Microsoft Shoots Own Foot In Iceland 476
David Gerard writes "The Microsoft Certified Partner model is: an MCP buys contracts from Microsoft and sells them to businesses as a three-year timed contract, payable in annual installments. Iceland's economy has collapsed, so 1500 businesses have gone bankrupt and aren't paying the fees any more. But Microsoft has told the MCPs: 'Our deal was with you, not them. Pay up.' The MCPs that don't go bankrupt in turn are moving headlong to Free Software, taking most of the country with them. (Warning: link contains strong language and vivid imagery.)"
Re:Another instant SlashDoting (Score:3, Informative)
Link to article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This seems strangely familiar (Score:5, Informative)
The legal doctine in common law countries is Force Majeure [wikipedia.org]. If something sufficiently big happens, all bets are off.
The other business doctrine is that a big company shall not bankrupt the organizations selling their products:
No sales companies = No salesmen = No sales.
Article text here. (Score:3, Informative)
Just because I hope to get modded up for a post containing the phrase 'skull fucking':
Microsoft Skull-fucks Iceland's Economy, Contracts Syphilis
Microsoft has made a business out of selling licenses to run software that can be copied at no marginal cost, this everybody knows. Essentially, they manufacture software, but their product isn't computer code, it's legal code. Contracts.
They make deals with companies, the most common type being three year non-exclusive non-transferable usage rights contracts for the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software package. A severe amount of licenses for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision Financials, and I shall refer to it as Navision) are sold as well.
The companies and institutions that buy these generally don't buy these directly through Microsoft. Instead, they sell contracts in bulk to Microsoft Certified Partners (MCP's), which are local companies that lobby the software, generally at a loss to themselves, as they know that Microsoft's lock-in is powerful enough that they can only get service contracts from the company if they offer a substantial discount on the Microsoft products.
Now, the licensing term is three years, but the licensing fee is made in the form of annual payments. Here is where the fun begins.
Now, say an economy collapses. Say some fifteen hundred companies in your local economy go bankrupt. Now, say that Microsoft comes to collect its annual fee from the MCP's. The MCP's say, of course, âoewait, the company that we sold this license to has gone bankrupt, we shouldn't have to pay.â
âoeAha!â says the suit from Redmond. âoeYou made a contract with us, and another with them. Their inability to uphold their end of the contract does not invalidate your commitment to us.â
This is what I've heard from pals in the industry. Pals who're being screwed over right now. In short, the MCP's have to pay the licensing fees for the bankrupted companies.
The sheer shock of having to do so is starting to hit the Icelandic economy, hard. Already battered by the collapse of almost all privately held financial institutions and the subsequent bust of nearly fifteen hundred companies, Iceland's MCP's are next.
The devil here is in the details. Microsoft was just collecting what was due, forcing an issue that, for most places would be perfectly reasonable to do. Well, no. But it could be argued. Hey, this is about revenue.
But the backlash effect has been astounding. Several of Iceland's largest MCP's are now fighting for survival in a sea already at significant turmoil due to the economic depression. Shit had already hit the fan, but now they're being skull-fucked by Microsoft to boot.
And what would you do? Well. My sources tell me a lot is afoot. Several MCP's are bailing out, switching over to Free Software and restructuring their business model. Keep the revenue inside Iceland, sell better technical services for less money and yet double their revenue. âoeWhy didn't we do this earlier?â
Why indeed. With Microsoft's stranglehold on the economy, a long series of lock-ins has made life difficult for the dozens of people involved in trying to push free software in Iceland. With the government alone spending in the vicinity of 1 billion Icelandic kronas annually on Microsoft's wares â" a number not even taken together separately in the accounting books, as it is all written up as âoemiscellaneous running costsâ â" it'd be a really smart move to switch, if only they could.
The easiest switch would be to go to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office. This switch is easy because not only is OpenOffice.org superior software in every respect, it's also feature-compatible with Microsoft Office, supports reading and writing of Microsoft's file formats â" even the ones that Microsoft Office itself no longer supports â" and is free to boot, both free as in freedom and free as in price. The only imp
Re:Ze goggles! Zey do nothing! (Score:5, Informative)
Oh god, a 500 error! MY EYES! THEY BURN!
