Slashdot Mirror
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."
Everytime I read the letter, I think they are talking about Bill G not the Bill. Of course, the Bill is the oppostie of what Bill wants. So in reviewing the Bill, I support the Bill because Bill doesn't like the Bill.
I think.
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...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
Not because OSS is best in *every* situation - but because in the 80% where it is the right decision, this article explains the needs to do it right (ie - have staff that is trained, pay for support), while dismissing the fears sent by proprietary companies.
The fact is, OSS is here to stay in the business, and only by really competing (ie - coming up with a better product for the price) can businesses hope to keep profitable. Of course, with more companies (Red Hat, Suse, IBM) making a profit from Open Source, the consumer will win every time.
Ah, competition. How I love thee.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Q: What's the difference between an M-16 and /.?
A: An M-16 only repeats 100x/min.
But while we're back (still?)on the topic, has anyone translated the original FUD letter from the M$ Peru guy (might be mirrored, which the honorable Sr. Nunez so elquently rebutted, into English?
Fight for your right to read books!
Yes, this was just posted Saturday, but I'll bet a lot of people don't look back at stuff from the weekends. That being said ...
His letter is a long way of saying, "Please decide which side of your mouth to speak out of." By the third time he pointed out, "This contradicts what you said in the previous paragraph," I had tears streaming down my face.
This contradiction alone would invalidate your position.
...
This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs.
...
In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3.
...
On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately precding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.
Nope, no sig
Since so many /. users notice so quickly that a story is a repost, why don't the editors do the same? Do they actually read what the others ran?
/. homepage...
It might be because of the duplicates the editors see all day in the submission bin. When you read so many stories, it might be difficult to judge if you already saw it in the submission bin (and rejected it) or if it made it through to
Would a "not a repost" committee, with some regular users as members, help? They could be chosen the same way as moderators (randomly, but still based on past level of activity). This would likely catch a lot of reposts, since usually, in the first ~30 comments, half of them are complaining about the repost. If a member flags a story as repost, the editor could then verify it, and refrain from actually putting it on the frontpage and look as somebody not doing a lot of backgroung checking.
Food for thought...
The difference is that I get +2 Funny karma (as of this posting) for saying "This was posted on Saturday." with some humor instead of -2 Redundant karma for just stating it blandly. Of course now that I have stupidly revealed my master plan, I will lose lots of karma from both of these posts. :)
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature [...] you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring [...] since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
If MS would submit arguments in favor of proprietary software instead of submitting FUD in opposition to free software, then this would allow an even more enlightening exchange! Wow! Just the exchange in this letter was enlightening enough. Probably so enlightening that MS doesn't want to draw any more attention.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
It was translated. The links to the original versions are at the very top of the article.
Unfortunately, the links are down, so, google cache time!
Original Response
Original Microsoft FUD Letter
Both are in Spanish, BTW.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
What I find funny is that the people who constantly complain about reposts can't figure
out that they are doing the same thing.
That said, I have to say, "You go, Edgar!" Replies to M$ FUD needs more people like you.
-Sean
Everyone of the argument planks in the proposed bill is good, and not just for Peru. Every sovereign government based upon the ideas of representative democracy can expect similar gains if they were to follow the same principles. They are logical principles.
Free, unencumbered and open communication are the hallmarks of any society that hopes to better itself. Restricting communication to those who can afford to pay for a read/write access device, such as MS Word or Corel Wordperfect or whatever, is an inefficiency, pure and simple.
Enduring archival of public documents is, likewise, important for any society that wishes to learn from history instead of repeating the same mistakes. A written language used to be enough to guarantee such archival. Now, the essential medium is no longer paper, but the authoring and reading of documents is no longer just a matter of learning how to read and write, it's become of matter of having paid all of the taxes.
National security issues of knowing exactly what it is you are running. This is one issue that largely continues beneath the surface. It's very surprising to me that in the post 9/11 world that more hasn't been made of critical infrastructure running only programs you can see for yourself and compile for yourself.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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.
You know whenever I read Tony Blair's speeches for instance or the writings of other foreign politicians such as this one, I get a little jealous. The holder of the highest political office in this country, in addition to constantly using phrases like "evil-doers" and "smoke 'em out of their holes", says things like:
"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."
- G.W. Bush as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002
See http://www.bushcartoon.com/bushisms.html for more examples.
