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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..
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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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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