Such decisions should not be based on bids and even less on court rulings. You can’t just have complex organisations decide on a technological platform in that way.

The Regie is a megalithic financial institution just like a bank. This goes beyond politicians sharing documents and such. They are extremely dependant on their software and technological architecture.

The Regie might have countless of proprietary application developed for Windows, their whole network based on Windows, their security infrastructure, all their technical staff as Windows professionals, and all their office workers familiar with suites of Windows applications.
All of their email and calandering based on Outlook, and their mobile devices using Windows Mobile with active sync. Investment tracking, trading software, training programs, audit processes and policies, all their specialised employees and servicing contracts, everything would have to be thrashed, it would cost millions to replace. Switch to Linux? Are you F@#$@### crazy!!!!!

This decision should be taken internally by a technological architect that fully understands the needs of his organization and the implications of a switch. Obviously he might be a Windows professional and switching to a different platform would invalidate his role – he could find himself out of a job. So indeed there is a bias, but if the main tech guy, and every techy under him, are working under one technology, then they should be able to continue doing so and that would be in the best interest of the organisation.

There are reasons why banks and finance institutions are not using bidding processes when it comes to designing their technological architecture:
First, going for the cheapest stuff is not always (if ever) the best choice, especially when it comes to software.
Second, Microsoft, Oracle, Mac and such have billions of dollars in cash that can be pursued if they cause catastrophic failure of an organisation. An open source organisation, be it Ubuntu or else, has no liability to their software.

And so on.

Bob, you are wrong when you say it does not matter if they win or lose. It sets a dangerous precedent that could threaten the stability of organisations. Insuring that stability is “due diligence” and it must be the responsibility of architects, not “the cheapest bid gets everything else thrashed”.

It doesn’t matter whether this action wins or loses…what matters is that someone has taken action…and others may do similar things in future.

No longer can governments simply “buy Microsoft” because “that’s what they’ve always done”. They are going to have to do their homework and open up the bidding process.

ok you are right. mea culpa. you win.

and hey, Maxime, you mispelt weather in your last sentence.

Nice syllogism, your premise is wrong.

Nobody’s suing a government (you misspelled it btw) for “not using open source software”, you just can’t do that, this is a laughable idea.

They are being sued for not issuing a call for bids, which they are legally obliged to do in Québec. That’s a very different matter and a valid concern.

Everybody that ever contracted for a Québec government agency at *any* level will tell you that.

In other words Savoir Faire Linux is doing the right thing to protect its “equal” right to propose its Operating System solutions to this government agency.

It’s the law, bottom line.

The only debatable gray zone in my opinion, is weather or not Vista can be seen as an “upgrade” or not and the court will decide that.