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When Think Tanks Attack
x1048576 writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is only one of a dozen different think tanks that have attacked Open Source. Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft."
Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Wasting money on Open Source? Evidently they haven't looked at the Wired article. The one that says that an average Malaysian worker has to work 1,100 (yes, eleven hundred) hours to buy a licensed copy of Windows XP.
Then again, think who these people are funded by.
Being attacked by a think tank? Sounds like we need to get Marvin to go and talk to it into submission.
("What a depressingly stupid tank.")
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
really needs a sanity check and anything they say really should be taken with a grain of salt. They praised Reagan for helping to keep the budget deficit in check.....Now THATS what I call revisionist history!
as opposed to what? Smartly shifting the taxpayer's money to the bank account of the world's richest man?
Someone was bound to think of slashdotting as an appropriate vengeance against the think tanks.
I for one think that the public criticism of the Open Source developer community is healthy. While we never like being ridiculed or having our flaws pointed out, it does have one advantage: increased introspection.
M$ is playing the same card every corporation and goverment has done in history: taking advantage of people's fears of what they don't understand.
Which is nice.
Microsoft are by many considered the driving force behind the BSA, who seems to have co-authored the software patents directive of the European Commission.
the good text is at the bottom, imho. start here:
They have a word in Washington for the corporate-sponsored outcry, the grassroots movement that isn't: AstroTurf. By far the most comical example of this is to be found at the Freedom to Innovate Network (Fin), a "non-partisan, grassroots network of citizens and businesses who have a stake in the success of Microsoft and the high-tech industry". Fin doesn't try particularly hard to appear independent--its website, after all, is housed on Microsoft's own--but it has as its online centrepiece a lengthy collection of testimonials from activist groups with vaguely alarming names: the Centre for the Moral Defence of Capitalism, Frontiers of Freedom, Defenders of Property Rights. Their comments appear unsolicited and independent: it certainly looks like there is a groundswell of support for the beleaguered computer giant.
In the spirit of fair use, visit the website for the full story. It's interesting but don't take it as a rallying cry. Just remember to wonder why you see a think tank write a paper next time. In fact remember to wonder why the next person you see says something, in general.
Because back then, people innovated in order to create a revenue stream. Nowadays companies seem unable to come up with fresh ideas that people will buy into so instead they take the easy way out and use IP to generate an income.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
And I haven't received almost any funding from Microsoft.
This isn't going to come as any surprise but he's *not* the brightest bulb on the tree. However he's far from alone in that, more's the pity.
Brown sees MS as a *miracle*, like many he looks at the phenomenal financial success, adds the fact that it's nominally 'technology' sector and draws his conclusions.
Now the place I'm working for (which has posted market performance in the same range as MS) just did a celebration of thier 25th anniversary. The founders of the company are both very well off and pretty damned bright guys. One jokingly referred to his early talks with Wall street where he said "we're in the business of being a profitable philanthropy". The other mentioned that "we're in the business of doing the right thing" (does this sound like Google's founders?).
Shortly after, the chief financial officer got up and (predictably -- he's a fan) compared us to Microsoft. The reason is he's a money guy and all he can see is the money / financial success.
In fact if we acted in our markets the way MS does, our clients would show us the door. As it is they respect our engineering, and even our sales force, which is trained very hard to serve the *clients* needs.
Iff OSS follows that model, all the ADTI's in the world won't matter. The fact is that some oss projects (see the recent article linked on /. about why users are 'wrong' in not likeing the new Nautilus 'spatial' design) *don't* think this way, and more's the pity.
Fortunately, those are the exceptions.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Since when does quality matter, especially in IT?
/. crowd, allow ourselves to be infuriated about the plain and open FUD by AdTI and others. What you /should/ be doing instead of performing the /.-equivalent of AOL-like 'me-too-ing', is creating awareness among your managers, and helping them to find linux success stories.
A few weeks back I read an article on the register that stated that 2/3 of IT personel do not have the competence that is required by their function.
Everybode who has ever written a resume knows that lying about what skills and experience you have are commonplace. Because the interview is done by a manager with no in-depth knowledge of the field you're working in. How different is that from a softwarecompany telling you that their product is the best out there? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but once you've bought a piece of software, and have spent 3 months (or more) on installing, configuring, testing, are you then willing to take your loss if you're not a 100% satisfied? I've seen project being dragged on for a year or more (!!!) because a vendor still had to resolve a bug.
It isn't about quality, it's about marketing. If you buy MS once, it's only logical you keep buying it. Enforce a decision on the executive level. Take a manager out for a meal, or a game of golf, send him a nice bottle of wine at christmas, and pummel him to death with expensive looking reports about how GNU/Linux/OSS is a baaaad idea. He'll bend over eventually. That way, they don't have to take the pepsi-challenge. The executive won't know the difference anyway.
