I'm sure this is a serious problem, but I'm not sure it's the main problem. The other one, that might be an even bigger problem is the way Microsoft sells its products. While, technically, most of the stuff they sell appears as B2C products, they are sold as B2B, and increasingly more so since the emphasis shifted towards the Web versions.

What this means for the users is that their interests are overpowered by the interests of the organization supplying them with the software. An organization can be more easily bribed both "legally" by offering a (temporary) discount and straight-up illegally by paying the procurement officer. Microsoft is known to do both. This is not a battle one can win on technological merit alone, unfortunately...

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dannyw 21 hours ago | parent [-]

The second part is alarming, but offering a temporary discount is a routine and standard pricing strategy; not a 'bribe'.

	▲	crabbone 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't mean to say it was illegal, I meant to say it was an advantage in competition against the open-source counterparts because those usually cannot afford to make discounts of any kind. More concretely, Microsoft used to claim that the price of their software is compensated for by the operational costs (which is false, but they managed to convince a lot of people). In the same way, due to having deep pockets, Microsoft can, temporarily, operate at a loss only to out-survive the competition only to crank up the price to the ceiling once the competition is gone.