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Microsoft's Lobbying Priorities: Limiting Open Source
MonkeyDev writes "In the story on cio.com, 'Mr. Gates Goes to Washington', the author says...'Microsoft cared little for politics until the Department of Justice called it a monopoly. Now the company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda.' The article outlines Microsoft's power, provides several examples of legislative decisions heavily influenced by the company, and talks about where they are aiming their newly found political clout. 'Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services. However, two of Microsoft's policy priorities, limiting the adoption of open-source software and inoculating technology companies from spam liability, stand out as areas wherein what's good for Microsoft may not be good for all CIOs.' Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
If Bill Gates runs for President, I'll be very sad. "We're not a monopoly... but, uh, we will be your rulers! Where do you want to go today?"
- Code Dark
Get the flapping at the flies buzzing around there heads like mad. They can't get them all.
its the other way around, microsoft stifles innovation
Cb..
Microsoft is one of the largest donor in washington. obviuosly they need to do good for stock holders money. What is good for microsoft is good for stockholders and opensource is not good for microsoft so hey what else would you expect?
How is this news? I'm sure anyone who has kept up with tech news knows this already. Ok, ok, it's a nice summary, and for the kid who just discovered Slashdot today it's great... but it isn't news.
god! you know the very people who are writing open source code... these are the individuals that are intrisically motivated to learn and advance the field not for money, etcetera, but for the pure good of advancing a field
In October 2003, when Reynolds first announced plans for the bill, Andrew Wise, a Texas-based Microsoft lobbyist, flew up to Oklahoma to try to convince him that his bill was misguided. Reynolds was surprised that Microsoft, which doesn't make custom software, was interested. He says Wise told him that Microsoft might one day enter the custom software market.
Wow... Does Microsoft plan on entering EVERY market some day? Can't you just see them lobby for or against some legislation for cloning because they may "one day enter the cloning market?"
I think redhat might argue that open source software can be commercial too.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Closed source does stifle innovation, but would you want to live in a nation where a company's lobbies were not allowed to speak because a vocal minority opposed them.
Ultimately, it is our responsibility to vote into office representatives that respond to our wishes rather than lobbies. If you aren't registered to vote and you are over 18 years old in the US, PLEASE register to vote before the November election. I don't care who you vote for; just VOTE!!!
If you are registered to vote and you don't, you suck.
If you are registered and know people who either aren't registered or don't vote, get them to. A democracy only works when people exercise their ability to effect a change.
Chris
Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas
Sorry, but I fail to see how any bill (Gates or proposed legislation) that advocates in favor of either open or closed source is a good thing. Legislators ought to stick their noses somewhere else then making technology decisions.
Without their fine closed-source innovation, the interweb would never have been possible. And wasn't it nice of them to give their TCP/IP stack to aid BSD development and let everyone else use that browser idea they had?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
As we all know, UNIX was also created by a monopolist corporation, namely AT&T. For decades, AT&T had a deal with Justice Department: we (the people) tolerate your monopoly, you (the corporation) give us back all the technology you develop in your labs, so at least your monopoly serves the public good. That's why AT&T had no choice but distribute early versions of UNIX at a nominal costs to universities and research centres. It looks that 30-40 years ago anyone at least considered the question of "what is good for the public interest". What has changed in America since then?
Why no one with relevant authority even tries to consider a similar deal with Microsoft? The case of AT&T proves that dealing with monopolists does not have to be necessarily a binary option, either we consider you a monopolist and forcibly split or we give you carte blanche. You can tolerate a monopolist corporation if you strike a good deal for common good - like in this case, for example, "OK, keep on your monopoly on MS Windows, but open the bloody source code so people can write their own security patches, give copies freely to education & research, do something to ensure cross-platform compatibility of data files and while we are at it, what about a good Age Of Empires sequel?".
Some politicians have budgets to meet and act accordingly. For instance, state legislatures who have to pay for drug plans are pushing to be able to import drugs from Canada. The FDA, which doesn't have to pay for anybody's drugs, is against it.
The trick is to have the politicians with the power to set the rules having to bear the cost of the rules that they create.
If we can make our politicians feel more responsible for the cost of commercial licenses that the government has to buy, then we will see much greater uptake of open source by governments. In Europe the politicians are juggling software patents vs. the cost of paying Microsoft. If it weren't for Ireland (a Microsoft client state), software patents would be dead in Europe.
The bottom line: Make the politicians responsible for the damage they create.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation.
If this is the case then why such a big PR/FUD Campaign against opensource? If microsoft products are so "innovative" then then will out sell the free alternatives that don't "innovate" won't they???
It getting rather funny microsoft running the "innovative" comment all the time when in my experience (10years ish) the open-source community has been far more innovative. (Hey I hear that I will be able to turn on/off computers using Shorthorn when it is eventually released. I wish linux had a feature like that.. oh..)
Anyway the one good thing about Microsofts FUD campaign against opensource/linux is that it has enabled me to show a number of clients how good Linux is! After all why else would microsoft spend so much trying to convince everyone that microsoft is better. TCO Studies funded by microsoft. Get the facts website with blatently biased results.
So microsoft keep up the fud as it is making me loads of $$$ !
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
"Where do you want it today."
Nope it's still backwards. The correct format is:
Innovation stifles Microsoft.
I mean; think about all the work Microsoft has to put into 'new features' everytime Apple/*nix/ect shows some innovation.
Come on guys, let's be a little bit more sympathetic to Microsoft from now on and not come up with fresh ideas as often.
will the large news corporations EVER report this?
Wake up USA. Your system has broken down. You live in a mediocracy, where the news control what you should know.
Thanks Slashdot, for staying independent.
Netcraft confirms it, Linux trolls are dieing. Slashdot's clique of giggling/conspiring school girls, Linux trolls harp over minor issues in windows as they ignore huge, gaping holes in Linux. Like a dog in heat humping an uncomfortable human's leg these unfortunate souls believe that if they just push hard enough, they can fuck the whole world before they lick their own groin.
Sad Trolls
While pretending to run or in some cases actually even running the now defunct operating system these trolls post hypothetical flaws of windows that they don't even understand. While attempting to convince potential users that the incredible inconvenience of Linux is worth the negligible advantage of Open Source Software they cite 'facts' that make one wonder if these trolls have ever even used a computer, much less Linux.
One thing is clear:Linux trolls are dieing.
Asia
Home to 3 trillion people, Asia was seen as a possible breeding ground for Linux use thanks to its widespread poverty and poor hygiene. This potential coup for Linux was averted, however when Microsoft entered into a rampant piracy agreement with the people of Asia worth an estimated -$34,000,000,000.
Global Ramifications
As a result, the proponents of this hard to use and poorly designed operating system have had to resort to sad measures. The most common is the "pretend to know Linux by mocking Windows trolls while really not even knowing either operating system well" troll. While usually guaranteed to garner some mod points, these trolls have been called out of late by a group of Windows trolls who know they are full of shit.
The fallout over the hivemind mentality of these sad and confused youngsters has led to the collapse of what was once a glowing beacon to trolls everywhere. Once held up as a symbol of individuality and defiance of the rules, Linux trolls have now been associated with the very conformists they purport to despise. These people that say whatever will make them look cool at the time threaten the already iffy credibility of true Linux trolls.
Fact: Linux trolls are dieing.
I can't tell if your new here or not.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
No government, no manipulation.
Commercial software that which many things of are patented are stopping innovation. History tells us in the time James Watt invented the Steam Engine he patented almost every (little) effort he made on it. The development/innovation of the steam engine for the next 10 years was totally stopped. In one particular region in England where they actually denied patents(-laws) and shared all information about new inventions and innovation the most effort on the steam engine was done. So this is almost the same situation we now have with open source and commercial software, only in another era.
