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You simply don't get it. Microsoft has billions of dollars of cash on hand. They have reserved tens of millions of that specifically to offer software and services at a discount where a Linux bid is involved. And here's where you don't get it, I'll say it again: how can you beat a bid on software and services against free software when your software costs millions in the first place without taking what would be considered a loss?

Microsoft has billions of dollars of cash on hand. They have reserved tens of millions of that specifically to offer software and services at a discount where a Linux bid is involved.

A fund wouldn't be needed unless Microsoft was paying the client to use the software.

And here's where you don't get it, I'll say it again: how can you beat a bid on software and services against free software when your software costs millions in the first place without taking what would be considered a loss?

OK. I'm going to help you through this. Say Microsoft sells a particular piece of software for $1000 retail... Yet it only costs them a few bucks for the box and CD. So their incremental profit margin on a single box CD is almost $1000. That gives their salesmen a lot of leeway on large-volume pricing, while still making a small (even $1) per-unit profit.

Also, Microsoft may have offered the services at a cheaper price than the open source bidder. The open source bidder may have over-charged. 30M euro for services and the software is free? That's about $2500 per seat. Maybe Munich got ripped off. You're over-analyzing the low-bidder, and not even questioning the high bidder. And yet you feel that you could write an objective spec? LMAO! Get real.

Commercial buying is almost always negotiable, as opposed to retail. The software that I have written and sell is avg. priced in the ~$6000 per seat neighborhood. Do I get occasionally offer aggressive discounts to keep out competitors? Absolutely. Is this illegal? Absolutely not.