Here you go, ya' big baby! [209.85.173.132]
Not exactly a balanced Article (Score:4, Informative)
OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office. This switch is easy because not only is OpenOffice.org superior software in every respect, itâ(TM)s also feature-compatible with Microsoft Office
Hm. no Can't agree with Open Office being superior. At the least a significant amount of re-learning is require. I know every time I use it I find it a frustrating experience.
And no if Word is the baseline then OO Writer is not feature complete. Once I learnt to use it the outline view in Word was the killer feature, which made editing large documents doable. Without outline view I could not imagine working on documents of a comparable size.
As for spreadsheets their are two keybindings I need. Insert current data and insert current time. Apparently their are third party macros for this. But tts something that's never available without additional effort when I try to use calc.
So no OpenOffice is not a simple drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. Then Again if it where a drop-in replacement then Microsoft would undoubtedly be suing.
Re:slashdotted... but available on Coral Cache (Score:5, Informative)
Still viewable via ye olde Coral Cache: http://smari.yaxic.org.nyud.net/blag/2009/03/06/microsoft-skull-fucks-icelands-economy-contracts-syphilis/ [nyud.net]
Re:Discussion point: time to short MSFT? (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm. On a per-share basis, they actually don't have much cash at all (9E9 shares outstanding, $20E9 in the bank, so their cash value is only about $2/share.)
And Ballmer has shown all the restraint and conservative business acumen of a recent lottery winner. "Gee, I think I'll use the company's entire war chest to, um, buy Yahoo! Yeah, that's it, Yahoo! I can has Yahoo?"
Sounds like a lot of downside, more than their cash reserves can cushion.
Re:Article text here. (Score:5, Informative)
And the rest of that sentence:
not only is OpenOffice.org superior software in every respect, it's also feature-compatible with Microsoft Office
Look, I like F/OSS software (and dislike MS) as much as the next geek but that's simply not true.
Re:This seems strangely familiar (Score:5, Informative)
If something sufficiently big happens, all bets are off.
This is incorrect - the principle of "Force Majeure" is that it has to be completely unexpected - that is, a reasonable person would be unable to forsee the event, and would not have taken measures to mitigate it.
Say I run a fishing company and all my boats are at sea and are sunk in a big storm. I can't really claim Force Majeure on your supply contracts, as it could be expected that, when fishing, one could encounter storms that might sink your fleet. However, if my boats were docked in a harbour with a narrow inlet with high cliffs and some construction work collapsed the cliffs and blocked the harbour preventing my boats from getting out, well that would fit under "Force Majeure".
In the MCP's case, one can get insurance for loss of business income, and if one is beholden to continuous payments to a third party, it's a good idea to get it. This is basic financial disaster management - plenty of businesses will sit down and think, "what would happen if the building caught fire?", but few will think, "what happens if my customers suddenly can't pay?"
Re:Ze goggles! Zey do nothing! (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes [wikipedia.org]
402 Payment Required
416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable
410 Gone
Huh, what does it mean??
Or have I just earned a huge whoosh?
And what does it mean by "practically constitutes foreplay"?
Re:Or I will gouge out your eyeballs... (Score:4, Informative)
Kdawson.
That says it all really.
Not Without Access (Score:3, Informative)
OO.o's "Base" is not even close to being an Access replacement, and a lot of small businesses run at least some mission-critical parts of the business on Access apps. They are important enough that they need to be kept in operation, but the business can't afford to rewrite them.
Re:This seems strangely familiar (Score:3, Informative)
If the flaming article is right, and if I've understood it correctly, that "cut" was negative: "Microsoft Certified Partners (MCP's), which are local companies that lobby the software, generally at a loss to themselves, as they know that Microsoft's lock-in is powerful enough that they can only get service contracts from the company if they offer a substantial discount on the Microsoft products."