Is that these actions by Microsoft fundementally affect everyone. Open Source makes perfect sense for certain types of infrastructure applications, the Operating System being the best example. Everyone who uses the OS can contribute to its growth in capabilities and maturity. Everyone benefits except the vendors of Operating Systems.
Open Source make especially good sense for governments as well, since they all have similar needs and limited budgets. Contrary to what Microsoft believes, my tax dollars are not intented as a hand out for Bill Gates. I want them used wisely. If Bill Gates wants my money, he can get it by producing software that I purchase willingly, not software that I am forced to pay for by Micrsoft's creative marketing "agreements" with computer vendors.
Now, for all those who are going to scream about how we should all just watch quietly as Microsoft goes about it's business of squeezing us for money... MS is a convicted monopolist. I personally believe that there is no place for a monopoly in a free market economy. It will always result in the devistation of the marketplace, just as MS has. Capital for software development didn't dry up just because of the Dotcom meltdown. It has vanished because no one wants to invest in developing a software product that MS might decide to compete against.
Those of you who are unemployed software engineers, think about this very carefully. MS is part of the reason you are out of work. MS has become the impediment to innovation in our industry, not Open Source.
If you want a good example, just look at Firefox vs. IE. MS stopped development work on IE after they "won" the browser wars. Firefox is quietly taking over the market now by being better, faster, and far more secure. This could only be done by an Open Source project, because we saw what happened to Netscape when they tried to compete against the company that controlled the operating system.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market. The new companies created out of the old Microsoft would eventually be worth far more than the current company is and we'd all see better software being developed as competition heated up again.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
The random quote at the bottom of the page for this article was:
"Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements, sooner or later the product will speak for itself." - Hajime Karatsu
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Using money to influence government in this way is, in its end result, bribery. But it is different than bribery in that it does not require corrupt politicians.
It requires only politicians who are not all-knowing. Even intelligent, well-intentioned people can be convinced of something if only one side of an argument is heard. This is especially true for a topic as complex as government policy.
Professional lobbying, because it is effectively bribery, needs to be outlawed-- it should be illegal to pay someone to speak to a government representative on your behalf. Instead of hiring lobbyists, companies can ask their employees and shareholders to contact, in their spare time, their representatives. If that is not sufficient, companies can, through advertisement, raise public awareness of their concerns. In this way, the influence of money will move one more step away from government.
Public interests groups, such as environmental and anti-software patent groups will have little problem recruiting volunteer lobbysists, as many of them already do. Such lobbyists, since they are unpaid, would be perfectly legal. Not only will public interest groups be able to lobby almost as effectively as before, but they will also no longer have to compete with highly paid professional lobbying firms.
Is Bill Gates turning into Milo Minderbinder?
And for the record, DRM sucks.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
Sorry, but, why would Mr. Gate want to take such a large cut in his polical influence and pay?
...change a light bulb?
None, as its a hardware problem. But it requires a room full of MS programmers to figure that out.
So how many MS hardware engineers does it take to Change a light bulb?
None, as it is a environment specialist problem. But it takes a building full of hardware engineers to figure that out.
How many environment specialist does it take to change a light bulb?
None as it is a maintance problem, but it takes a complex full of environment specialist to figure that out.
So how many maintance personel does it take to change a light bulb?
One and Shes polish, but first she has to get purchasing to order a light bulb.
How hard is it for her to get purchasing to order a light bulb?
harder than it is to just take a light buld from some hotel room or other business and use it instead.
Now thats innovation and job creation.
Point being, MS does not innovate, so how whould they know what innovation is?
Correction, what is their definition of innovation?
The light bulb in someone elses building.
And it is a worthy article in that topic. You realize you can simply save your time bitching and not read the article at all (remember they have a summary?).
Yes, it is in the interests of M$ to influence Washington and local governments. They want to make a profit, and in the spirit of unfettered capitalism they will do all they can to do this.
...he company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda...
Of course it does. So do the oil companies, the gun manufacturers. To be effective lobbying must be aggressive. Note this doesn't mean in the open air - the most effective lobbying is that done behind closed doors. Done by the most experienced - oil companies are the best example of this - they even got themselves a president! Whether open source is better than M$ is of debate - but the sharholder value maximiser that our economy, and capitalist greed orientated world (though in Soviet Cuba this is the reverse) prevents this debate. Not only is M$ greedy as all corporates are, but it is led by one of the most driven, single minded, power seeking and successful (in this area - where so many try and fail) person in history - perhaps only Ghengis Kahn compares, yet I don't think BillG rapes and murders in the thousands, at least directly. Gay Niggers don't have this problem, nor does Natalie Portman's steaming hot grits... in Japan
With this kind of corporate greed so embedded I don't see how Linux, an OS that _is_ ready for the desktop no matter how much the Apple fanboys (jumping a little late on the *nix bandwagon) say it isn't. A good friend of mine has installed a GNOME network in a local special school, and now all the retarded kids are hacking the Kernal Ruby with sticks attached to their foreheads. Note he did this for free using Gentoo/Debian, and chose not be be a testing clone for Redhat.
I for one hide my petrification and welcome our M$ lobbiest overlords.
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
"Bashing" Microsoft is like "bashing" the present U.S. government administration. Unless they have spent many hours studying them, those who complain probably don't know one-one-hundredth of the abusiveness.
I've been trying to understand the underlying causes of organizational abusiveness. Partly it seems that rich people often begin to think of themselves as above everyone else. The begin to have a subtle kind of mental breakdown. For them, continuing to think of themselves as superior is like drugs to a crack addict.
The article Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going shows a little of the inability of Microsoft to be a good world citizen. It's old now and needs updating, but it does give a small idea of the breadth and depth of Microsoft abusiveness.
Three movies and 35 books say that the present administration of the U.S. government is extremely corrupt. See the article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
At present vice-president Dick Cheney is visiting all the states with many undecided voters to tell them that the U.S. is constantly at war, and he and George W. Bush are the best people to lead a war. The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since World War 2. The system works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
As former U.S. President and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech, beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
Another quote:
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."
If you love the U.S. as much as I do, you will stop worrying about bashing, and you will begin trying to understand the conflicts and begin trying to help the world out of the mess it gets itself in when people don't think deeply.
At present, those who complain about Microsoft are often attacked by people who are uninformed. This delays needed improvements inside Microsoft.
Really, really caring makes you strong.
If you become aware of a particular technological issue that your congresscritters are discussing, WRITE THEM A LETTER, STUPID. If MSFT-centric policies are getting pushed through "in a vacuum," it's because citizens who know better aren't providing the opposing ideas.
As that philosopher guy once said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil (or silly corporate lobbyists) is that good men do nothing."
Fact is, these "jobs" are ones that do not need doing.
If "open source" provides needed software at lower cost, everyone (and I am looking at you, large wasteful government) should be using it.
The "jobs" and "economic growth" should be used to create software which is not available thru "open source"
Society is not better off when people do un-needed work, or pay more then necessary for goods and service.
"But it's *my* job at risk" I hear you whine.
Too farking bad. Do you remember when ball point pens first came out, and they cost $25? Do you think the craftsmen who made those are still getting paid the same amount to make pens today that wholsale for 20 cents? Where were you when buggy whip makers went bust because people drove cars?
You are buying only made in USA computer parts, right? I mean, you would never buy parts made in other countries, because that would mean that US workers would lose their jobs just so you can buy a PC for less than $6000.
