4 ms·
My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my workplace, to a point where ema
by Qem 5y ago
My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my workplace, to a point where emails with announcements from corporate IT sometimes looks and sounds like spam pushing MS products. Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.
- mistrial9 5y agoit is well documented in the 1990s antitrust documents against Microsoft Corp. that attorneys under contract with Microsoft, paid money to senior management at the Brazilian national phone system to adopt Microsoft Office as standard, and remove any other system internally, IIR
- rapsey 5y agoMS is insanely powerful pretty much in every country in the world. They know damn well how to get into the power structures.
- mschuster91 5y agoThey just had the advantage of having the only viable GUI-based OS on mass market computers. Linux has only begun to be usable on the desktop around 2005-ish, Mac always was expensive because you had to buy Macs.
- worik 5y agoThat is untrue. In 1995 the Windows GUI was complete trash The Linux GUI much better. I was the sole Linux guy (Microsoft Windows 95 mostly plus a HP Unix workstation the boss controlled fromOS/2 desktop). The windows machine constantly crashed and ran like a steam roller in two feet of mud. Lots of mess, not much speed. It was not the quality of the operating system that made Microsoft successful. They were successful despite having the worst operating system in that room. Significantly worse.
- wolverine876 5y agoThe reasons corporate IT uses Microsoft: * Backward compatibility: Ripping out everything and starting over is very expensive; what is the return on this investment for the company's bottom line? * Applications: Everything in business, perhaps outside creative arts, is compatible with Windows; much is only compatible with Windows. * Management: Active Directory is by far the leading tool for managing thousands of computers efficiently. That has a network effect: Other management tools, including for specific applications, integrate with AD. This automation greatly reduces labor costs and improves quality.
- rapsey 5y agoLinux desktop GUI was irrelevant. To succeed in B2B you need a sales operation.
- hulitu 5y agoIt is the same also in some automotive company.
- goodpoint 5y agoIt's well known that Microsoft has been giving bribes even to small companies for many decades. The entity of the bribes from MS are above average.
- tombert 5y agoIs it considered a "bribe" if it's a transaction between private companies? I would think that's just considered a "discount" at that point. Not saying it's right, I'm just saying that I thought there might be a legal distinction.
- hirako2000 5y agoand it also leads to unfair competition.
- goodpoint 5y agoIt is a bribe because it goes into the pockets of individuals rather than savings for the company.
- tombert 5y agoAh, fair enough...I didn't realize that was something that happened, though I suppose I should not be surprised; I'm now reasonably convinced that is the reason that anyone signed off on the use of Sharepoint.
- frozenlettuce 5y agoIf the company is public traded, the IT manager is hurting the investors by accepting the bribes. If the company is owned by a family but big enough to have an IT department, well, they might solve their problems the Corleone way.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago> Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership. Usually the latter, often it is just marketing, but you can never discount the former, and the lines are often blurred.
- wolverine876 5y agoMicrosoft products for large institutions are very popular; they don't need bribery (or even bad taste).
- rbanffy 5y agoNo need to wonder. Of course it's bribery. Most likely not by Microsoft, but by their local VARs, with tacit corporate approval. All the blood, sweat and tears we gave during the early 2000's to make FLOSS the standard, how we advocated for it on grounds of openness and auditability, how it would - and did! - help foster a local industry... All this work and see it being undone by the current government and their cronies. As a note, São Paulo state, where I lived, was a very reliable income source for Microsoft.
- Qem 5y agoTruly sad. Even if eventually FLOSS regain traction in the Brazilian government, I think it will be trickier to extricate government data and systems from proprietary blackboxes this time, when compared to the 2000's. I think Microsoft is making their products interlocking more tightly between themselves, so it's harder to fight lock-in by replacing one piece at time. Now it's becoming like a card castle that will crumble if you try to pull any single card.
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoA bit like any time a local government makes a concerted effort to move to Linux, suddenly Microsoft magically finds a way to deeply discount Windows and Office just for them.
- rbanffy 5y agoOr even not discount it, but some magical requirements about compatibility with existing software that was never used pop up while others, about security and auditability disappear…
- marcosdumay 5y agoThe old rule about having to justify acquiring proprietary services or using proprietary formats disappeared. It was there by decree, so it could vanish from one day to another. The rules about open formats for data disclosure are written in law, and the decrees about data interchange require open formats too. As a consequence, the most people-facing roles of governments reverted to old habits (or maybe there were bribes involved, I wouldn't know, but it surely didn't require bribes, those people never stopped using Word for everything), while the more central roles are migrating into web-systems and open formats.