Mug-rosoft
As long-time readers may have guessed, I have more than a little admiration for Mandriva. They stuck it out through financial problems, and (thus far) seem to be standing firm on not entering into some kind of patent-promise arrangement with Redmond.
So I was more than a little curious when François Bancilhon, the CEO of Mandriva, fired a sardonic mortar at Microsoft last week, accusing our favorite proprietary vendor of ruining a deal Mandriva had with Nigeria for 17,000 pre-Mandriva loaded Classmate PCs.
I fired up the e-mail client and tossed out some posers. I initially asked Bancilhon where the deal stood right now. He replied that Mandriva was "currently trying to get more information on the local situation." That would be the gist of Bancilhon's answers, because it seems no answers have been terribly forthcoming from Nigeria.
That, I sense, is why Bancilhon is so torqued about this deal collapsing. It's bad enough that the deal crashed--but to not know exactly why or how would be immensely frustrating.
Bancilhon's blog indicated that Nigeria would take the PCs with Mandriva installed, then install Windows later. I asked if his contacts in Nigeria had indication of what Nigeria would have to pay for those new Windows licenses, if anything. Again, he'd gotten no indication on this, nor did the government explain why they wanted to migrate to Windows at all.
Even more maddening was the way Mandriva discovered something was amiss. It turns out that Nigeria didn't bother to let them know directly. "I learned it on Wednesday, after a journalist called the contact I gave them in Nigeria. We checked the source, the news [was] confirmed on that same day." Which was ridiculously embarrassing, given that Mandriva had issued its press release announcing the finalization of the deal on Tuesday [October 30].
To me, having covered the crime beat before, this has all the ear marks of a classic mugging: a shadowy assailant, a rapid strike, and a stunned victim. Because Mandriva is stunned by this. They knew Microsoft was in the running for a similar deal, but had no idea they would be able to outright steal it.
Microsoft, naturally, denies any wrongdoing. "Microsoft has a strong relationship with the government in Nigeria and will continue to partner with government and industry to help meet their needs," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement sent my colleague Sean Michael Kerner. "Microsoft operates its business in accordance both with the laws of the countries in which it operates and with international law."
Except I thought it was "convicted monopolist," not "acquitted monopolist." Hm, funny.
My last question for Bancilhon definitely falls into the cynical category. Given the fact that Mandriva, by Nigeria's statements, is still going to get paid for the delivery of the 17k Mandriva/Classmates, what's the long-term harm?
I told you it was cynical. But, upsetting as the deal killing was, I was actually trying to look for a silver lining in all of this. Turns out, it's all cloud, no lining.
"Our idea of doing business is not to sell products which get dumped, it is to establish a win-win partnership with a customer who benefits from our products and services," Bancilhon replied. Also, there are more practical concerns.
"The 17,000 [PCs] are a first phase with more machines [to be sold later]," the CEO explained, "and this deal is representative of similar deals in many parts of the world."
In other words, Nigeria's actions, whatever their motivation, could sabotage similar deals with other nations.
It's the mugging that keeps on giving.
I wouldn't be surprised if bribery was involved. Many African governments don't exactly have high standards with regards to corruption. Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index gives Nigeria a low rating of 2.2 for 2007 (lower numbers are worse).
Africa has always sold its people for cheap, so this smacks of standard practice in an oil rich country where there are long gas queues and where people get incinerated trying to catch drips from oil pipelines.
I don't think Mandriva will get any answers, silence has been paid for and deposited in overseas bank accounts. Next I expect they'll not be following through on any promised further orders.
It seems to me Microsoft is a company without any moral or ethics. They prove this again and again and again. And yet nothing happens. One would think that they someday would realise this themselves and say Hey! what are we doing?
But no! A company without a soul does not wake up. No they keep on justifying what they do by saying everyone do buisniess like this and otherwise the competition would kill us. But this is only rationalisations for the true motive to keep increasing profits..to keep the shareholders happy.
There is something terribly wrong with the laws that govern large (and small)corporations!
It should be price to pay for not having decency,moral or ethics.
The more of this the better.
We want a sliding scale of cost of Windows to illustrate how it has no intrinsic value, that the "normal" price is a gouging price.
A hypothetical.. Microsoft deals with the major Nigerian oil company, which presumably is responsible for Nigerian leaders getting lots of cash. Microsoft offers them a savings in Windows licensing to partly pass on to the Nigerian government if they accept Windows. In fact, Microsoft may have specfically wanted the gov to accept the Mandriva sale knowing Mandriva's business model.
How it's done is not very important when you consider Microsoft has so much cash (especially the cash they mint onto CDs) ..just as long as the government is willing to be bought off at the expense of the people.
It's difficult to play Microsoft's game even if you wanted to because you can't really offer companies savings in licensing. At most you can offer to service/work for free which is a very different matter. Thus there is little leverage.
Anyway, I don't think this will spread too far without affecting Microsoft negatively. Also, this and some other things encourage me to go back and spend more time with Mandriva/Mandrake. FWIW, one of the most popular distros right now was based on Mandriva and still has much in common with it (actually all linux distros have much in common with each other).
J. -- support freedomware games by carrying the shield: http://thetuxproject.com/gamefestbanners
It is against US law for a US corporation to pay bribes or kickbacks in a foreign country. If a money trail is discovered, Microsoft would be in trouble in the US regardless of the efficiency of justice in Nigeria.
Perhaps the larger community that made the Groklaw site successful could shed some light here.