Keep Office or suffer, MPs told. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2015/05/26/microsoft-accused-threats/1
Big surprise, a multinational telling governments what to do, and this is why capitalism is a failure. The very fact big companies are comfortable blackmailing governments suggests it has happened before many times with success. More on topic, over in France the fuzz stopped using windows because of the price of upgrading the entire gendarmes force. They now use some version of linux and as far as I'm aware are happy with it, I wonder why MS didn't attempt a little extortion with them... or if they did, how the Gendarmerie got around it !
I don't see why Microsoft should support a government by paying them multi-million dollars in taxes (not to mention highly-paid employees themselves do pay taxes and buys a lot of things) that don't support them. Not to mention how the U.K government is laughably doesn't know how to cut funding. If you use something daily, it is not a waste of money. It is rather an excellent investment. How about cutting corruption, MP wages, stop MP using tax payers money for personal expenses, and I go on and on and on and on. Oh and let's be sure to not upgrade Windows, and instead pay more by getting XP extended support. What do you think will happen when they switch? They'll switch to Linux based OS, and LibreOffice or whatever, the government will spend millions on overpriced training for the employees, and even new recruits, and stick with the same software, same version, apply 0 update, for the next 15-20years, similarly to XP now, and because they'll have 0 push to upgrade they continue to stay with what they have. Security? What security? Linux can be super secure, but 15 years from now, it really won't be.
So the government doesn't support large companies by providing a healthy and educated workforce, good infrastructure, legally enforced respect for contracts, law & order, etc, etc.
But the blackmail didn't work, Microsoft didn't get what they wanted, so therefore your argument doesn't apply here.
No. It is Microsoft R&D, they only hire the best of the best of the best, and people that get a knock on their doors to work at Microsoft ('cause they don't really hire, the company goes get them), are willing to go anywhere Microsoft is. And if the company moves, they know that Microsoft will pay for everything, including family move, finding schools for the employe kids and so on. And when you work at Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, you don't just leave because of a small inconvenience (compared to the benefits you get). Not to mention that the U.K is full of red tape, and high taxes on everything. What you said, benefits small companies, not massive ones like Microsoft.
Beat me to it. Some people seem to think that our comfortable Western existence is just a given, whereas actually it's built and paid for on the back of hard work and taxes. Why should large multi-nationals be able to make themselves exempt from the taxes that everyone else has to pay, when clearly they benefit from them every bit as much? I don't believe in all the 'class-warfare' and 'soak the rich' nonsense, but large corporations should be made to play by the same rules as everyone else - anything else is freeloading.
So if the government doesn't help large companies by providing an environment for doing business (a healthy and educated workforce, good infrastructure, legally enforced respect for contracts, law & order) then why don't more companies setup office in the middle of the outback, or places like Zimbabwe, Zambia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
This is why capitalism is a failure? Are you not aware of MS's history? They got as far as they did BECAUSE of pulling this kind of stuff. They put companies and organizations in a situation where they have nowhere else to turn. That is the success of capitalism (I'm not saying I favor it, BTW). I don't think the UK (government officials or the citizens) are wholly prepared to make a switch to something else, like Linux. Switching to Mac isn't really going to help the whole openness issue they're looking to resolve. Wouldn't surprise me if they switched to something like Mageia and Mandriva, which are largely developed by the French. France is a pretty big contributor toward linux. But yeah, I'm a little surprised MS didn't manage to make a deal but maybe they were too late. Besides, it isn't really that hard to make linux user-friendly. I've set it up for people who know nothing about computers and found it easier to use than Windows.
For most companys the cost of migrating from Windows and office to another option would far outwiegh the cost of Paying MS the money. Few years back the place of work I was in was looking to upgrade there Entire pc system around 8000 Desktop Machines nation wide. A linux compatible distro could be done cheap. The problem was the lack of compatible hardware and the staff been unaware of how or what linux was let alone how to operate it. Retraining staff in Linux would of cost more than what they eventually paid MS for renewel. Due to cost off staff training ( which is crazily expensive for linux due to it been done by 1-2 companies instead of 20-30) Downtime in workforce been trained and the lost producitivity from the above.