I don't understand why there is so much aggrivated rivalry between Linux, BSD, OSX, etc. Friendly competition, and even friendly jibes, are understandable. But the 'ha ha, it's BSD not linux!' or vice versa, is childish and regressive.
I've been using Linux since 1996, and I love it. But I don't feel any enmity with the BSD folk, or any other free software/OSS system. I use RedHat. Not because it's necessarily better, but it works for me and I like it. But if you like Debian, or Gentoo, or SuSE, more power to you! I don't feel the need to inflict my choice on you.
Competition is good. Gnome vs KDE is good for both sides. It stimulates thought and advancement. Same goes for Linux vs BSD. I mean, come on! Most of the software even runs on both platforms!
MS, on the other hand, isn't about competition. It's about crushing everything that isn't MS. They don't give you a choice. In fact, the take away choices that you already have. That's worth fighting against.
If Peru goes BSD, then great! If they use Linux, fantastic! It doesn't matter, because it means freedom in either case. It also means great interoperability, because Linux & BSD get along just fine in a heterogenous environment. So they could use BSD *and* Linux! That's the whole point.
This article is a follow-up of the story posted on Saturday. Geez people you people are like rabid dogs.
I've read a bit of the Federalist Papers (okay, it was just Alexander Hamilton's brilliant first paper... it goes downhill as soon as you get to John Jay's first writing) and of course we've all read the Declaration of Independence and other such great documents. And this reads like one of those documents. This guy could give lessons in what being a Democratic and Free state really means to the US Government. In fact, I think this letter should be required reading for all US Government officials.
I'd even go as far as to say we should begin a letter-writing campaign to mail copies of this to our congress-critters, to the White House, and to the national news media.
I'm going to put this on my TODO: list. I am going to draft a letter with these contents, and mail them to the people who represent me.
As the submitter said, "All that is required for Evil to triumph is that good men do nothing." I may not be a perfectly good man, but I'm going to do SOMETHING!
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).
Just lay off the editors. They've got other things to do like spending working day after working day in front of their playstations. They are also responsible for planning and resourcing trips to the movie theatre. You think that the deep and insightful movie reviews that we are lucky enough to find here just appear out of thin air?
We should be thankful that they're busy schedules allow any resources at all to be devoted to posting and researching these stories. Who can honestly say that its humanly possible for any of them to pay attention to what was posted only 24 to 48 hours ago? Any of us would surely make the same mistakes after our 10th hour of redbulled fueled Final Fantasy.
And don't you dare mention any thing like a review period or even the most simplistic of approval mechanisms for their postings. Because you would then clearly be in league with the RIAA, BillG, (or insert favorite techno-nazi here) and denying them their right to post whatever they want when they want.
You have the name of the law correct. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that most kinds of information be available to the general public. There are exceptions for classified information, information that's protected by privacy (e.g. you shouldn't be able to get a copy of my tax return, etc).
I think the big jump you're making here is how the information is stored versus the information itself.
The Peruvian (and most free software people) want to say that the way the information is stored should be open and accessible to all. That is, whether the documents are kept in a locked filing cabinet, a computer, or posted to every chat room in the world, the way to access the information should be held hostage by a single vendor. The information must be accessible at all times.
That doesn't mean that the government should share all of the information all of the time with the people. While storing documents in an open format such as HTML would give them the opportunity to do so, it doesn't mean that they have to.
From PBS Frontline:
Under the terms of NAFTA, an environmental regulation is regarded as a "taking" and the state may have to pay a huge settlement to the manufacturer.
Nope, no sig
Sunday was a great day for reading intelligent and insightful commentary on Free Software and Copyleft.
/. comments.)
First, I got up to read the letter mentioned here. (Was that really the congressman who penned that?? Wow. In any event, what a very nice read.)
Next, I go to the bookstore and stumble across:
Free, as in Speech and Beer, absolutey without peer as the _best_ most insightful book on copyleft and free software and its implications that I have yet read.
(And I've read a bunch of them.)
The strangest thing: I'd never even heard of it. It was just sitting there on the new releases.
Read the letter above, then go and buy the book, too. On both counts you will be pleasantly surprised at the quality of discourse taking place on the topics we all care about. (Something you don't always get from
The book doesn't appear to be at Amazon yet, but what the hey... Canadian dollars are cheap! (The link above is to the Canadian equivalent of Amazon/B&N)
With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence
This statement alone should form the basis for many kinds of IT decisions, not just purchasing. Absolute brilliance.
where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
Hear, hear. Stating that a smarter, better informed "consumer" is a better served consumer is profound in its simplicity, and it neatly states an irrefutable argument that I think developers and admins have been trying to put into words for decades.
