Dutch govt ends exclusive MS upgrade talks

@ 2004/12/23
Follwup on this story

The Dutch government has abandoned its negotiations with Microsoft over an ambitious plan to upgrade more than 260,000 workstations and servers.

Despite a unanimous vote by the Dutch parliament in 2002 to adopt open standards and open source software, Microsoft recently opened exclusive negotiations with the Dutch government regarding a major software upgrade. After Dutch IT weekly newspaper Automatisering Gids leaked details about the €157m ($210m) deal, Dutch MPs demanded an explanation as to why there hadn't been a mandatory public bid.

Comment from kristos @ 2004/12/23
seems like some people were getting an extra payrole their