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Microsoft's Big Stick in Peru
An anonymous reader points out a Wired story on the continuing Peru saga. In this latest episode, Wired notes that the U.S. Ambassador to Peru has chimed in in support of Microsoft and in opposition to Dr. Villanueva's bill which would have mandated open source software be used by the Peruvian government. On the one hand, sure, our diplomats have a national goal of promoting U.S. enterprise, but do we have to promote companies which we are simultaneously pursuing in court for numerous violations of our laws? Isn't that a bit counter-productive?
I know everyone hates Microsoft but they are a big corporation and they do have a major influence on the rest of the American economy. Right now, the US needs Microsoft.
(Sorry if this is a tad offtopic, but...)
The more I hear about stories like these, the more I think we need campaign finiance reform. Think how much more productive and progressive our laws would be if our senators weren't owned by companies. The problem I see with my fellow americans is that we tend to be, for lack of a better word, shallow. For most, memory of things political is only a few months at best. Further, yes, occasionally you get something like CBDTBA (or whatever it was named) that cause outrage, but the underlying problem - that most congressmen are owned my big cooperations (particularly republican, but democrats aren't immune either) - is the one that never gets solved.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Our economy does not need Microsoft. Just think of how much worse it would be if Microsoft also got caught with some corporate scandel (aside from this monopoly thing). Have you not noticed it only took a few huge companies, not many small diversified companies, to make our markets collapse.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
...this is wrong.
Sure, it is our government's job to promote the US's interests, but Peru is right to stand up to the pressure.
Paying for software should take a back seat to paying for water and electricity.
I think mandating Open Source is a bit much, but maybe that's what they have to do to keep their departments from deviating.
I own and run MS products (Win2K, Win2K Server, XP Home, XP Pro, SQL Server 7.0, VB Studio 6.0, etc.) I like them. I haven't had any real pain from them. But I couldn't go buy them today. If I was Peru I'd want Free Software.
But that's not what this is about. Peru didn't mandate Linux. They simply said all software must come with source, which effectively cuts out MS. It's an implicit endorsement of Open Source, but not an explicit one.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
In his June letter, Hamilton said that while the United States doesn't oppose the development of open-source software, it prefers to support a free market where the quality of the product can determine the issue.
This makes no sense, on many levels! First of all, any company can supply open-source software. In no way does this create any barrier to any company. Even Microsoft can submit software for this purpose.
To me this quote is the same as: "Hamilton said that while the United States doesn't oppose the development of green army tanks, it prefers to support a free market where the quality of the product can determine the color." Makes no sense! Anyone can write open-source software.
Microsoft is a monopoly, an illegal one at that, so hearing them talk about free markets is damn funny.
On another level, open-source software is closer to a situation where there are no copyrights, in other words, a true free market. Copyright monopolies are exactly that, monopolies. If you need your software serviced, you have to call exactly one company for permission (or even to have the work done). You have more freedom with open-source than proprietary software. Governments should be supporting freedom!
Of course, I'm not surprised. Microsoft did the same thing in Mexico. Free markets, my ass. Microsoft is just buying their way in and taking advantage of poorer countries.
It used to be that the U.S. was known for promoting freedom, in the guise of democracy and free markets, to other countries. Now, we have our diplomats promoting to keep those same countries in the grasp of a predatory monopolist that we ourselves convicted.
They can say they're not against free software all they want, but the industry they're promoting is not one that is known for giving freedoms to its users and it one that is clearly afraid of the true freedom that free software can give.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
On the one hand, sure, our diplomats have a national goal of promoting U.S. enterprise, but do we have to promote companies which we are simultaneously pursuing in court for numerous violations of our laws?
Actually, these days I think this is a catch-22, if you want to promote U.S. enterprise, by definition you've pretty much gotta support the ones in court.
Seriously, though, it would be hard to define such a standard (at least for big business) since large enough companies are almost always the target of some sort of litigation or investigation, many of which are small or without merit, and are simply a function of their size, history, numerous divisions, and the law of numbers when they employ thousands of individuals. I'm not going shed tears for big business, but even corporations should be considered innocent until proven guilty, and even for the guilty ones government officials should not seek to impose extra-legal restrictions and punishments beyond whatever punishments are decided in court (although as citizens and consumers we are always free to voice our opinion and deny them our business and government agencies should evaluate potential suppliers based on past conduct).
