Fears About Microsoft Return, in Mexico

Z` points to this New York Times article, which begins: "While Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, defended the company against charges of monopolistic practices before Congress this week, legislators in Mexico City prepared their own attack against a new agreement by Microsoft and the Mexican government that could drive millions of new Internet users into Microsoft's waiting arms by the end of the year."

Comments

Re:looks like it may be just the start..

[sweet reason]

...foreign countries taking Microsoft to task now that the US DoJ has led the way.

i hope they do it with more backbone than the DoJ showed.

Moving on to pastures new

[DirtyDuck]

It's clear that what Microsoft is doing is securing markets outside of the first world nations by giving away much now and reaping the benefits later.

This makes perfect sense for Microsoft. After all, if they are forced to change Windows in the US marketplace you can bet that other contries which see IT as a way to improve their economic conditions and will gladly jump at the chance for some 'free' software from Microsoft will not sue them later for monopolistic practices.

It also seems that these contries which are developing fast are almost dazzled by the Microsoft marketing and spin machine and don't realise the long term consequences of their actions.

I suspect this is a slightly larger symptom of the same problem that some companies face. The high level executives are dazzled and wooed by Microsoft and the order goes out to use only Microsoft products.

Also, don't forget that Vicente Fox has promised this will be complete by the end of his term in office and Microsoft proably swore that it would be done in time.

Re:Moving on to pastures new

[joib]

Well, it's like dope dealers: "The first hit is free". And tobacco multinationals giving free cigarettes to schoolchildren in countries where it's not forbidden etc.

I don't blame Microsoft. It's a company after all. It's mission is to increase the value of its stock. Not to feel sorry for people without net access.

The blame falls entirely on the mexican government. For _believing_ MS marketing bullshit and doing some shady backroom deal with MS. Instead of a proper public tendering where they could have compared the TCO of a MS solution with other solutions. I find it hard to believe that the TCO of a MS solution would be lower than, say, one using the linux terminal server project and second hand hardware.

Ugh.

[digitect]

I don't know if it's just me, or if I've been hanging out on SlashDot too long... this article makes me feel sick.

Can it really be that we're the only ones who see Microsoft's business "initiatives" for what they really are--predatory monopolisitc struggles to rule the world? Or have we all become stained by reading SlashDot and they really mean well?

IMO, Mexico is the perfect place for Open Source software. It's a real shame that portions of the Mexican government can't see their opportunity to leapfrog existing software technologies and jump into the first world.

They should learn to fish

[Phil Hands]

If Microsoft sold fish, this deal would be equivalent to being taught how to fill out the MS order form for your next fish consignement, and being given a discount on your first order (but still paying enough to cover the cost of the training and the fish).

If they kept their money, and spent it on training people as GNU/Linux trainers, they would have taught themselves to fish, and would soon be in a possition to export their fishing skills to the world, including the USA.

I know which I'd prefer if I were Mexican.

And of course, this is in a free software ocean that cannot be over-fished. It actually becomes more productive, the more people fish it.