UN Summit Tones Down Open-Source Stance

akb writes "CBR is reporting that the latest draft of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Plan of Action has considerably removed language that promoted open source awareness, the creation of intellectual property mechanisms supporting open source and the creation of a UN 'Programmers Without Frontiers' body to support open source software in developing nations. This language was removed from earlier versions to make the document more palatable for business and commercial interests. In recent years commercial software interests, notably Microsoft, have lobbied hard to keep governments from openly preferring open source over proprietary software. Other issues to be debated include the archiving of and access to government information, access to wireless spectrum, government subsidies of Internet access, Internet taxes and international cooperation on information security."

Comments

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The new wording is a masterpiece of fake balance. (Do they have Fox News writing their drafts for them?)

In the new draft, these are replaced with a more general description of how governments should "promote awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different software models... including proprietary, open-source and free software".

Um, no. Proprietary software vendors do just fine "promoting awareness" of their products on their own. If governments give equal weight to proprietary and free/OSS, in practice that means that governments will be shilling for M$ just as hard as M$'s own PR dept., and free/OSS providers will be out in the cold. I suspect this will be especially true in poor countries -- the ones who would benefit most from a push for free/OSS -- because, let's face it, that's where government workers are most susceptible to outright bribery.

Too bad. It was a nice idea while it lasted.

Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

[_Sprocket_]

First thing's first. Paying jobs. Americans/Canadians/Europeans have the luxury of taking a chance and coding up Open Source for the morality of it. But in other places, food on the table comes first. Closed software puts food on the table -easier-.

Exactly. Because all the jobs for writing that proprietary code are created in the developing country in question. By using a proprietary software package, you are esentially paying coders in your own developing tech job market.

Oh. Wait. No. Most of this development happens off-shore. If your countrymen are being hired to code for these projects, they had to emegrate first to do it - further weaking your own tech market.