And that would just be UNFAIR!
Hmm, since the current outbreak of Linux on the desktop MS has:
1. launched a massive security sweep of all existing code.
2. released XP service pack2 that defaulted most security settings to reasonably high levels, including turning on the built in firewall.
3. Has resumed actively developing Internet Explorer, even released a popup blocker (about 2 years too late on that one Bill)
Those are the only three things I can think of now but it sounds to me like open source is stimulating innovation here. If Open source is providing MS with tough competition, hence pushing both sides to attempt to innovate more and create high quality products, how is this bad? Are the people in our government that fucking stupid? I mean, they can't be that dumb if they got elected....well, actually (bush...cough bush)
I've read a lot of posts from people who believe innovation in software is dead, I say, don't listen to them, they are not programmers. Simply because the product is the same, doesn't mean there isn't innovation all over the place. Someone might have found a way to make the application 10% faster using some new technique never used before, you never know. Open source is full of these kinds of breakthoughs and our development model ensures that they don't die with the company who created them, they live on through the GPL, being used and reused in many applications until something even better comes along.
Open source is not only innovative in and of itself, it also creates innovative code and makes sure that everyone can get ahold of it.
Damn it man, you almost had it.
Consice statement. Coherent, insightful point. A well written statement.
However, it left me with a taste in my mouth that just said 'bogaboga is a tard', and it was your use of "M$". It's a matter of respect, the same kind of respect you show a shotgun or a pit bull, however much you dislike them.
Now, most of the asshats that say M$ are just that, asshats. You, on the other hand, have mastered punctuation and closing the italic tag.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to just write Microsoft, or, if you are in a rush, MS.
I think I need a new sig here.
Its like this...
.com boom).
MS is currently one step ahead of linux (yes flame all you want, but if linux were ahead more people would use it). They are ahead because windows is easy, and there is a whole bunch of software that doesnt run on linux.
If MS was so worried about OSS then if all they did was make sure they delivered what their customers wanted first, at a fair price, they wouldnt need to worry. OSS would simply never be a justifiable option (when looking from a CIOs perspective).
But MS is often late, at a higher price. If nothing else, OSS keeps MS in check. I would hate to think about a return to the day when MS is the only game in town, and can act accordingly (think of 1999 minus the
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Excuse me? This from the company who is "appropriating" features from Firefox into the next version of IE?
It seems to me that open source developers are the only ones concerned with innovation, because most of the time innovation and profit are mutually exclusive (i.e., upholding the status quo means less work, less dev time, and hence fewer expenses for closed-source operations, especially in the more 'feature-oriented' areas that customers feel they can live without).
Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services.
In other words, socialize costs, privatize profits.
Yeah creates jobs in india.. how many other quality programmers / developers have been laid off in favor of quantity over quality in india or other developing countries.
Wile I generally don't like the idea of corporate lobbying, what I would be interested in knowing is where IBM is when this is going on? IBM seems pretty damned committed to Open Source, it would seem like they'd be lobbying on the other side of the fence. God knows they have the cash to do it effectively.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
I worked QA for a team developing what could have been the next big thing in Unified Messaging, conversion of any kind of messaging protocol to another for routing to email, fax, cell phones, alphapagers, text-to-speech, etc. There were something like ten developers total during the company's largest point. Due to the company's going out of business during the dotcom burst (despite it not being a dotcom, we had a stupid investor) the software was never quite finished and fell away. It's basically gone now. The perceived value of the intellectual property was just in the wrong place for people to consider it worth the money. Consequently that hard work is gone.
If it had been Open Source there still would have been developers working on it, but it would still exist. When the company went under those developers could have taken this and went elsewhere to show what they had. It could have at least been released to the public so that other companies could take it and adapt it to their needs, hiring programmers in the process.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Microsoft maximize shareholder value?! Surely you jest!
Microsoft's entire history has been to ROYALLY SCREW SHAREHOLDERS. The business plan has been to pay employees with stock options instead of real money. This maximizes Microsoft insider's value, not ordinary shareholders!
This has amounted to giving the company away, little by little to Microsoft insiders and employees.
But, you can't give it away for free without taking it away from somebody, and that would be away from outside shareholders who didn't get all those "free" stock options.
Yes, I know that Microsoft has just decided to actually pay a dividend to shareholders, but the amount per share is a pittance, and it must be so, because of the vast number of shares outstanding. And why are there so many shares outstanding? Why it's all of those exercized stock options, of course?
I like to think of companies like Microsoft as anti-capitalist, because along with the Enrons and Worldcoms of this world they have destroyed capital instead of accumulating it. In Microsoft's case it might be more accurate to say that they have dissipated their capital so widely that it might just as well have been destroyed!
Only a few select insiders have made it big. It works like a pyramid scheme in that only those who get in early can become filthy rich!!!
Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'
You mean after the success of free trade with off shoring there will be many jobs out side right? Glad to see Bill cares about the country more than he does his dinasty==I mean legacy==I mean share holders....ah darn....ssdjh349dg
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Isn't that argument ("only commercial software spurs economical growth"), which seems to be the biggest gun of MS and other entities against Free/Open Source softwares, only the Broken Window Fallacy applied to something else?
I mean, surely they can't be serious. The govt have the choice bewteen paying a lot of money for commercial software, or much much less for free/open source software. The opponent of FOSS says that since they pay more, and people working for companies are earning money and got a job, it spurs the economic growth as opposed to FOSS who supports some people in their basement given nothing back to the economy.
Isn't this bullshit? I mean, if they pay MUCH less for the needed system/software, they have MORE money left afterward, money that can be INJECTED back in the economy in different ways. So, the govt fulfilled their needs PLUS they have more money for the economy, and can spend it anyway they want.
It's WIN/WIN isn't it? With commercial, they get their software at an overinflated price and they inject money ONLY in a specific part of economy and don't have the luxury to choose how to spend it.
Quite frankly any bureaucrat that settles on closed data formats and protocols should be fired for betraying the interests of the government. The government should not be beholden to a particular manufacturer for its information systems.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The problem is that Open Source Software has been manipulated into the anti-property rights corner. If you have no rights to any of the code you write, then there is no way you can sell it and you go bankrupt.
For OSS to really excel, there simply has to be a mechanism that allows people to get paid for their contributions to innovation.
Open source has the potential of bringing more developers into the software development process...but there needs to be a way for people to protect their investment in the development of the code. Without that piece, politicos like Gates will always be able to come down on it as being anti market.
The idea that people only get paid for installation and not development and that sysadmins will live a dual life installing software during the day for pay and writing code at night is really not tenable. Nor is the idea that software developers will live for extremely sporadic donations. If OSS came with a strong system of structured property rights, then OSS developers would make more money and it would be more exceptible to business types.
Really? I threw a [modified to write to HD] Knoppix disc in a machine with a blank FAT32 partition, as an experiment, and my entire school used it for a week with no complaints.
And if you'll look at statistics, as I recall, 3% of the userbase is Linux. Do some research before you flame, will you?
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Dear Microsoft,
Please visit www.mozilla.org. See what your crappy IE browser should be, if it's 'innovation' hasn't been frozen since the late 90's...
Geesh.
Don't you think this is a side effect of the antitrust lawsuits. Microsoft didn't grease the politicians before and paid the price in litigation. They have now learned the need to play the system.
This is no different than Ford, GM, ADM, the NRA, or PETA.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
The real root of this issue is that operating systems have become commodity technology. They only can command a premium price if they enable the development of advanced and popular software applications that their competitor operating systems cannot host.
