Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Carve a new face on the Mount Rushmore of Linux: Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nuñez brilliantly vapourizes the Chicken Little division of the MS Fud Machine. Long read but inspiring. Add another name to the list of people who get that 'All that is required for Evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.'" Update: 05/07 00:03 GMT by T : Antonio Ognio Cesti has an update: "We are some activists working here in Peru to bring the documents to more eyeballs with better bandwidth." They've done just that, writing, "Now we have much better hosting in the U.S. and the original FUD letter completely translated into English."

Comments

Go Peru!

[blankmange]

Sounds odd, but this is exactly what needs to happen to slap MS down a peg or two. I have read on several occasions recently that most of South and Central America are considering open-source in all government computers -- that's great! No chance in hell of it happening here in the US, but then their governments aren't propped up by corporations, either...

Has anyone mirrored the orig letters?

[weis]

I've been trying to hit http://www.gnu.org.pe all day, with no luck. Comments about re-posting an article from Saturday aside (after all, many don't check /. til Monday morning), brief letters from tiny, foreign webservers are the sort of thing that ought to be pasted into the /. article explanation.

Too bad

[avandesande]

all our politicians are lawyers....

WTO or FTAA action

[akb]

It will be very interesting to see whether MS will get any of the "free" trade orgs into this or (more likely) get the US to lean on Peru. They use words like "discriminatory" which have specific meaning with respect to international trade.

A World Trade Organization ('member the big protest in Seattle?) action would require action by the US government on MS's behalf. That's pretty unlikely given the likely size of the trade, it would probably be more trouble than its worth.

Under the in process Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement ('member the protests in Quebec City?) MS could sue Peru directly and receive compensation and overturn the law (if that statement doesn't bother you replace the word "Peru" with "US" or whatever country you live in and see how that makes you feel).

In any event its very likely that MS's Washington lobbyist corp has talked to the office of the US Trade Rep and Peru will suffer in some way for its impudence to MS.

Can I sue the USA for not giving me access?

[eyefish]

I'm contemplating the following after reading the AMAZING article: If I'm a U.S. citizen, can I sue the government for not allowing me full access to the source code of the programs that handle all my data?

Like the letter sent back to Microsoft says: how will I know that the software being used to count votes or calculate my taxes is working as it should if I don't have full access to the system running it???

I figure that anyone who takes this matter to court, and ultimately to the supreme court has a good chance at winning the case, which could eventually force congress/senate to pass a bill mandating open-source software to be used for all govergment affairs.

Any lawyers here have any comments on this?

Side note: I have to admit that this letter sent from this peruvian guy to Microsoft is one of the most amazing and clear documents I have read this year. This should be published by the Free Software Foundation and send copies to all law makers in all countries of the world (for real).

And here's the bit that nailed it for me

[GMFTatsujin]

If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licences; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious.

Congratulations, Peru! Piracy problem solved. I applaud you all. Basically he's just said, "OK Redmond, you don't have to worry about auditing us - EVER AGAIN - and you haven't lost one red cent." Brilliant.

Now if we can just do the same for open-source music, the RIAA will have no reason to bitch either.

Well, I mean, they'd have a reason to bitch, but only because the potential money source that they call "stolen revenues" -- don't even get me started -- will have gone away forever. Sounds equatible to me.

GMFTatsujin

Re:Excellent article

[jxs2151]

Why is my Congresscritter not as well educated as this fine fellow? I'll be sending his letter to my elected leaders.

MS and Peruvian govt

[inode_buddha]

Interesting how MS is all of a sudden concerned about non-competitive practices, isn't it?

No.

[Paul the Bold]

You may not sue the Federal government. It's in the consitution.