September 02, 2008, 12:17 CET
Budapest court rules in favor of Microsoft
The Budapest Municipality Court yesterday rejected the objections to a government public procurement IT tender in a first-instance ruling.
In the spring three Hungarian open source software companies turned to the Public Procurement Arbitration Court (KDB) to appeal against the Ft 25-billion state tender that ordered “Microsoft or equivalent” products, but the KDB dismissed their objection. Public Procurement Council member Katalin Vígh, delegated by the Competition Office then put the case to the court.
The Court ruled that, as the specification had to mention Microsoft in order to clarify what was required for equivalent products, the tender did not violate fair competition.
Microsoft is only indirectly concerned as it did not file a bid on the tender, but consortiums of its partners did, Népszabadság notes.
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Yet another strange decision by the
Hungarian court system. In my world it does not exist any products that need to be specified as Microsoft or equivalent products.
Microsoft did not invent anything (email, word processing and spreadsheets etc), they just bought some companies or copied some other products. Clever business guys though and Bill Gates tried some years ago to get Microsoft being an official term for computer software. He failed in the US, but obviously convinced some Hungarian judges.
Anyone want to bet whether Simonyi was there to walk it through.
I agree with Viking a 100%.
This isn't really about Microsoft, It's about
procurement rules which are a European single
market issue. At first sight it's a parallel
markets issue - using structures "over here" to
prevent competition "over there"
It also seems to crate problems at the
interoperability level, which also seems to be a
European issue (cf investigation into Microsoft
Office)
Finally it also brings "state aid" into the frame
in which the state is favouring one
company/industry over another.
Of course the full facts of the case may provide
clarification
There are two issues here:
1. Why did they pick Microsoft over Linux or whatever cheaper alternatives are on the market?
2. Is Linux a Microsoft equivalent product?
The court said there was nothing wrong with the wording of the tender as it considers the Linux operating system an "equivalent" to Windows. Whether it was the right decision to pick Windows over Linux is another matter - I wouldn't.
I can just wonder what the reaction and judgement had been if the original tender had stated 'Linux or equivalent' products. Would that not have been seen squeezing Microsoft out?
Did not Microsoft sue some German Bundeslander for asking Suse to develop special Office and Administration programs for them?
The fault here lies with the procurement office and the Hungarian court.
The procurement office should specify the entire requirements of what it wants for every specific program or application (even if this means spelling out every feature of a Microsoft application that they think they need without mentioning Microsoft).
The Hungarian court obviously is unqualified in legal matters if it thinks specifying a company's product in a tender is not a "fait accompli".
Every company which is lobbying for a project before tender tries as much as possible (if it has the influence) to have its products (or expertise) explicitly stated in the tender to give it an edge.