[Am-info] Microsoft loses showdown in Houston

[Mitch Stone]

This is a "must read."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030122/ 
tc_usatoday/4798893

Microsoft loses showdown in Houston

Byron Acohido USA TODAY

HOUSTON -- The people who run this city recently heard a familiar pitch  
from Microsoft: Sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing  
plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of software it hadn't  
paid for.

Microsoft warned that the city could be slapped with stiff fines for  
using any Microsoft software for which it could not produce receipts.

Scores of other businesses and public agencies, facing a similar  
dilemma, have agreed to the new licensing deals -- a linchpin of  
Microsoft's growth strategy.

Not Houston.

The nation's fourth-largest city rebuffed the offer and has embraced an  
obscure competitor called SimDesk. SimDesk delivers software over the  
Internet at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft's Office, a software  
suite used on 94% of America's office personal computers. Houston is  
giving SimDesk to tens of thousands of residents and businesses, free.  
And it has begun using SimDesk as an Office substitute on at least half  
the city's 13,000 PCs.

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