As far as I know (from working in one such place), that is correct. The way it works for the MCPs is that you sell them an "enterprise" solution with a support contract for $X00,000 and then throw in Windows Server, MSSQL, and SharePoint for "free". On the whole, it does earn quite a buck... well, did when companies did have cash to pay for the privilege of running "enterprise" stuff.
Re:This seems strangely familiar (Score:3, Informative)
But that's not the case. It would be if the companies had, say, hired cars - to buy the cars back and sell/lease them to someone else is better than just writing them all off - but they were selling software licenses and the actual unit costs of producing the software is inconsequential.
So. It should've been:
3: If we insist on payment, they will declare bankruptcy, if they do bankrupt, we don't get any money out of them.
4: If we buy back the unused contracts, we spend money and therefore lose even more!
This is all very short term, of course and doesn't take the future into account. But it seems business don't do that these days.
Re:Just so you know what you missed (Score:3, Informative)
Ah yes, the good old apples and oranges. I mean, c'mon. Redhat 4.0? According to Wikipedia: "4.0 (Colgate), October 3, 1996 (Linux 2.0.18) - first release supporting SPARC". Does it tell you anything? Ok, how about this: it was released before Windows 98.
What was your point again? That a 13 year old Linux distro on PIII's is worse than the shiny new Windows on brand new hardware?
Rude shock, indeed.
Re:Screw this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screw this (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm afraid you have reached beyond the red line of the BS meter. OO.o is just fine for home users that are only writing letters and occasionally making a little speadsheet. But for business? I'm sorry but Calc is no way in hell comparable to Excel, and there are simply way too damned many businesses that live and breathe in Excel for this to be even a remotely viable solution. I've tried giving OO.o to SMBs for evaluation. Most have positive reviews UNTIL they get to Calc. If he wanted to suggest that businesses just take the hit(and probably a huge cost in rewriting a shitload of spreadsheets) that is one thing, but saying OO.o is "superior software in every respect" to anyone who has used Excel is simply spreading the BS a little thick."
I make complicated spreadsheets, with lots of functions, cross linked between sheets, with very large data sets, and it works no worse than Excel. The only downside, is the lack of PivotCharts - they have a PivotTable equivalent, but no PivotCharts. Does this really matter to me? Nope - it's just a feature I really don't use, and can work around anyway.
I would say that 99% of business users would have their needs met with OO.org. If they don't use Excel macros (which have always worked for me in OO.org, but I can see it being a problem), PivotCharts or MS Access, I don't understand why it wouldn't suite their needs. Especially when making the switch from Excel 03 to 07.
If Sun tossed a few more developers into the project, I'd probably pay the same price as MS Office for a copy.
The greatest value behind OO.org is the fact it's free, I can download it from the Internet when I need it, and if I'm on a computer with no office suite, I'll have one by the time it finishes downloading. I make use of GoogleDocs in some cases, but it just lacks features, plain and simple.
Re:WWBD? (Score:4, Informative)
So I take it, you haven't listened to Aphex Twin's album "Druqs" then?
I recommend "Omgyjya-Switch7 [youtube.com]" (also known as the "zen music [youtube.com]" from Children of Men), ;)
and of course his promo video "Rubber Johnny [youtube.com]" (Warning: Do not watch this if you do not want to have nightmares!
Also recommended is the classic, and execptionally great "Come To Daddy [youtube.com]".
He's like Björk on very strange aggro-drugs. You have to ask: Does he write this stuff, or just slam the keyboard? [todayandtomorrow.net] ;)
Re:Screw this (Score:3, Informative)
When this site was mostly IT folks we all had first-hand experiences to go along with the bashing. The new crop of young republicans don't have the background, so they think we're being unfair.
Re:Ze goggles! Zey do nothing! (Score:2, Informative)
Huge "woosh" indeed...
Let me lay it out for ya (pun intended): Foreplay is something you would typically do before sex to get your partner in the mood. Except of course when you pay for sex (402). Regardless of what women say, they do care if you have a small penis (416) and if the chick was purely in it for the sex, then obviously she'd GTFO as soon as you are done (410), notice that I said YOU are done (refer back to 416).
There.