[Linux-bruxelles] MS scorns Israeli OpenOffice defection

[Pettiaux Nicolas]

Le ministère israélien de l'emploi vire Ms Office pour OOo ... à la 
colère de M$.

Et un de plus.

<http://theregister.com/content/4/34154.html>

MS scorns Israeli OpenOffice defection
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 24/11/2003 at 12:05 GMT


The Israeli Ministry of Commerce - essentially the treasury - has 
suspended all contracts with Microsoft.

First out of the door is the Israeli employment agency, which will 
replace 550 out of 700 users with OpenOffice. The contract represents a 
hardware win for IBM. Some 150 staff will stay on Microsoft Office. For 
now, all the switchers will remain on Windows, running the Win32 version 
of the software libre equivalent of Microsoft Office.

Microsoft reacted scornfully to the decision, the Hebrew-only Daily Mail 
reports, accusing the Israelis of being tight-fisted.

"The employment agency has selected an immature and unproven software 
package and its functionality is at the best close to Office 97," said 
Microsoft representatives.

Accusing the ministry of penny pinching is hardly a promising line of 
attack, we suggest. Users make rational choices. And Word 97-era 
functionality is clearly considered good enough for the Israeli ministry 
of employment.

Traditionally, incumbents fight better-value insurgents by stressing 
switching costs. We'll be hearing about the importance of the fabled 
Microsoft Office Corporate Macro^(TM) fairly soon - a mythical beast which 
has never been sighted outside of technical computer magazines. 
Switching costs are certainly a factor, but may be less than Microsoft 
had banked on.

In a little noticed decision recently, Israel's Antitrust Authority 
director general, Dror Strum, declared Microsoft a monopoly. Separate 
civil actions on behalf of open source and Apple advocates are pending; 
a motion by the former to State Prosecutor Tadmor recently brought to 
light unpublished decisions by the Antitrust Authority to abide by the 
US antitrust settlement. The latter followed an outcry by Israel's 
Macintosh community about Microsoft's failure to support right-to-left 
languages, such as Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew - in their Macintosh 
applications. Apple now fully supports right-to-left languages, but 
there's no sign of Microsoft enabling the feature at the application 
level. This affects Apple in the Hebrew and in the much larger Arab and 
Indian markets. ®
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