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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?
For some reason, I read that as "Microsoft pig stuck in Peru." I got very confused..
slashdot!=valid HTML
Right now, the US needs Microsoft.
But does Peru?
(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
And you wouldn't want to risk those potential 15,000 jobs, now would you? No matter that any real employment will be exported to the US. No, don't bother thinking about that...
We're in sad, sad times.
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.
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.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
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
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!
I stole this Sig
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!
Maybe it's a nuance of translation from Spanish to English, but Mr. Villaneuva constantly refering to Bill Gates as "the Bill" was confusing. And I disagree with many of the things Villaneuva had to say about him.
"The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever", "The Bill protects equality under the law", "The Bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software" - As far as I know, Mr. Gates doesn't do any of these things, strange that the Peruvian government thinks so.
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.
I don't see how Peru adopting Free Software for government use is going to put Microsoft out of business. My thinking is, it will make essentially no difference at all to the profitability for Microsoft. How much Microsoft Product does the Peruvian government pay for on an annual basis now?
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.
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.
protecting existing companies and ensuring that they don't falter like WorldCom and Enron is essential
This is wrong on several levels. Companies like Worldcom and Enron should falter, and the government should do nothing to help them. Soviet-style economies are known for propping up decreipt corporations rather than letting them fail -- it's letting them fail that helps ensure competition and free markets. Propping up an otherwise doomed company may make things better for some people in the short term, but it's disasterous long-term.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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
It is an explicit endorsement of Open Source. MS is perfectly welcome to compete under the law, they just have to stop being whiny bitches and open their source code to public scrutiny. There is no requirement (AFAIK) that it be under an official open source license, so they can use their own "look but don't touch" style license if they want to.
The object of the bill is not necessarily to save money, it is to ensure the integrity and security of government data and prevent proprietary file format lock-in.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
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.
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'?
Because they actually do. There are two main reasons for this:
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:
* Krupp's factories, for example, seemed suspiciously immune to Allied bombing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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!
Free Linux CD still could use a Peru affiliate. Interested parties should contact the maintainer on said page.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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
Sure they do! And if they don't agree, we'll make 'em understand why they do. It's a mountain of MS software, or a carpet of bombs!
"either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs"
It amazes me that even though our press freely prints stories about how our education system is the laughing stock of the developed world, meaning that our citizenry is composed of ignorant fools for the most part, that most of the people here still actually believe that this country is free, and that we are the good guys.
If the quote above (mine, not the one I am replying to, although I'm sure his was based on mine) is not familiar to you, and you are an American citizen, then you *are* a traitor to everything this country is supposed to stand for.
It is your fucking job to inform yourself constantly. That is what is *required* from a citizen of a free society. Do you fucking get that? This does not mean just watching CNN or your local news. (Do you know who owns your station? Their job is not to inform you, it is to maximize revenue for their parent corporation. That is *it* ) That is passive. You have a responsibility to *actively* inform yourself. (Shut the fuck up. Yes, you do.) If you are not doing that then you are *not* a good American. And please, if you do fit that category, take that flag off of your car. You have not earned the right to fly it.
Here is a very brief lesson for you:
America *is* the most violent, destructive and evil terrorist threat this world has ever faced.
Do not cry like a little bitch. If you disagree, do your fucking patriotic duty and inform yourself and then try to debate that point. The fact is you can't. Big mindfuck ( assuming you actually did some research ), huh?
Did you know we have clothing stores here called "Banana Republic"?
Do you know where the fuck the name came from?
If not, you *are* a traitor to everything this country is supposed to stand for. (Shut the fuck up. Yes, you are.) Look it up.
Corporations run America.
Period. End of sentence.
Again, come up with a fact, develop an argument, if you disagree. Otherwise, wake the fuck up.
Corporations are by their very definition, amoral, and greedy. This is not that bad if you think in terms of human life spans. But consider, they have almost all of the rights of an American citizen, none of the responsibilities, and a potentially unlimited lifespan. This *is* new. This *is* different, and this *does* need to be addressed.
So, do a search on that quote. Pull your head out of your ass. Wake up. Please.
This is an appeal from a true patriot.
If you think I'm not, and you are, then you have a lot of waking up to do.
And your answer is
And you have the nerve to criticize others as righteous!
Theolein, or whatever the hell your name is, I simply do not have the words to describe what a depraved, subhuman, piece of trash you are. I couldn't despise a Nazi more than you.
Everyone has the right to hate the US as much as they want, and I happen to agree that Bush is righteous and corrupt and that he and Gates can go fuck themselves. 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. When you start to come across with that kind of hatred and rage then you are the problem, you are far worse than Bush or Gates could ever be.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
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.