Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group

pk2000 writes "Microsoft withdrew from a United Nations software standards group for commerce. 'Unfortunately, for now, we have made the decision to stop participating in U.N./Cefact for business reasons and this serves as notification of our immediate withdrawal from all U.N./Cefact activities.' This might be connected to Microsoft's intention to build up its patent portfolio. Currently it has about 5,000 patents and seeks to at least double this number by the end of 2005."

Comments

Re:déjà vu?

[DNS-and-BIND]

There's plenty of bribery...ever hear of UNSCAM? No wonder you didn't hear about it, the news hasn't been reporting it. Basically, certain UN members (guess who they were) took bribes from the oil-for-food program. Huge scandal, almost zero splash in the media. One story here.

Here's how the scam allegedly worked: Saddam sold oil to his friends and allies around the world at deep discounts. The buyers resold the oil at huge profits. Saddam then got kickbacks of 10 percent from both the oil traders and the suppliers of humanitarian goods. Iraqi bean counters, fortunately, kept meticulous records. Coincidence. If you wondered why the French were so hostile to America's approach to Iraq and even opposed to ending the sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War, here's one possible explanation: French oil traders got 165 million barrels of Iraqi crude at cut-rate prices. The CEO of one French company, SOCO International, got vouchers for 36 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Was it just a coincidence that the man is a close political and financial supporter of President Jacques Chirac?

Re:Must be a 'Merican company

[Sein]

No it is owed in the sense that the US commits to a certain level of funding for the UN as a whole, spread out among the budgets for the various UN orgianizations.

And then fails to pony up.

Bottom line? The money owed to the UN is in the form of promisory notes that the US has failed to pay. Mostly because of situations like with the WHO where certain religious groups have recoiled at the fact that the WHO supports education on things like birth control and abortion for women in the third world and have pressured Congress and Senate into stopping funding for the WHO as a whole until those education programs are cancelled. That this also interferes with things like disease prevention and control, public medical research that would end unencumbered by patents and similar benefits seem to be completely outweighted by the need to deny women in the third world education about and access to birth control and abortion.

Similar situations exist across a broad swathe of UN organizations who have already made budget and project commitments and used funds according to the promised contributions from the US, and then dicovered that the money were not forthcoming after all.

That's the sense in which the US owes money - because they said they did. Not because the UN asked.