microsoft guy."

Companies like IBM had entire divisions of these people who were more loyal to Microsoft than to the company that employs them. IBM dumping their PC hardware division thankfully purged a huge number of these rogue employees from the company - although IBM still has a long way to go with similar types of Microsoft loyal employees throughout the company.

Exposing these people in the companies we work for by making it clear how many thousands or millions of dollars they are wasting is something the open source crowd really needs to step up to the plate and do. Many companies have no idea of the magnitude of waste they are spending on Microsoft products every year. Anonymous emails or other forms making these numbers known in companies can jar a company onto the open source/open format path in a hurry. If there is one thing geeks can be, it's sneaky when it comes to computers and information...

What's the ratio

[pvera]

Of legal licenses, at least within government use? 25% sounds like a lot, but if 75% of their desktops are running unlicensed MS software then MS is not really taking a hit with this 25% reduction.

Re:Expect a flying visit from Ballmer

[Crayon Kid]

It's happened before but the question is how long Microsoft can continue along that route. Discounting is all very well but once more governments get in on the game it's going to start costing.

Costing what!? It's not like they didn't cover the cost of producing Windows hundreds of times over by now. If you mean "lower profits" then yeah, but to Microsoft it's probably worth it. Lower profits is better than nothing.

No, I'd be more worried about other governments starting to get pissed. It's not nice to pay premium price for Windows and see that others get it for much less.

The way Microsoft affords to juggle with the pricing on their products is unique to both software and selling in general. They practically have a special price for any market, as long as it sells for something, anything. Kinda reminds me of certain illegal substances...

Re:Timing?

[OwlWhacker]

the resolution may not be binding because it runs against fair trade regulations in Taiwan

They should change it to 'reduce purchases of software that uses proprietary file formats, APIs and protocols - to prevent lock-in.'

There's nothing wrong with that, and it would achieve the same result.

Venezuela did the same thing

[gelfling]

But not because of licencing. Because of national interest. Recently a union threatened to shut down the power plants and oil refinery infrastrure via programming and the government was terrified at the prospect of not being able to get their software running, or, if something was done to damage it, fixed.