Tony boloney: Blair's photo call with Microsoft sends out wrong message?

Just as the argument over the government's decision to use Microsoft's platform for its websites really starts to get heated, Tony Blair has managed to stir things up nicely.

The government has been under attack for making a controversial switch from running mainly Linux servers to Microsoft servers.

The situation Whitehall finds itself in has been bubbling away for a while and is now boiling over. It relates to the discovery that the gateway.gov.uk site - the online government services portal - currently excludes visitors who do not use Windows and Internet Explorer.

A Redmond conspiracy to dominate the great British public? Probably not.

It's much more likely the government just doesn't know any better, especially since it took its tech-savvy CCTA agency off the frontline.

Labour now has to answer two questions: If it ain't broke, why fix it? And, if it costs more, why do it?

And what's really frustrating for friends of open source is that in other European countries it's a different story. In Germany, for instance, the government is affirming the right of open source vendors to submit government tenders. Open source generally has a greater profile there, especially in educational circles.

So the Prime Minister's appearance earlier this week at an Office XP demonstration no doubt left open source advocates fuming. Tony Blair was considered to be advocating a company that last year was battling in court over allegations of monopolistic behaviour.

The government's naivety runs even deeper and points to a very worrying trend: how exactly are government services procured, and should processes be monitored by an agency such as the National Audit Office?

What's more, Whitehall probably didn't even know it was running Linux in the first place and Tony himself most likely doesn't even realise just what a faux pas his Microsoft appearance was.