Microsoft's strategy should be to continue to make their systems better and stay one step ahead of the commodities. They are accomplishing this for desktop applications but they are failing in server systems.
The government lobbying is merely a rear guard tactical action to buy time for the strategic efforts. A fine thing to do in a free society, although I hope their efforts are ineffective.
This is what happens when the government gets into the business of meddling with the economy. Closed source software does generate more profit and jobs for certain sectors of the economy. Let's face it - the Microsoft business model makes Microsoft more money than the Redhat business model makes Redhat. And the low TCO of linux obviously allows for fewer IT jobs. That closed source may reduce economic efficiency and hurt the economy in the long run doesn't matter to politicians. Microsoft's position makes sense to congressmen used to meddling with economic affairs. This is why the OSS community should place less emphasis on the "free as in speech" dogma and more on how it saves non-technology companies money and help create other non-IT jobs there.
Not only will public interest groups be able to lobby almost as effectively as before, but they will also no longer have to compete with highly paid professional lobbying firms.
"Environmental" and other NGOs also employ paid lobbyists.
You propose a
( )technical
(x)legal
solution to lobbyist influence. I don't know wether or not it's worth it.
I agree with campaign finance laws, because it reduces the appearance of corruption by special interest groups, industry, unions etc. But otlawing paid information/lobby/PR firms from operating will be even harder to uphold. (Not to mention that getting such laws passed would be difficult.) Should we outlaw firms from putting together talking points memos and packages that being used by volunteers? What are the standards delineating employees volunteering and employees, like a communications manager or press secretary, being de facto paid lobbyists?
Actually, this is one of the few matters in which politicians actually know more about the issue than the average voters do. But they also are legislating themselves on this issue.
I think the most important thing is that the politicians being lobbied should be aware of the games that are being played. They should know wether the lobbyists have divulged their agenda, their information sources, and wether or not all the people they pruport to represent actually support the lobbyists' position.
Campaign finance laws takes some of the money out of the equation, so being lobbied by those who paid for your campaign is less of an issue, but not a non-issue.
I propose that we follow up on campaign finance laws before starting to legislate people's access to speak to their elected representatives.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.
Yeah, in the same way that shooting yourself in the foot creates jobs for doctors.
PS, why do some many people insist on framing the debate in terms of commercial softwre versus free software?
It really is proprietary versus Free. Redhat is commercial, SuSE is commercial, the list of Free and commercial software is quite extensive.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The presidential election gets the most attention, but it's only one of a few thousand going on at the same time. While the choices for president aren't very encouraging, I can guarantee at least some local candidates are worth voting for.
Microsoft may be many things, but dumb is not one of them.. They learn from their mistakes and their competetor's victories.
They pretty much minded their own business government-wise until their enemies wined and dined the folks in the beltway and got the feds to go after microsoft for antitrust. So now Sun and Netscape have taught Microsoft that if you spread the wealth around washington you can get things via governmental force that you couldn't normally get in a an open market economy.
It's stark irony that an open source project such as mozilla could suffer thanks to a lesson about lobbying that Microsoft learned from Netscape.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
You can't tell if his new here or not what? And what's a "new here"?
Example 1:For my sins, I am the maintainer of the YAFFS file system which is used extensively in Linux-based mobile and embedded devices. People have often take YAFFS and add stuff or use it in ways that would not happen if YAFFS was closed. Having people play with and extend YAFFS in ways that I would not have done myself has improved it. YAFFS is designed for NAND flash, when somebody said they want to use it for NOR flash I said "Dumb idea", but the person went ahead anyway and achieved great results. Now a few products are shipping using YAFFS on NOR. In a closed source model that could not have happened.
Example 2: The RML preemptable kernel stuff. RML went and played with preemptable kernel stuff that many people said waas a waste of time (including, if I recall, Linus). When he was done, and could show that it worked, it got included back into the mainstream and the Linux kernel is vastly improved because of this. In a closed source model Linus would have said "Dumb idea, fsck off" and RML would have not been able to "scratch thaat itch" and would not have been able to get past having a cool idea.
Code improves by having different people try out different things. Some are dumb ideas and go nowhere and some are good. Until tried, it is difficult to tell the good from the bad ideas. In closed source, a pre-selection filter prevents people trying ideas. In open source anyone can scratch an itch and try things out, hence open source is more likely to experience breakthroughs than closed source.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If you are let me be the first to tell you that posting comments like yours will kill your Karma faster than saying "I like ie more than firefox", "The prequel SW movies rock", or anything nice about GW.
You can shout "increase shareholder value" all you want, until the customer replies, "Not at my expense and not at the expense of all ethical considerations." Oklahoma and Oregon tried to express their wants and needs towards which they would carry expense. Microsoft's response was confrontational: they bought off the results. Microsoft's actions may be capitalism in action, but they're also legalized bribery in action (unethical) coupled with deceitful FUD (unethical) and married to manipulation of funds (anti-free market, which some would say is unethical). Markets only function if every consumer has the right to express a preference in purchasing: you, me, and even a State government!
So, would I act as Microsft does? No, I would not. I would find a method, means or manner to gain myself a slice of the future market in FOSS as a better long-term plan for my stockholders. They gain value. The corporation acts ethically. The consumers: you, me, and the State get what we want. Everyone wins.
Digging ditches and then filling them in over and over again would also create jobs, but that doesn't mean it's actually good for the economy.
There may not be that much "new" about open source, but that's not necessarily due to a lack of innovative desire. It's due to the fact that the market knows that's already there (Microsoft), and in order to gain any respectable degree of adoption, open source needs to be able to offer an environment that is very familiar- that is, very much in line mith Microsoft's own lack of innovation. Otherwise, it will alienate all but the die-hard linux hobbyists.
In fact, the most innovative thing about "open source" is the model itself, not any results from it.
That's because free software is still catching up in a few areas: luser-friendliness, market share and commerical games. Once we have everything under Linux that we have under Winblows, we're not going to stop, we're going to build on that. We'll advance from there at the much faster free software rate of development.
In mathematical terms, on the innovation = f(t) scale, the curves are about to cross. The free software curve has an exponential curve, while commercial development is linear. Commerical software is over.
The only way the commerical model can survive is through the application of force and deceit, which is why we're seeing things like lobbying to support the M$ monopoly, the SCO suit, and the FUD spread by zero-summing fatcats who don't know how to make a living without taking from others.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
The first is when taxes pay for research and programming the code should be public domain. Microsoft, apple, GNU, everyone should be able to take the code and put it in their work, claim copyrights and license it as they like. From there let the various models compete. I dont want to get into trying to legislate licenses.
The second is states should not be able to say you can or can not buy commercial software or open source. I'm not even for favoring one or the other. Let them compete. However, they should be able to say they will only be able to buy software that adhears to standards needed for interoperability between vendor products. So unless the
One thing is for sure. If you start playing politics with Microsoft, you better be ready for the big fight. Its one thing to push for standards which is going to cause enough conflict, but dictating vendors or rejecting vendors based on their biz model is getting into dangerous ground.
In the real world, things never are black & white. One poster had a good remark about historical Unix (search for 'AT&T' in the comments). Likewise, I myself am in favour of Free/OS, but don't really think laws explicitly promoting Free/OSS are needed.
What IS needed, is that government should judge software on requirements, and benefit to the public. I have no problem with closed-source solutions, as long as they respect open standards and data formats. For databases containing sensitive data about citizens, government has the obligation to guard the integrity/security of that data, and that could require the ability to search for/plug security holes, if needed without the help of the vendor. Needing open source could follow fom that requirement. Also government should spend public money as effectively as possible. Avoiding licensing costs by going opensource could help that. But it is the requirement itself that should be guidance, not OS just for the sake of OS.