We, the
In the name of Eris, some of those "think tanks" really are full of shit. For example, here's a nice article from the "Small Business Survival Committee" against the recent anti-SUV feelings among several key US people. Their motivation is to be doubted in the first place; why would a think tank that aligns itself with SMALL businesses care about SUV? Non "mom-n-pop" shop/small business will ever produce a SUV. Besides, look at some of their reasoning:
Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. That's an ammount of misinformation that would make many a discordianist proud. I love that logic, how many people died in M1A2 Abrams tanks lately? Probably less then that. So clearly, everyone in the US should drive a M1A2 Abrams MBT. Also, more people die each year by drowning in water then by drowning in hydrochloric acid. Therefore, hydrochloric acid is safer to swim in then water. I'm not even going tom start on their anti-"EC penalty vs MS" article. Since when does MS count as a small business, anyways, to attract their concern?
Hate me!
I'd guess there's been some serious cash kickbacks over the years to some big companies (individuals in companies) to get them to stick with microsoft. I can't think of another reason why they would keep using their stuff. I've read all the legit reasons,OK, I can see a few of them, but I bet the REAL main reason is from massive and ongoing kickbacks, and because it's so profitable for *some* people to have very well paying "busy work" fix it daily and forever jobs.
Anyway, it will change. I know it will. Bound to happen. Several years ago now I noticed the young geeks all using linux. Not someone's nephew who can play video games so he's the family computer "specialist", nope, I mean the geeks. The young people in any industry determine the trends of the industry, sooner or later, because thats where the innovation comes from, and also that's where the next generation of decision making bosses comes from.
Microsoft is hosed now, ain't nuthin they can do other than try and get legislation passed to save them. I'm serious on that. they are right at the exact point they need protection, even though they are still raking in billions, it's coming, they know it, that's why you are seeing this sort of stuff. Part of that is to have "concerned consumers" lobby for them. What a crock. IF they do that they will struggle along making billions for a lot more years, but if they *fail to get legislation passed that protects them and their business model of no warranty and mediocre product but maximum profits*, they are hosed. It might take some time, but they will crash and burn right along the opposite side of the curve of their rise to success. That is my prediction.
Get some facts before ranting to the extent you did.
... thanks for asking, Ace.
The pro-wealthy weighting of America's tax system isn't fashion, it's fact. The tax system in America is so Byzantine that the wealthy and corporate take monstrous advantage of it time and time again. This is opposed to the wage-earner who is assaulted by a mandatory system he can't afford to escape through the hiring of a tax accountant. For instance, can YOU (British even so) park your assets offshore while parking your expenses onshore, escaping taxation while also piling deductions under your tax system? Can YOU pay a relative 1% fee to a tax accountant to draft an opinion letter outlining how all that asset movement is legal? Can YOU move compensation from tax-deferred instrument to tax-free account, eventually escaping all taxation on it? Can YOU escape taxation by being so diversely embodied that you simply end up paying yourself?
Enron (an egregious example, certainly) managed to use the tax system so well -- creating almost 900 partnerships for tax-dodging purposes -- that for the last 5 years of its existence, it had no yearly tax liability for 4 of them.
Just because a middle-class person can rack up enormous debts and play a little with his income tax return, doesn't mean that the wealthy and corporate aren't escaping away with billions.
As a Brit, you may find the book dreadfully dull due to its American focus, but go out right now and obtain:
"Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else" by David Cay Johnston
As far as I'm concerned, exposees like Johnston's only illustrate that the American tax system is arranged for the collapse of the American Empire. The complexity, and lack of enforcement in fixing it, are fatal wounds. When tax frauds can happen much, much faster than they can be stopped, then tax frauds will become the usual. When tax dodges can happen for the wealthy equivalent of pocket change, and the very mentality of fraud settles in, then eventually the wealthy will pay no taxes.
P.S. I own no stock and voluntarily participate in no benefits program (a la 401(k)) of any kind
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
You'll be hard pressed to find a "stink tank" that would agree with you. They do claim unbiased analysis. If they weren't trying to at least project the image of being unbiased agents of the truth, they wouldn't be much use would they? By witholding disclaimers in their articles as to who funds them, they're liars and they know it. I'm sure they'd even deny the watered down term of propagandist. Even Slashdot will conscientiously admit to the source of an article being from or involving a parent company to acknowledge the possibility of a conflict of interest. That shows Slashdot is a more honest than these loser "analists".
However, if they aren't for the truth, what are they for? I mean, has anyone stopped to ask what is a "think tank" anyways? Here's a couple definitions.
Incidentally, if you look at other large sponsors of these agencies, you'll see other funding sources they have in common besides Microsoft. It's not like MS is the sole, driving force behind these organizations.
Perhaps not, but it's absolutely clear they are the common funder. And, I bet they're the biggest fish in that scummy pond. It's also crystal clear that the less visibility Microsoft has as a funder, the less likely there will be questions of veracity regarding the "analysis" from these so called "think tanks". As Microsoft practices security through obscurity, so do these "stink tanks" claim unbiased authority by not announcing who paid for their "research". There's a reason why political Ads must have full disclosure as to who paid for what. That's because an uninformed public will make uninformed decisions, and often against their own interests. Paint it anyway you want, but I've got paint thinner.
= 9J =