On Sun, 7 Jul 2002, der.hans wrote:

> Am 07. Jul, 2002 schwätzte Robert Bushman so:
>
> > Single sourcing products means accepting several risks,
> > including the risk that the single source will become abusive.
> > Recently, Microsoft was found guilty by the Department
>
> It was actually 3 years ago. The punishment is what's recent ( pending for
> other states, but already a done deal for .az.us ).

Agreed. I was shooting for creating a feeling
of currency - the offense was recent in terms
of the history of Maricopa County. Is there
an advantage in specifying 3 years, or is there
another way you would say it?

> > of Justice of abusing its monopoly power. Maricopa County
> > has a clause (MC1-902) in its procurment procedure to
> > deal with such vendors, but Maricopa County is currently
> > too dependant to even consider invoking the clause with
> > Microsoft. What efforts are being made to mitigate
>
> Are they too dependent on Microsoft? We don't know. That's what we want to
> find out. It's up to the county to decide how deep their dependency is. We
> want to ask them.
>
> We don't even know for sure that they're dependent on Microsoft.

Agreed. This is similar to the point raised by
Jim.

Suppose we put Jim's MC1-902 questions right at
the front, and add in a "if not, why not?"

Presumeably, if they say, "we will debar them",
we will all be at down Einstein's Bagels talking
with Allsing over coffee about which is the
best distro :)

They probably will say, "we cannot debar Microsoft,
because we need them". Even if it's not technically
true, they will feel this way, just as 90% of the
population does. Since I think this is the most
likely outcome, I framed the question this way. I
think gently reminding them that they cannot follow
their own policy because they are addicted is a
nice angle.

If Maricopa has another reason for not debarring
Microsoft, then this question will have to be
mutated on the fly.

What do you think?