20090701 Evidence of More Microsoft Corruption in Portuguese Government
From s5h.net
PT: Advocacy group criticises government portal, builds alternative
Portugal's National Association for the promotion of Free Software (Ansol) accuses the government Office of Construction and Property (INCI) of having broken procurement rules after it admitted on Monday that it had signed a 268,000 euro contract with Microsoft for the government's website on Public Expenses, Base, without a public tender.
http://www.osor.eu/news/pt-advocacy-group-criticises-government-portal-builds-alternative
Recent
Portuguese Public Administration forced to use Microsoft Office 2003/7
The Court of Accounts's Counsil for Corruption Prevention is making a mandatory survey on corruption risks in public procurement, which all public administrators must reply, by law. However, not only the survey is available only in Microsoft's binary format, but they also demand that it is returned in Microsoft Office 2003/7 XML format (MS-OOXML).
Portuguese open sourcers decry MS-only gov eProcurement
Portuguese open sourcers are a bit miffed that a government "eProcurement" platform offers "conditioned access to bid at a public tender", viz: If you're not running Microsoft software you're not tendering for anything.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/04/portuguese_procurement_portal/
Related: Steve Ballmer Gets the Egg-Treatment in Budapest http://youtube.com/watch?v=mtBQ4UCXQeo
Pity the Poor Classmate PC'd Children of Portugal
Combine that complete outsourcing of computer systems evaluation with silence on the financial terms of the deal and I'm thinking there is a deal in the works - cheap Classmates now for lucrative future government orders. Shady deals being a hallmark of Classmate sales to date.
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/intel/classmate_pc_children_portugal.html
Open source tour of Europe: Portugal
Many of the country’s open source projects to date are in the education sector, triggered by the government’s five-year agreement with Sun, signed in 2004, to provide open source technologies – including Linux and OpenOffice.org/StarOffice – to Portuguese secondary schools. More recently the Associação Ensino Livre (Association for Free Education) was founded to increase the use of open source software in education, while the Education Ministry launched a new website designed to promote open source usage. Outside the education sector, the Institute of Technology is migrating to OpenOffice, the Ministry of Justice has used an open source system based on JBoss, PostgreSQL and Linux for the dissemination of information on referendum results and the Ministry of Internal Affairs used JBoss to create a new traffic fines management system.
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/06/20/open-source-tour-of-europe-portugal/
OpenOffice.org being distributed to Portuguese schools
I was just made aware of this Portuguese blog entry. CDs including OpenOffice.org will be distributed to Portuguese schools again. Great news!
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/openoffice_org_being_distributed_to
Portuguese Schools Learn About Open Source
As Microsoft understands - and as Apple first learned - if you get them young, you've pretty much got them forever. So it's good to see efforts being made to spread the open source word in the educational world, like this new effort by the Portuguese Ministry of Eduction...
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/04/portuguese-schools-learn-about-open.html
In my country (Portugal) we have a very similar deal, available to all students and teachers in high school, which is subsidized by the cellphone/mobile ISP companies, the government and probably Microsoft, where you can get a laptop for 150 euros with a contract for 2 years for the mobile internet access with a nice discount from the usual monthly fees, from several well known laptop manufacturers (HP, Toshiba), and pretty decent machines also (Core Duo, 1 Gb RAM, the only downside is they all have integrated graphics cards), of course they all come with Windows Vista Home Premium as well.
http://technocrat.net/d/2008/2/16/36312
IBM is still locked out of the Portuguese OOXML meeting
In spite of various communications, we [IBM] are still locked out and will not be allowed to participate. Microsoft will be there, as well as a special Microsoft guest, as will various Microsoft business partners, and others.
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1755
Portugal: Votes Yes with Comments on OOXML
Commitee presided over by Microsoft decides in it's favor 13-7: It's with much disgust that I see that after an initial membership controlled by Microsoft of 7 to 1, it was only possible to add the participation of 12 more entities, 6 in favor of open standards, and 6 in favor of Microsoft. If from the the first meeting it was clear that there was a favorable support for Microsoft of 7 to 1, the voting just an hour ago of YES WITH COMMENTS is sadly revealing.
http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php
Portugal's ISO says no room for IBM & Sun in the room ! ?