Similarly I don't like, but also don't have a problem with MS lobbying efforts. But it IS the responsibility of politicians to serve the public. If lack of informed data makes them susceptible to lobbying efforts, then maybe that same public should just do more to remind those politicians of their responsibility? As in: put your vote where your mouth is, and let politicians know how you feel.
He would not have to sell it, only place it in a blind trust which he has no control over. This is typically what captains of industry do when they go into politics.
The Bolachek Journals
"...open source freezes innovation..."
Oh, thanks for the insight. I always thought it was Software Patents that froze innovation. Thanks for clearing that up.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday that it would share the underlying software code for its Office program as part of its efforts to make governments more confident in the security and compatibility of the world's largest software maker's products.[snip]
So I guess the government should limit Office use? (Not that MS is promising open source by any means.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Firms putting together packages to be used for volunteers would be fine. Trying to eliminate the influence of money in all cases would require an extremely complicated law that would be impossible to enforce. I believe that simply outlawing paying someone to speak to your government representative strikes a good balance between enforcability and effectiveness.
It would be great to have effective campaign finance laws. But campaign finance is only part of the problem. According to opensecrets.org, industry spent 1.45 billion on lobbyists in 1999, and only 0.6 billion on campaign contributions, most of which was "hard" money. From these figures, one can guess that the influence from lobbyists was much greater than from campaign contributions.
I like Firefox LOTS better than IE. Been using it since it was Firebird, and gots lots of co-workers to switch. Upgraded to 1.0 today. I also use Trillian and sometimes GAIM instead of MSN Messenger.
Not in the U.S. What you're advocating, though very worthwhile, is something that requires a certain degree of personal integrity and general fortitude. Unfortunately, there aren't many politicians willing to slam the cookie jar shut. After all, today's placated lobbyist could easily lead to tomorrow's high-paying consulting gig.
Indeed, perhaps next year will truly be The Year of Linux on the Desktop(TM).
Are you adequate?
Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services.
CIO priorities: corporate welfare, corporate monopolies, corporate tax dodges? Have the sins of avarice and greed blinded them so?
Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs
Create jobs in other tax havens via offshoring, destroying the very working class and government they turn to for R&D monopoly welfare and consumer revenue. How does such intellectual fraud survive peer review?
Let's see.. what has Open Source contributed to innovation? TCP/IP, the Internet, DNS, email, newsgroups, networked operating systems, user and system security... and many many more (including revision control and process).
Microsoft wouldn't know innovation if it bit them in the nose. Bill Gates famous line "this whole internet thing is a fad" is one example.. The quote "Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation" - is a joke.
Put simply, one of the greatest problems facing the USA this decade has been the fact that we are rewarding the "duplicator" (Microsoft) more than the true "innovators".
Name ONE innovation Microsoft has introduced...
The OS.. NO (UNIX.. even DOS was stolen)
The windowing system.. NO (Amiga/Xerox/Apple)
Microsoft "Bob".. YES!
Multi-platform/Network based programming language.. NO (Sun Java)
The Webbrowser.. NO (Mozilla/Lynx/Netscape)
Streaming media?.. NO (Real Networks)
The office suite.. NO (Lotus/Word Perfect/etc)
The virus..YES!
The worm.. YES!
Networking.. NO
TCP/IP.. NO
NetBUI.. YES! (yikes!)
Stability and Security.. NO
The BSOD.. YES!
Obscurity.. YES!
hrmm.. not much innovation there... I hope most people realize the emperor has no clothes when it comes to Microsoft speaking about innovation.
As far as money from Open Source.. well, the internet is the single greatest new market this decade.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
M$ is full of it. How does open source stifle innovation. There is not one company nor one person who can possibly stop the development of open source products. Think about how many millions of people have benefited from open source software!
BillG would keep collecting his paycheck and pretend it is "deferred compensation." Although I think he will use the prisons in Gitmo (built by the company that still pays Cheney a paycheck) to house Linux/OSS contributors. And will make the DoJustice pay for the Sun vs IBM lawsuit.
In Soviet Russia, innovation stifles MICROSOFT.
Hey, Troll-boy, are you saying that mmarket share is based on ease of use, or that open source software keeps you from having a good desktop, or what?
The Apple Macintosh is generally considered the easiest desktop computer to use... even Bill Gates has said as much. But it's got about the same market share as Linux, and it's built on an open-source OS.
So whatever your alleged point is, that should be enough to render it clearly nonsense.
Microsoft's market share is the result of cross-promotion and the application barrier to entry.
And open source software is just as capable of being the base of an excellent product.
Now, think what might happen if all that desktop code was opened up to little ISVs. No one said OSS has to be the gnu license - all the good stuff about linux could end up happening in the windows world, and MS would still control the essence of it all. Heck, they might even get enough help to get that fancy new desktop done on schedule...
Quite honestly, I think we're rapidly approaching the day when that power becomes moot. I think the management at MS will look back on these days in another decade and realize they made the biggest business world blunder of the century by not embracing an OSS license early - and retaining all those folks who have already made, and are making, the not-so-distant leap to the alternative.
Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
... even innovative!) and we were always trying to think of ways to make computers more fun and useful. Then I think about how far we haven't come in that time, and I wonder how anyone could call that company "innovative." Microsoft is static force, that attempts to milk every single feature and function for the last dregs of profit before they deign to release something a little better. Innovative. Ha.
{sigh} this has reached the point where one wonders how even a professional politician could believe this stuff. Microsoft has done more to hold back the computing industry as a whole than any other single entity, including the Federal Government. Over the past twenty years, I've lost track of the number of way-cool innovative products that I used for a while until suddenly they were gone, because the vendor either a. became a Microsoft "Partner" (euphemism for "death knell") or b. was simply bought out or sued out of existence.
Honestly, I look back almost three decades, to the beginning of the personal computer revolution, and think about the promise the industry held and how excited we all were to be a part of it. Everything we did was new (yes
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I worked with my friendly state delegate, here in Charlottesville, VA, to introduce an OSS bill in the General Assembly in Richmond last February. It did nothing but remind -- not enforce, not require, remind -- the state IT department that there's nothing preventing them from using OSS, should they see fit.
It...uh...ended badly. Microsoft sent out six lobbyists (only one officially from Microsoft, with the rest from Microsoft shell agencies with Bushian names like "Organization for Software Freedom") and shut it down.
We'll try again this year.
-Waldo Jaquith
If there was any election in history that was bought, it would be if Bill Gates ran for office.
Since No one in their right mind would vote for him to even hope for the 'popular vote', he would have to pay off enough of the electoral college's votes to be declared the winner.
And don't put it past him to try if he saw a way to profit and increase his companies stronghold on the world.. Big business men DO run.. The congress is full of them.. And never forget billionaire Ross Perot... He may have lost, but he tried....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your article is all very interesting and such, and we could debate a great many of the points that your raise, but I'm just going to pick on the command prompt stuff. For example, you say "the command line interface does less in some ways than the CLI in Windows 98 SE (Second Edition)" which is patently nonsense. The command interpreter (cmd.exe) in Windows NT based OS'es is infinitely more useful than any of the Windows 9x line ever was. Of course, since you don't provide concrete examples of what you mean, it's very hard to refute your assertation. Quickedit is also there, (I'm assuming you mean right click copy and paste) and works far better.
I've pointed out to you before your inaccuracies regarding disk duplication, and your biggest complaint seems to be "Windows does it differently than I want it to".
