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?

Comments

Re:Politics in America today

[greenguy]

That's why there's a Green Party. We accept no corporate money. That keeps us focused on the things the US really needs: renewable energy, taxes on "bads," not goods, an end to overseas military bases, a government that sees people as citizens, not consumers (and increasingly, prisoners), and so on. For more info, see http://www.greenpartyus.org, or for the Platform, http://www.gp.org.

To veer this back on-topic, I should mention that there is a movement within the Greens to include a detailed plank on software rights and DRM in the next major release of our platform.

Re:Stock market

[HydroCarbon10]

Really? Could you please explain to those of us who are quite obviously in the dark how not having red hot competition in the OS and office suite market is helping the US economy? There could be many more jobs out there for programmers right now if there were, for example, 4 worthy competitors to NT in widespread use. This recession started as a slump in business spending, a slump that would have definately been less pronounced had there been four competing companies fighting tooth and nail to stay alive in a ruthless market for operating system software. Want an example: see ATI vs. nVidia, neither can afford to lose and neither will ever win (hopefully).

We shouldn't resign ourself to the current status quo when things can be changed for the better right now.

Nice perspective

[quantaman]

Microsoft apparently enlisted the American ambassador in Lima to help try and convince the Peruvians to kill the legislation.

I don't think I could put it much more accuratly than that!

Two birds with one stone

[leonbrooks]

Actually, as long as war is going to happen, I'd rather it be over there than over here.

Yah, and `over there' would rather it happened on US soil. Who has the most right to say where a war should happen, `them' or `us'?

But why should we assume that war is going to happen?

Because they actually do. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Basic human nature
2. The existence of corporations which amplify the greed of the greediest few among us - note: this is a subset of all corporations, but a large subset

Most wars are completely preventable. Reducing the power of arms corporations over the government would be a big first step to doing so.

Agree. However, bear in mind that armaments corporations are far from the biggest beneficiaries in a war.

Think about World War II, in which companies like Ford and Bayer made money from selling to both sides of the war at once. Except where things got out of hand and their facilities were destroyed*, oil companies, steel companies, banks and many others all showed that in one way or another they thought of the war as a Godsend. Many Swiss banks, for example, did a roaring trade even in what were to all appearances financially destitute circumstances.

Consequentially, what you're basically looking for are two things:

1. Answers to human greed
2. Ways of preventing greed from being enthroned by corporations without catastrophic threat to the underlying supply lines

...and good luck. But if you do acghieve even a small measure of these aims, you'll be absolute heroes, regardless of what the Press has to say about you.

* Krupp's factories, for example, seemed suspiciously immune to Allied bombing.