The Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland has ruled invalid a software licence contract between a Swiss government agency and Microsoft, the Swiss press agency SDA reported today.

Today's ruling is preliminary.

The case's final outcome could mean the Department for Building and Logistics (BBL) would have to issue a call of tender for its desktop software.

Eighteen open source companies had appealed at the court last week, saying that BBL had ignored procurement rules when it signed a software licence agreement with Microsoft worth 42 million CHF (about 27.8 million euro) without a call for tender, earlier this year. The contract is for software for PC workstations, and covers applications, maintenance, and support.

BBL in earlier news reports on the case said public procurement was unnecessary, as tender regulations were not in force when the contract was signed. Apparently, the court thinks otherwise. BBL also suggested there are no alternatives to the software it used.

Among the companies that protested BBL's ignoring of procurement rules are GNU/Linux distributor Red Hat, offering an alternative desktop operating system, along with Open-Exchange and Zarafa, both developing open source alternatives to Microsoft's Exchange mail and groupware server. A third company, Opencollax, is selling services around an open source small business server, as an alternative for a similar Microsoft product.

According to the SDA report, quoted by the German IT news site Heise, Swiss public bodies must since 2004 consider open source when acquiring software.

SDA reported that the court also said BBL can continue to use the software it purchased, while awaiting the court's final decision.

More information:

Heise news item (in German)

Neue Zürcher Zeitung news item (in German)