Dude, if you said this on purpose, it's hilarious (but meaningless). However, I suspect you meant to say that "philogeny recapitulates ontogeny" - which still doesn't have much to do with your thesis.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market.
Couldnt have said it better!
Too bad it would have been very unhealthy for those that wish to maintain a hierarchical society... *cough* MS/Bush *cough*
I sometimes dream of our government being run by poor people... (sigh)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. --E.C. Stanton
I think IBM, Novell, and HP might have a different and better value proposition.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
For example...?
.
Let's see.... the internet, the web, email, chat, network-aware windowing systems, DNS, NTP, security systems (like kerberos), and a slew of other network stuff that we take for granted these days.
More recently:
CODA, GNOME Storage (RDBMS-based filesystem), Dashboard (which Microsoft bit off of and calls "implicit query"), Wiki, . .
A *lot* of true software innovation starts in the free software world. Often it's taken, usurped, and out-marketted by commercial vendors (like the case of MS Internet Explorer). That doesn't mean it didn't start as free software.
There are quite a few examples of commercial innovation, too, especially in the case of business software like the various office suites, database query tools, etc. Innovation is not exclusively a free software activity. But I think the GP post was correct: the free software community has demonstrably provided more innovation than Microsoft.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
the problem is that your 'vocal minority' problem already exists.
the megacorporation with a few lobbyists has more power than millions of voters.
~~~
Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
The simple reason Microsoft can't stop open source development is because it's not only done here in US alone, instead OSS development is a global phenomenon. There are other countries that directly benefits from usage of OSS or commercial software built on OSS due to the cost savings and they will move forward with OSS integration regardless of what Microsoft think about OSS.
There are several American companies that already build commercial software applications on top of OSS, or uses OSS to create their products. I can see how Microsoft trying to stop OSS usage in the US through political lobbying will only make things worse for said companies because it becomes even harder for them to compete on a global market where usage of OSS is becoming more and more of common practice.
The rest of the world will move forward regardless of what Microsoft think about OSS. I can understand that Microsoft believe that its in their best interest to slow down this process as much as possible because they probably think that their business model can still be salvaged, however I think they are just doing the rest of the country a big disservice.
After all, this has a few major benefits for Microsoft. For one, open source provides a sandbox for new ideas that get public enthusiasm before they are blatently ripped off and incorporated into products with great results.
The R&D/Marketing department at MS is to become a whole lot more redundant in the immediate future, I think; there will no longer be much of a need to come up with BS as any ripped-off improvements will likely sell themselves.
I have honistly tried and thought about all possible ways this is true... and well, I really just can't think of one. If anything, the OSS movement allows for more innovation because we don't have to worrry about something that might be "bad for the company." Corporations constantly scrub projects all the time because they don't go along with their corporate image, or there's not a big enough market, or because they're getting under-the-table funding for doing something else. Corporations arn't about being innovative [rare exceptions]. They're about making money. Innovations come from the people that don't have anything to loose; the people that are willing to take greater risks and try something new. Sorry Bill, look back on history, more great inventions came from a small group of independant visionaries than from large mega-corps.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation,
Nigga please!
You haven't looked at Microsoft's stock lately, obviously.
;-)
Sure, they have a ton of cash, and right now the expectation on the street is that the best way to play with that cash is for MSFT to give it back to shareholders as dividends.
That doesn't sound very "innovative" to me.
Instead, they should open source everything they do and use the cash to fund important open source initiatives.
Sack windows, long live the command line!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services.
Stronger copyright protection? A CIO's job is to ensure IT aligns w/ business objectives. How does promoting stronger copyright protections facilitate that objective? Most businesses consume more ideas than they produce, so for most, weaker copyright protections would do them more good.
The notion that MS promotes free trade is also ridiculous. They promote free trade with anyone who adopts the same draconian intellectual property regulations that allow MS to thrive in the US. Free trade among the plantation owners, as it were.
Lobbyists make large campaign contributions. After that is understood, everything else falls into place. Yes, all our representatives are bought and paid for.
It might be time to elect amatures to all offices. Look what the professional have done to us!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Some strongly suspect some back-door MS insentives injected into Catapult Systems.
I doubt a Linux box could be as much trouble as they claim it is there. They are even blaming application limitations on Linux.
Table-ized A.I.
Why bother to lobby against it? I mean in theory, your superior product should take hold in the corporate world where it matters most.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
On a level playing field free software will inevitably wipe the floor with proprietary software. At some point linux or openoffice or whatever becomes good enough and Microsoft's proprietary stuff starts to look too expensive both in terms of money and lock-in. Once alternative file formats and protocols become commonplace Microsoft will have lost much of its power in the marketplace.
To combat this eventuality Microsoft and the entertainment industry push to build DRM into the hardware - CPUs, motherboards, sound systems, all of it. This is really what Longhorn is all about. There will be a thicket of patents walling off the technology, and of course the licenses will not be compatible with free software. Naturally it will be difficult to impossible to get this hardware to be fully operational without access to the specs.
Obviously, most people in the industry will understand what Microsoft is up to and many will not want to go along. So there'll be attempts to sponsor legislation mandating the use of these technologies. I'm sure you can imagine all the FUD from the {RI,MP}AA and their many front groups.
Will Microsoft get away with closing the PC hardware platform? I don't know. But this will be the final showdown between free and proprietary software.
For the record, I think this would be very bad for America.
According to a post just a handful above yours, IBM has a policy which forbids influencing political processes. Yes Virginia, it is possible the businesses practices of a convicted abusive monopoly are reprehensible, something Microsoft uber-fanboys would do well to consider.
You are right, in a sense.
Thing is, monopolies aren't illegal in the United States. It is their tactics that get them into trouble.
From Dictionary.com:
The thing that most definitions forget to mention is monopolies are often formed when it is cheaper for one company to provide the good or service than multiple companies.
Is it cheaper for the consumer to get their OS from one source? No, I don't think so. (And) It removes competition. But the other thing that makes someone a monopoly is restrictive laws and patents. Microsoft became a monopoly through smart tactics, some illegal, but mostly through patents, and existing laws.
Did the U.S. government "grant" Microsoft a monopoly? No, I don't think so. Did they say "hey, who can be the sole supplier of operating systems?" and come up with Microsoft? No, but I'm sure when their income made it into the billions they decided that a dead Microsoft would mean a dead economy.
It would be like telling the Saudi's to shove it. Sure, it needs to be done but our banking system couldn't handle the fallout.
Plus, I wonder if backdoors and that sort of thing made the U.S. government like them. Sure, ship that to Italy, we want to watch them... sure ship it to whoever, we want to watch them. Maybe, just maybe our national security depends on Windows dominance?
Get your Unix fortune now!
Well speak for yourself. IMHO, we should be talking about getting rid of copyrights, not making them stronger.
This is nothing new. As tech companies become large and powerful, they will start influencing government. Companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and others, are some of the largest corporations in USA and hence they will influence govt. The tech industry, and hence the corporations, were small in the past so their power was limited. Other than IBM, very few tech companies would have been considered powerful from the 60's to the 80's.
Influencing govt is nothing new. One just needs to look at how some of the historically large corporations in USA (eg. oil companies), such as ExonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton (aka KBR), and others, have influenced US govt to the point of controlling their military.
As the computer industry, and consequently the corporations, increase in size, theiry lobbying power will increase...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
My head is still spinning. This seems to mean that Microsoft (ISC's backer) is stating they cannot compete with OSS without laws creating barriers to adoption. I read the rest of the article looking for clearification, but just saw more examples of Microsoft pumping large sums of money into politics to make sure they don't have to compete. Microsoft has a history of purchasing competitors and there aren't too many companies they can point at next time they get hauled off to court for in a monopoly suit. Those they can point at are either open source (OO.org, Linux, apache, mysql, Mozilla) or have been working to build a relationship with the OSS community (IBM, Sun).
