On Friday 12 October 2001 11:23, you wrote:
my understanding is that because this was not a new contract - it was basically the re-wording and consiladation of many existing contracts - it didn't have to go to tender.
Kate Hanaghan Silicon Media Group +44 207 761 8219
Try this link for a more detailed view. http://tap.ccta.gov.uk/doh/intpress.nsf/page/2001-0473?OpenDocument When is an old contract not a new contract? So if I go to any of my clients that I have supplied previously they don't need to tender because I just keep the contract open? I don't think that would stand up with the National Audit Office in supply of schools. We tender for every round of funding no matter whether or not the school uses our kit. When was the contract initiated and at what time was it ever tested for value for money? I would quite like to test that one in court. The issue is really first and foremost about competition and monopolies, not the evils of MS. History shows that any organisation that is given monopoly power ends up abusing it. Whatever the contracts, there is deemed to be a single point of supply in this case. Therefore there is a monopoly and in all other cases monopolies are regulated or specific action is taken to inject competition. So the Government should either appoint a regulator who then has the power to determine a fair profit margin based on comparisions with other products, development costs etc or put the same funding into say Open Source development to provide viable competition. I know in education, even a fraction of this money would enable full support of the NC with Open Source and in the longer term billions would be saved. This is nothing to do with being anti-MS, its anti-monopolies and pro-open source as a principle. I would have thought that anyone on the suse list would be promoting the use of open source. Cartel deals between Government and a monopoly will damage open-source so if you just ignore this you are nailing our collective coffin. Its rather a shame legal action is so expensive because it would probably be worth challenging something like this just in order to gain the publicity and highlight the problem. It really is worth making a fuss, its the only chance of getting things changed and 70m buys a lot of kidney machines. regards, -- IanL