RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU) [LWN.net]

OSOR.EU takes a quick look at the Romanian government's decision to spends millions of euros on Microsoft licenses. "The announcement came just five days ahead of the third national open source conference, eLiberatica, taking place in Bucharest. One of the conference organisers, Lucian Savluc, condemned the government's spend thrift. "The Romanian government is out of touch with reality. I hope that the European Union will protest this deal, for it is not in the best interest of the Romanian citizens.""

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RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU)

Posted May 27, 2009 6:27 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (3 responses)

Who needs Romanian citizens and their interests, after all.
The only interests worth protecting are those of filling pockets for selected government and near-government members taking part in this bid and deployment. That's the only reality they need to touch.
I know kleptocracy very well on my own citizen's skin, as I live in Ukraine (it borders with Romania and shares Soviet past history with it).

RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU)

Posted May 27, 2009 6:35 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (2 responses)

A different way to think about it:

What about the interests about the big IT companies of Romania?

Why should they pay extra for third-party in the US if they don't really need it?

RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU)

Posted May 27, 2009 7:17 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (1 responses)

Government does not earn its money, it just declares its violence the law and then simply collects taxes from citizens.
So if you are an IT-supplier spending government-allotted money, you don't have to worry about any savings. Often you even have an incentive to grow the monetary volume of the project, as you are getting paid with a percent of that.
Don't know about democracy and competition, but with kleptocracy it is done exactly in this way.

RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU)

Posted May 27, 2009 16:33 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Ah, so there's one company that is magically linked with corruption, unlike other companies. Nice.

RO: Proprietary licence deal draws ire open source proponents (OSOR.EU)

Posted May 27, 2009 15:08 UTC (Wed) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

The number is 100 million euros for MS licenses for 2010 - 2012. May not be impressive, but it comes from a state that a few months ago ran the risk of becoming insolvent (I believe it's called "default"), and currently introduces controversial minimum taxes for all companies just to get a few more millions to an endangered state budget.

What muwlgr is currently valid, as most analyses in the press show about Romanian state contracts.

But there of course big costs associated with change, and the public workers have very low computer skills, to make any supposed transition even harder. Even I were the one to make a decision, I doubt I would currently force a transition to, say, OpenOffice.