Is this lobbying effort going to build the winning anti-trust case against them?
"Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs."
This is 100% correct. Open source has only ever copied what has already been done commercially. And, I can't really think of an instance where the open source equivalent has come close to matching the quality of the commercial product it is ripping off.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
What they're basically saying is "AAAaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!"
"It's not a matter of "Open Source against Closed Source", except when someone with a bully pulpit says it is. Don't buy in to Microsoft's game, or Richard Stallman's. They thrive on opposition and obstruction for different reasons."
Remember awhile back, my comment about the way we treat RMS, when he's been proven right more times than wrong. The above post is a "tip of the iceberg" response that I've seen go deeper and nastier than that in the past. I'm afraid we'll never be ready for the "why we do this" until we're ready to acknowledge the fact that we do this to begin with.
"Personally, I think it's a losing battle in the long term, but merely delaying open source can mean billions more of revenue for Microsoft."
How long is "long term" and what influentual things can happen between now, and "long term" that might make the outcome an undesirable for all?
"Microsoft is taking a good hard look at entering all sorts of markets."
I predict the underwear market will become more hazzardous, as men will become plagued by BSODs.
Yes, we know Apple couldn't sell tahitian holidays to eskimos. That's not the point. The point is that market share has nothing to do with the quality of the system, which is one of the two possible points the original poster was straining to make.
"Isn't that argument ("only commercial software spurs economical growth"), which seems to be the biggest gun of MS and other entities against Free/Open Source softwares, only the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org] applied to something else?"
OK let's turn this one eighty. Give examples of open source spurring economic growth? If you can't do this, or do it well? Then you'll realize why this argument is MS's biggest gun, and keeps showing up. The fact that it's a fallacy is only a point for nerds to fight over, while avoiding the really important issue.
You just MADE his point. Saying that jobs are lost because of FOSS is like saying buggy whip makers lost jobs because cars are being made.
Technological advancement moves FORWARD, and when that happens, people have to ADAPT. The IT jobs of the future are not going to be like the ones today - $DEITY, I HOPE not. I'd hate to think that all the training I received has set me up for a life of patching crappy MS operating systems.
Even as a monolithic entity the intramural competition is savage. Individuals there don't hesitate to piss all over shareholder value if, by undermining a competitor/colleague they climb a little higher up the corporate ladder. Politics.
"You've got to warn everyone and tell them! ... ...
Microsoft Longhorn is made of... people!"
The concern is not with natural monopolies whose existance serves the public good. Electric utilities, for example. Multiple installations of power lines serving the same neighborhood makes no economic sense.
But when you have a predatory monopoly, that's a problem. Would IE have taken over without the desktop monopoly? No. Would ANYONE use windows media player if it weren't bundled with windows (and difficult to remove!)
The advantage a monopolist enjoys is not total. Just because an MS product is on every windows machine doesn't mean the game is over. They are still a predatory monopoly because of the tactics used, but if their offering in a particular market is bad enough then that if it is utter crap, a bigger and more torrid security hole than the goatse guy - well, that leaves an entirely more wholesome opening (if you'll excuse the expression) for an open source project.
But seriously: would any VC invest in a browser company? Or an office productivity suite? IE vs. Firefox represent a perfect storm of incredibly shitty software vs. a decent alternative + monopoly immunity by an amorphous, untargetable development entity. But any standard, commercial company is toast. That's a monopoly, and one to be concerned about.
There is one notable exception to this pattern [of donating equally to both parties], however: the 2000 presidential election. During the campaign Microsoft donated close to $60,000 to George W. Bush's campaign and over $390,000 to the Republican National Committee. In contrast, Microsoft gave $28,750 to Democratic challenger Al Gore and $65,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
While there were many causes for the outcome of the 2000 election, Microsoft shares the responsibility for the election of George W Bush, and consequently for all the shit he has done while in office. There couldn't be a more perfect illustration of why businesses, whose only priority is their shareholders, should not get involved in political lobbying.
Go ahead, mod me down, but I believe strongly that every soldier and every innocent civilian killed in Iraq has Microsoft -- among many others, of course -- to thank.
I don't know exactly what Futurepower meant by that comment, but I will point out that merely having a command prompt is not the same as having a proper CLI environment. While cmd.exe may be slowly gaining some of the serious features of Bash or KSH, that still doesn't make a CLI. Under Unix/Linux, bash (or whatever shell you want to use) is really just a "glue" language. The real power comes from the dozens of filter-type tools in /bin and /usr/bin and being able to combine them in useful ways. Add in hundreds of other tools (e.g the NetPBM graphics programs) and you have a seriously powerful environment.
The power of a Unix-like environment isn't in just having a command-prompt. You have to look at the system as a whole to realise that it's constructed of many simple principles. These principles may seem inconsequential at first, but they all tie together.
Anyone with a half a brain will realize one simple fact: There are lots and lots of companies that USE software. But there are relatively few companies that CREATE software. Therefore, free software (both free as in beer and in speech) would benefit overwhelming majority of companies, since they don't earn their living from writing software. And since there are quite a few companies making money from creating and selling open source-software, that MS-argument simply doesn't hold.
Only companies that would be harmed by Open Source, are those that have placed all their money on creating and selling proprietary software. And right now Microsoft seems to be only company that has done that.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Democracy is becoming more of a joke every day.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas.
A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
There are no prima donnas in engineering.
--Freeman Dyson
gewg_
From these figures, one can guess that the influence from lobbyists was much greater than from campaign contributions.
If that includes paid dinners etc., that could also have the appearance of corruption. Let's stifle the flow of money that could potentially be traded for political favours.
Perhaps they have to spend more on lobbying to get the same influence as the campaign contributions would have?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Open source undermines the ability of top quality pay-software writers to earn a decent living from their work. Once they're out of business, there will be no basis for free software because there will be no source of ideas, no innovation. This will hurt all of us in the long run. So remember, it may be free, but it does have a cost.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
We conduct our reprsentative government in a democratic manner. Defense contractors lobbying for more tax payer money to Israel in order to beef up their sales, Monsanto lobbying to stop labeling products organic and Microsoft killing any open-source bill are not in the spirit of democracy where we each have equal say through our representatives.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Then again, that's why the proposed schemes for breaking up Microsoft were as brain-dead as the breakup of Ma Bell into the baby bells. In the Bell case, they broke up 1 National monopoly into 7 regional monopolies; instead of being shafted by Bell consumers were shafted by their local RBOC since it still didn't have to compete with anyone (think of GTE as the Firefox of the telco world at that time).
Similarly, people wanted to break Microsoft up into a company with a monopoly on operating systems and a company with a monopoly on office suites. Woo hoo. Sign me up for that...
All's true that is mistrusted
If someone made the "Microsoft Technology Lobbying Watch Website" that just kept a list of where Microsoft lobbyists have been seen poking about and what they're doing, maybe set up an RSS feed, and open source folks would have a lot more meat to sink their teeth into. Probably generate lots of Slashdot articles as well -- look what happened with the USPTO having a searchable database and Microsoft having publically visible new patents. Plenty of criticism and prior art showing up. If Microsoft's lobbying efforts were exposed, bullshit could be shot down before it starts to take off.