[PJ: OpenXML.info is reporting (in Portuguese, but a Groklaw member translates for us) that the person who is head of the ISO technical committee about to vote on Microsoft's Ecma-376 wouldn't let IBM and Sun representatives in, claiming there was no room! This, if true, is ridiculous. And here is a second source reporting the same thing, also in Portuguese. So in the US, we hear reports of packing the TC. Now, it's weeding out those who are not likely to vote a certain way desired? Is this how standards get "approved"? I don't recall ODF having to play such games. Here is the rough translation:] Portugal, and more concretely, its national organization of certification IPQ is a member "O" (observator) of ISO/IEC for the voting of OOXML (ISO DIS 29500). WARNING: the first meeting of the Technical Commission "Language for document definition" was on Monday 16 of July. The vote was delayed. Representatives of IBM and Sun were not allowed to attend because there "was no available space in the room" Dear G [Sun Microsystems] due of restricted number of members of the CT (Commissao Tecnica) that can attend the scheduled meeting room to host the meeting, we cannot, in this stage, accept your proposal of integration of the CT. With my best regards, D [Microsoft as president of the Technical Commission]
http://mv.asterisco.pt/2007/Jun/cat.cgi?MS%20OOXML
* More details are emerging from Portugal regarding the kerfuffle there over Ecma-376. If you read Portuguese, here you go -- just click on the link. I asked a Groklaw member to do a rough translation, and if you see ways to improve it, sing out, but it gives a bit of the history of how this committee that has no room for Sun or IBM (see previous News Picks item) was formed and how it happened to choose a Microsoft representative to be president of the committee that decides whether to "approve" Microsoft's submission as a "standard". Unless I'm missing something, it appears to have been set up so Microsoft can "approve" itself. Now that's handy. Here's the translation of the part about how Microsoft is represented on this committeee with no room for IBM or Sun:] I was present on the meeting of the Technical Commission (CT) created to award the ISO standards in the area of structured documents (in Portugal) A Technical Commission (CT) did not exist when ISO 26300 (Open Document) was submitted neither when there was a submission of OOXML (ECMA 376, potential ISO 29500) for the the fast track, and that was the reason why Portugal did not submit any opinion nor had any right to vote. We expect that now, with the pressure made and the CT created there would be right to vote. The CT was created by the Computing Institute, in which is delegated the responsability for the norms of the IT sector; a delegation granted by the Portuguese Institute of Quality (IPQ), the point of contact of ISO in Portugal. Its creation is motivated mainly by the pressures and availability of some people when the proposal for fast tracking of OOXML and a neccessity to avail now the OOXML as standard ISO and as a Portuguese National Standard In the meeting they were present: * 2 persons from II (Instituto de Informatica [Computing Institute]) * 1 person from the local government (Alentejo region) * 1 person from Jurinfor [Jurinfor is a Microsoft partner] * 2 persons from Microsoft * 1 person from Primavera [Primavera is a Microsoft partner] * 1 person from ISCTE * 2 persons from Assoft [reportedly, most members of ASSOFT are Microsoft partners] * 1 person from the Inst. Informatica da Seg Social [Computing Institute of the Social Welfare Department] * 1 person from the Inst. Tecn. Informacao da Justiça (eu) [Technical Institute Information of Justice (eu)] The meeting dealt basically with the bureaucracy details of the creation of the CT. It didn't go into details of OOXML; that discussion will be held in the next meeting, on July 16th about 14:30 in the II [Instituto de Informatica, I assume] The CT, thus, was composed of 8 vocal elements, one representative for each of the organizations present. The II [Instituto de Informatica] is arranging and hosting the initiative and is a not-named representative. The 8 vocals will readily follow to the election of the president of the CT. There was 1 candidate in the place (Miguel Sales Dias, from Microsoft). I did not present my candidature but made myself available in case the rest of representatives deemed it neccesary -- informed not adequate since to begin with, as a member of the OpenDocument Alliance, I had a conflict of interest. The vote results were 7 votes in favor of Miguel Sales Dias, of Microsoft, who was designated to preside over the CT, and a (1) blank vote. It was decided to adopt consensus as the form of adoption of any proposed norm, following to majority vote in case there is no consensus in the CT and if there is a strong opposition to submit any norm. `---
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