That being said, the adoption of open source software abroad should have positive economic benefits to North America: with the bulk of open source developers based in the U.S. there is probably a quantifiable net benefit to skills and innovation as well as benefits to the many small businesses that rely on open source products and service for productivity gains and revenue. Politicians should be encouraged to promote this industry as well, especially with small business being the real lifeblood of the economy.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Knowing the United States less than honorable track record in Latin and South America, I find it almost funny the article would talk about a US Ambassador trying to "convine" Peru. What is the US going to do? Bomb them for not running Minesweeper and Solitare on their desktops? The irony of the situation is gigantic.
For those who think the US has every right to pursue pushing its own companies, that's fine. But I would hope that we would push companies in compliance with our own laws. Regardless, I would still like to see Linux in Peru.
The world's leading computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.) ship Microsoft-based systems.
They still can, and will, if Peru adopts an open-source mandate.
If you cut out Microsoft from *consideration*, you cut out huge areas of the US service industry.
Why should Peru make that a primary consideration? Or any consideration at all?
Let free trade and market forces determine which technology to choose, not some ideology.
As was pointed out in the article, Microsoft doesn't respect free trade or market forces.
Are their Linux IT companies to help the Peruvian government manage their systems? Yes. Are they chances good they'll be around in six months?
Yep. "IBM"
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
An IT industry covers quite a spectrum of jobs. There are your lower-level technicians and support staff. There are higher-level system and network administrators. There are system architects who identify organization's need and designs an appropriate sytem from available components (or identies components needed). There are programmers who build those additional components.
The only time any of these jobs require Microsoft is when the organization has already invested in Microsoft solutions. And even then - change will happen whether Microsoft is used or not (witness the slow deprecation of many long-standing Novell networks and the migration from one version of Windows to another).
If the Government of Peru invests heavily in a Linux or *BSD infrastructure, it will still have to hire a whole gambit of IT workers to support its environment. If the 15k job figure is correct then it will be 15k IT professionals with a background in Open Source systems and software.
MS isn't the first US corp to complain about "unfair" trading terms imposed by foreign governments. Take the beef row with Europe. Europe maintains that any US concern can ship beef to Europe, providing it meets European standards - basically that the level of growth hormone in the meat is below a certain level. So this is free trade, anyone can produce goods to the spec. The problem is that in the US nobody produces beef without growth hormones. So no beef goes from the US to Europe.
Similarly, MS could produce "open" software for use in Peru in order to compete in the free market according to local regulations. That would mean a big shift in its own practices which it is not prepared to make. I have some sympathy for the MS position. Remember the bit in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent is told he had free access to the plans to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. That is, if he can get to Alpha Centauri, get into the basement of the planning office, break open a locked safe etc.
But I'm still not eating American beef.
IIRC Peru cited two other reasons for specifying open source software besides money. There is a real fear that closed file formats might prevent recovery of information. There is also the possibility of back doors. If there are any it is far more likely that the US has access to them than the Peruvian government. Don't get me wrong, money is a real issue but common defense is the first order of the state. Machiavelli was right.
All your database are belong to U.S.
You are overlooking one critical idea. Monopolies on thought tend to be near-impossible to break (just look at pharmaceutical companies). Microsoft has adopted an attitude specifically to avoid interoperatability with other companies' products. (Just look at kerberos, samba, the office .doc format, et al) The playing field is obviously not level - companies may choose to buy inferior microsoft products simply because they need that interoperability. Therefore, you can't simply let the free-market choose. I'll go so far as to say that Peru doesn't need to mandate open source - they just need to mandate open standards.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So is IBM. Why is Microsoft's position being singled out for support by the US public's representive in Peru?
Requiring software to come with modifiable source code does not discriminate against any company. It should just be considered part of the specification that is desired from the software. Since pretty much all software has source code, it is only a business decision (like pricing, the color of the box, bundling, etc.) whether or not to release the source code with the binary code. As far as specs go, it is pretty easy to comply with. Easier than making a Spanish language set of documentation.
