Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

U.S. Asked to Put Purchasing Power to Good Use

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the power-of-the-purse dept.

James Love writes "Today Ralph Nader and I wrote U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels to ask the federal government to use its power as a big consumer to address competition issues in the market for PC client software. These are some of the practices we want OMB to examine: OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture" makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers, and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave; OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software; OMB is asked to consider if it should place a cap of the market share for any one vendor of PC client software, and have the size of the cap depend upon Microsoft's willingness to open up its interface information, or port its MS Office products to additional platforms; OMB is also asked to consider if it would be more efficient to buy code for office productivity products (and release into the public domain), rather than spend billions to lease software."

2 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. Re:File Formats are the key... by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/do cs.html#filefmtspecs

    Why does everyone think PDF is a closed spec?

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  2. Re:And people complaim about corporate welfare... by oGMo · · Score: 5, Informative
    so, in a nutshell, Nader is saying that the government should make an effort to influence the marketplace in a certain direction, rather than letting natural market forces dictate what heppens

    Uh, the government is already influencing the marketplace in a major influence at that. Nader appears to be asking for the government to influencing it less or at least differently, as to not support a convicted criminal.

    --

    Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage