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An open letter to Steve Ballmer

Posted by Sander_Marechal on · 8 comments
Mandriva Blog; By François Bancilhon
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Dear Steve, Hi, this is François, from Mandriva. I’m sure we’re way too small for you to know me. You know, we’re one of these tiny Linux company working hard for our place on the market. We recently closed a deal with the Nigerian Government. We had a good answer to their need: the Classmate PC from Intel, with a customized Mandriva Linux solution. And then, today, we hear from the customer a totally different story: “we shall pay for the Mandriva Software as agreed, but we shall replace it by Windows afterward.” How do you call what you just did Steve, in the place where you live? In my place, they give it various names, I’m sure you know them.

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Comments (8)

...what, exactly?

It doesn't even say why Windows will be used. Mandriva's problems the last few years are becoming clear, and it probably has little to do with Steve Ballmer.
Although, being Nigeria, which is rather infamous for being the most corrupt place on the planet Earth, and, quite possibly, several star systems beyond ours, one is permitted to draw reasonable concluesions.

Again -- I don't generally like to speculate, but, to go through an entire purchasing process, sign the deal and take the goods, then switch before you ever use it?

Sounds VERY fishy.

Unless, I suppose, Madriva was able to offer a better deal on the Intel PCs than anybody else.

Oh well, I admit it's just a conjecture on my part.
Ya know, looking at it from the other side of the coin ... how many of us buy windows machines and promptly gut them and put in Linux? It smacks of "WAAAAA, your doing what we do to you ... no fair."
> It smacks of "WAAAAA, your doing what we do to you ... no fair

Absolutely, but you do have to wonder what Microsoft ponied up to make that happen.

Let us not forget that, for any organization using employees to do its work, replacing OS's costs money. Unless Madriva had really snared itself an unbelievable deal on PCs, one wonders why they would do the rip.

The real question is, are those licensed copies of Windows they'll be using to replace Mandriva? Given the possibility that they're not, don't you suppose Mandriva could have an ulterior motive in pointing out the comments to Microsoft?
I'm thinking that being Nigeria it could just be that the purchasing agent found a way to get another kick back.
Quoting:Sounds VERY fishy.
I know a lot about Nigeria. I assure you they wouldn't have a change of heart like that without an exchange of a large sum.

Not fishy at all. Simple economics: Linux is free (as in worth $0) and Windows is worth some negative number whose absolute value is much more than zero.

I know, I used to work at a telecommunications company that had to cowtow to M$ for the MSN business. Every week I'd get emails with all the IIS web sites that need patching, including customer facing web sites. Some web companies value downtime at an order of magnitude of negative $10,000 per minute - put that in your "Get the Fud" TCO pipe and smoke it.

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