I am amazed by the audacity of trying to dictate the specs that another country's agencies want to use in a call for software. If companies don't want to bid on it, they are free to hawk their wares elsewhere.
What is next, opposition to countries that want documentation in their own peoples' languages instead of the Industry Standard (TM) American English?!?
- Free access to public information by the citizen.
- Permanence of public data.
- Security of the State and citizens.
i.e., the bill says "we think this kind of software best suits our needs at this time". Microsoft isn't being cut from consideration more than any other company is; Microsoft just doesn't choose to produce the kind of software the Péruvian government is interested in. Many of those companies (plus IBM) ship free software-based systems as well. The more people that adopt Linux, the more money there is to be earned in the support industry. So the Péruvian government shouldn't use Free software because their vendor would collapse in six months? That's extreme. Is IBM going to collapse in six months?A summary of your post: the U.S. economy relies on Microsoft (paragraph 2); Linux companies are all going to be bankrupt in half a year (paragraph 3); let different products compete for the business (paragraph 4). I don't see how [2] and [3] are true, first of all, and as for [4], Congressman Villanueva has let free software and Microsoft products compete: he compared them, and chose what looked like the best choice to be the government standard in his bill. Microsoft argued with his conclusions in the aforementioned letter, and Congressman Villaneuva promptly annihilated those arguments in his response.
..how having a requirement that you will only use open source programs is shutting out Microsoft any more than a requirement that the software have some feature X (say the ability to properly handle right-to-left writing) is shutting out Microsoft?
The legislation leaves the door entirely open for Microsoft to develop open source applications and sell it to the Peruvian government. Should Microsoft choose not to bid in that field, is that the Peruvian government's fault? In fact, they are letting market forces decide and it is the American Ambassador who is getting in the way of that.
In fact, if anything, this is the embodiment of the capitalist mentality. Entity A desires a product with various features. If entity B does not or can not supply those features, they do not get the business, and some entity that can does, and more power to that other entity.
Part of the Peruvian government's desired feature list (if the legislation goes through)is a product that they can inspect, modify, and alter themselves. The Ambassador is saying "Please change your requirements so we can compete" without giving any reason to do so other than without the change, they won't (not can't)compete.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
IBM: 320,000 employees, $80 billion in annual sales, sells useful open source systems.
... the major strength of capitalism is diversity. Microsoft doesn't sell software that meets the needs of the government of Peru. If Microsoft would like to sell such software (open file formats + open source), that's fine. But if they continue to refrain from that, the whole point of a free market is that other companies can fill the customer's needs.
Microsoft: 48,000 employees, $28 billion in annual sales, sells crappy closed source software.
So, by your criterion of "big is good", IBM is 2 to 5 times as good as Microsoft.
Seriously
n his June letter, Hamilton said that while the United States doesn't oppose the development of open-source software, it prefers to support a free market where the quality of the product can determine the issue.
He added that by excluding proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Peru would be hurting an industry that "has the potential to create 15,000" jobs in the local economy.
Well, what makes Hamilton (what an ironic name!) think that Peru has not made up it's mind about the quality of the software? I certianly have.
More, how is a GOVERNMENT spec for software purchases going to interfere with private purchases of software. What kind of "free market" is there in goverenment puchasing to begin with.
One more thing, who says that free software won't create jobs? It seems to me that free software has made more jobs here in the US than any single company ever will. Witness sendmail, Apatche, BSD, Linux, and others. What do Sun, Microsoft, HP, Compaq, IBM and other silly spellings have to compare to the thousands of jobs out there tending email, websites, company accounts and what not? Free software can do anything comercial software can and usualy does it better.
I'm disgraced. Our ambasador is meddling in an internal purchasing matter for reasons that don't make sense on their face for the sake of a few US companies. The decision is neither in the best intrests of the US as a whole nor even philisophicaly consistent. As Bill Gates goes in to buy government officials, our Government will be smeared with the corruption. Who will respect our wishes or opinions when we are so frivolous with them?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
By this logic, does this not mean that other countries must NOT use MS products? After all, these countries will be letting their vital systems run on software will be known only to Americans!