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
(What did we do before google? ;)
http://www.pcworldmalta.com/specials/MSPiracy
PARIS (11/28/2001) - The French subsidiary of one of the world's most vocal opponents of software piracy has itself been convicted of pirating a French 3D animation program. This is the first ruling on a matter that dates back to 1995, when Microsoft Corp. bought Softimage, a 3D computer-generated image (CGI) specialist whose software violated the intellectual property of a small French software house.
The Commercial Court of Nanterre fined Microsoft France 3 million francs (US$422,000) in damage and interest for software piracy. "It's a start," said a lawyer for the plaintiffs, "although Microsoft continues to stall on the provisional execution of the judgment."
Some fact-checking shows the following:
. htm) is a real member of the Congress. His email is evillanueva@congreso.gob.pe.
Congressman Edgar David Villanueva Nunez (www.congreso.gob.pe/congresista/2001/evillanueva
If you go to the page mentioned above, you will see some pictures/buttons at the top left. Click the one that shows some fingers holding a pen ('Proyectos de ley presentados'/Projects). He apparently introduced 25 pieces of legislation in the First Session in 2001, and 7 during the Second Session.
During the First Session, he introduced Bill 1609, 'Software Libre' (Free Software). It was sent to two Committees on 7 January 2002: Education, Science, & Technology, and to Consumer Protection and Public Services Regulation.
He introduced a similar bill in the Second Session, number 2485, 'Use of Free Software by the Public Administration.' As of 12 April 2002, it is in the same Committees as the first bill (1609).
I would post both Bills here, but a) they are looong, and 2) they are en espanol. So, if you want to read them.....the full text of both Bills are available through Congressman Villanueva Nunez's page.
Happy babelfishing!
In NZ, we have a law firm taking Microsoft to the commerce commission for issues related to Software Assurance. He has writen a very nice brief outlining many of the issues, and it is well worth a read. Click here to read more. There are links to various letters and news articles covering this issue.
One big point that the Commerce Commission raised, is that if SA is such a big issue, why aren't bigger companies and countries picking it up?!
The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom....
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
--Leonard Peikfoff
It's not theft. It's use.
OSX is exactly the same thing as any non-coder who uses any OSS. It's NOT theft. It's NOT unethical. And, in fact, it's EXACTLY WHAT THE BSD FOLKS SEEM TO WANT!
OSS is (alledgely) about getting the best sofware, and being able to get support long after the creator dies. Not getting your agenda across. Not beating down the big guy. But getting THE BEST SOFTWARE POSSIBLE.
If Apple dies tomorrow (MS buys them and shuts them down 100%), everyone who has an Apple with OSX can continue to get support and updates from the OSS community--which is composed of people who, for the three goals of getting-something-that-works, ego-stroking, and philanthropy, donate their time to something that does not get them any direct fiscal payback.
But my main point is that the letter is just beautiful, even in translation; I really wish I read Spanish well enough to be able to read the original, because it must be wonderful. My favorite, by far:
Heehee.
I am not certain that neo-liberal international fora will agree with the Congressman's position. MS will say "we cannot sell to the public sector in Peru w/o having our IP expropriated" and I wouldn't be shocked if a WTO or FTAA tribunal was sympathetic.
I would be extremely surprised if MS isn't talking to USTR to apply pressure. MS is definitely not shy talking to USTR (think about US pressure on China to stop piracy) or about trying to get other countries laws changed (a la Sri Lanka).
I'm part of a similar initiative in Argentina (I'm not Peruvian) which is closely related, so I can tell you the story from here.
The Argentinian Free Software Law proposal has been around for more than a year now. You can read about it at http://www.grulic.org.ar/proposicion. It was written by a congressman and improved by a bunch of geeks on a mailing list who offered him (idelogical) support.
At some time in the middle, the Peruvian LUG found about it, liked it, and tried to find a Congressman there to do something similar (in fact, both law proposals are identical). They found Congressman Villanueva Nuñez.
Our group has contact with the Peruvians, and some people from here have travelled there to offer ideas, and even helped with the writing of this letter (yes, it takes some mistycism about it away but is true: geeks participated in the writing of the letter).
Hope that feeds your curiosity. You have lots of info at the site i noted above, and at the Peruvian LUG (slashdotted right now).
You may not sue the Federal government. It's in the consitution.