Red Hat and 17 other companies last week sued the Swiss Federal Bureau for Building and Logistics (BBL), a government agency, in the Swiss Federal Administration Court seeking to overturn the award of a $36 million three-year contract to Microsoft for workstation widgetry, including applications, maintenance and support.

They say there was no public bidding process because the BBL felt there was "no sufficient alternative to the Microsoft products."

Red Hat says it is "seeking a public bidding process that allows for consideration of the technical and commercial advantages of open source software products."

It claims there are plenty of alternatives and that those alternatives are being used locally by the city of Zurich, the canton of Solothurn, the Federal Agency for Computer Sciences and Telecommunications (BIT), and the Federal Institute for Intellectual Property (IGE).

Red Hat is the only brand name in the action which includes adfinis GmbH, Binatec AG, cape IT GmbH, Collax GmbH, Corvent GmbH, iNodes AG, LiipAG, LxPN Distributions AG, Open-Exchange GmbH, stepping stone GmbH, stoni.ch consulting & help, SyGroup GmbH, univention GmbH, Zarafa Deutschland GmbH, Ziil Informatiklösungen GmbH, 4teamwork and 4Synergy GmbH.