All your favorite sites in one place!
because your fucking ambassador would not dare to do the same pimping in Europe because Europe is big, has lots of money and would tell him to go fuck himself. Your ambassador is doing what your ambassadors do best. Treading on small poor countries that can neither defend themselves financially or politically against your fair(sic) and democratic(sic) country.
The argument about the jobs is really so ridiculous that becomes funny:
;)), and thanks to that, the company is expanding and generating even more jobs, profits and taxes.
It would be like advocating to stop using trucks and any kind of machinery in agriculture and use horses and human power instead, that would create thousands, if not millions of jobs!
<sarcasm>So, lets give up the industrial revolution and go back to the middle ages so we can create thousands of jobs!
Let's stop using electricity, cars, planes, and computers all together! they all save jobs!</sarcasm> *sigh*
Open source is a kind of revolution in the IT industry, of course many people will lose their jobs as consequence of it, but many more jobs will be created thanks to it, and many companies will improve how they work allowing them to expand and generate more jobs. Any new tool that helps companies get their jobs done with a minimum cost is good for the economy.
Another of my favorite MS FUD is that the taxes for software are a good thing for the economy, oh well, so then is bad that companies save money? Lets duplicate taxes on software then! It will be even better! This also assumes that the money don't spent in MS software disappears in a black hole, I'm sorry, but it will be spent in more productive ways that will actually help the economy(and generate taxes) instead of just help MS economy.
Disclaimer: I work for a non IT company as software developer and system administrator using only Open/Free Source software, the company is doing quite well, thanks to the use of OSS, among other things(like having a smart boss, hi Carl!
\\Uriel
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
yes it might be healthy, but it most probably would be stupid in the end (if it were accepted, not likely)
What SHOULD be mandated is to use only open formats for data!
That was pointed as an advantage of open source, but in fact there's nothing that prevent a user to use corectly a closed source application and refuse to get locked on it.
For anyone, it's a good advice; for public administration should be a requirement.
-Kz-
In the case of Peru, open software and public file formats are REQUIREMENTS. Nobody is keeping Microsoft out. If Microsoft wants to compete in Peru's market then they have to meet their requirements.
Government systems commonly require candidate system components to have a second source - multiple suppliers. This kind of thing is done all the time on US Government contracts. If a particular single-sourced processor is chosen for a critical weapons system, for example, and after the system is deployed, the vendor goes out of business, what do we do?
Peru has every right to require open source and public file formats. If Microsoft wants to get into markets where this is a requirement then they should make that commitment.
Your post seems to imply that Peru no right to establish these requirements. How childish is that?
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Let's stop being stupid! They say this bill is unconstitutional, because it excludes some companies. These companies are not excluded, they simply don't have the desired product to sell. In this case, open source software. That's the product the peruvian govt wants.
If I want to eat a hotdog, would McDonald's say I'm excluding them, just because they don't sell hotdogs?
Screw you Micro$hit!
I'm all ears, theolein, and this better be good. You're going to tell us now why mass murder is justified, right?
No one is going to try to JUSTIFY it. It was a terrible act done by mean people--OKAY?? But if you think it has nothing to do with USA foreign policy, you have your head in the sand.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, can possibly justify what this country had to take on September 11th, and certainly nothing as puny as cola and software.
Again, no one is trying to justify anything. But I notice you don't seem to be concerned with WHY the USA is hated enough that someone would fly planes into its buildings.
People don't just wake up one day and say "You know, I want to hate a country... Hmm... Who should I hate? Howabout the USA!" They live everyday with US police (troops) marching around THEIR communities "keeping the peace". They live every day with US corporations building McDonalds restaurants and Pepsi machines right next to THEIR mosques. They see their culture and lifestyle being made more and more irrelevant every day next to US culture and lifestyles, and some of them just snap. It doesn't justify mass-murder, but it's important for the USA to see what it is doing to breed this contempt.
Imagine if a car dealer refused to show you anything but the outside of the car and the driver's seat. And you were forbidden to open the hood and look at the engine unless you took to the car to a licensed mechanic.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.