Incidently, this would be a worthwhile task for even a company to pay someone to do -- it'd be similar politically to what PJ is doing legally with SCO. Just providing useful, distilled information (though Groklaw has gotten less objective since the beginning, sadly enough).
May we never see th
Anybody remember the 1950's sci-fi novel "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth? While they didn't understand and predict computers at all, they had an interesting vision of the corporate world with regard to advertising and politics:
Advertising agencies have moved from just advertising and creating markets for groups of companies to actually owning and re-organising entire industries. (In the book, the leading example is the re-arranging of all of India into a huge consuming system.)
And US Congressmen and Senators no longer are voted in the office by dumb consumers, but are elected by and directly represent major corporations. The President is a mainly ceremonial figurehead.
Hell, the guys had vision. Good read. "Commies" are replaced by "consies" (conservatives who try to throw the spanner into the works of holy Sales)...
* Open source projects have trouble innovating, because they don't pay. That means the people who work on them have to make money somewhere else, which means they can't devote 100% of their energy to innovating the open source.
Take a look at how much research software in academia is open source -- it's significant. There are probably an order of magnitude significant new ideas being coded up for the first time in open source than in closed source software.
May we never see th
some of microsoft's most prominent products are either ripoffs (xerox parc gui+mouse)
//sidethought - wonder what would happen if xerox patented THAT idea!>br>
or outright purchase like NCSA's internet browser!
and when they DO come up with a new product, its a failure (BOB is dead!) or irritating (go away clippy!)
go ahead troll me down, my karma is dead anyways!
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
Can't stop the grass roots, we are already jamming. Come jam with us mon.
Ok fine lobby against Open Source, just means less money for government and more money for M$. If you want to shot your government in the foot, well alright your choice. Or you could follow in HAWAI's path and save some money on IT solutions and redirect it to better causes (education, health, public networks, etc).
imagine if you took every state and every federal government's it budget and dedicated it to exanding and improving a shared resource of software. Imagine how quickly the software could improve.
The only problem is our society doesn't have a way to cope with the lost jobs right now. And there will be lost jobs. After all, right now a lot of work is being unecessarilly duplicated. Of coarse this doesn't generate real wealth (software is generally a means to and end, not an end in itself), but it does shift wealth around in such a way that people work harder in general and end up generating a little more real wealth in the process.
But this is rapidly becomming a moot point. Outsourcing is sending all our programing and IT jobs away. There's no need to worry about open source putting our programmer's out of work, Microsoft has already done a very good job of that thank you very much. So why give a fuck if Microsoft goes belly up if they're doing basically nothing for America (or for whichever country you're in, presuming you're in a first world nation with Minimum Wages and labor laws). As companies abandon us, our only hope is to abandon them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Hello,
But most new ideas come from the OpenSource comunity and not from pay-software writers. pay-software writers have there ideas limited by the "needs to make money" and company policy constraints while open source developers can express new ides just for the sake of expressing new ideas.
Besides: OpenSource and pay-software don't exclude each other. Take a look at http://www.adacore.com/. Ada-Core charges $15.000 for a 5 seat one year support contract for there Ada compiler but at the same time at there sister webseide (http://libre.act-europe.fr/) you donwload the very same compiler for free. With full source code.
You wonder why anybody pays > $15.000 for something you can get for free? Well look at the customer list for enlighenment:
http://www.adacore.com/customers.php
With Regards
Martin
Hello,
let me quote from another article I wrote a few minutes ago:
-- snip
Besides: OpenSource and pay-software don't exclude each other. Take a look at http://www.adacore.com/. Ada-Core charges $15.000 for a 5 seat one year support contract for there Ada compiler but at the same time at there sister webseide (http://libre.act-europe.fr/) you can download the very same compiler for free. With full source code.
You wonder why anybody pays > $15.000 for something you can get for free? Well look at the customer list for enlighenment:
http://www.adacore.com/customers.php
--snap
As allways it is the golden middle way. The Problem is: Microsoft does not want to go there.
With Regards
Excuse me, but the whole point of OSS is that
it makes clear what everyone who cares about
software, knowledge , universities and meaningless
stuff like that have known for years.
No locks on Books. No locks on thoughts.
Be very careful. I'm an Angry Norfolkman (UK). One
of my predescessors (Tom Paine) will come back and
haunt you Mr. Gates if you dare to flash this crap
in public. Sorry but internal spell check is on
strike right now..
You see. We care. Make us mad enough and a galaxy
away you'll still see the effect.
(I would be more poetic but my brain is still
readjusting from the Heineken overdose last night).
(and yes we would welcome a calming thought from
a microsoftie...)
You are forgetting the fact that copyright is a government granted monopoly. It predates capitalism by the way; monarchs used to grant such monopolies. It seems most advocates of capitalism have a feeble belief in what they advocate; otherwise why do they think a feudal concept is needed to fix capitalism?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I'm in business, as a freelance coder. I own my company 100%. Should I try to maximise shareholder value? Should I shrug off my foolish morals and become a complete bastard - if the money is right?
Put another way: what is it about 'maximising shareholder value' that excuses the need to behave like a decent human being?
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
There was a time when Microsoft refused to lobby, or they lobbied very little, and all that got them was several slap downs from the governement, and articles from industry leaders telling them to grow up, to learn how to play with the big boys. I guess they listened to those articles, and they realised that they'd never continue to survive without extensive and aggressive lobbying. This article isn't about how evil microsoft is, it's about the failure of the current political system.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
Monopolies lead to lobbying.
Lobbying leads to corruption.
Corruption leads to the dark side.
use Linux. Advanced it is.
Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
All one has to do is point out how the BSD licence spurs economic growth.
If the Pol doubts it, cover the history of network protocols, and how the fact TCP/IP had a BSD implementation and that is why it won. Point out the Internet to said pol. Then whip out the Microsoft products and show the BSD copyrights.
Microsoft thinks open source will freeze innovation? Since when the hell does Microsoft care about innovation? Name two major Microsoft products that weren't stolen, and I'll be surprised.
IBM wins either way.
If OSS continues to take off, they're in a good position to capitalize on it (as they have been).
If OSS is squashed, they still have a really strong development process to create proprietary software, from which they can profit (as they have for many years).
The power of the Unix CLI is that it's fragmented into small usefull pieces that can be combined using standard methods however the user wants.
It has two drawbacks:
- You have to know it quite well before it starts to pay off. It's not easy to search for something that does [fill in purpose].
- You need a basic "programmer" mindset.
It would be more powerfull if it was not all lumped together in a few directories, but structured like a GUI menu.
[File manipulation string manipulation Help etc.]
The advantage of a GUI is:
- It helps you narrow down your choices fast if you do not know what you are exactly searching.
- There is a predefined selection of choices pre-programmed, preventing user-error and the need for programming skills.
The CLI is potentially more powerfull, but also a much higher and longer and steeper learning curve.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Seriously - corporations control many other industries; ours was just a matter of time. Think about Disney's extended copyright stuff, Monsanto's corn, pharma, etc. Face it - can't vote with our dollars there either.
Signatures can only be seen by those that choose to create an account or log in. Next time, just quote the thing you have to say in the message body.
Perceptive.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Maybe until recently I would have agreed. However, recently I have started noticing projects relating to desktop search: Dashboard, Beagle, DBFS, etc. This is the hot new area of desktop innovation, and at the moment it seems Gnome has an early lead, with KDE looking to start up some related projects too. Off the desktop, Namesys is moving towards related technologies on the filesystem level. To the extent that MacOS-X can be said to be OSS, they have their Spotlight technology. On the other side, well, it looks like we won't be seeing WinFS in Longhorn afterall.....
That sounds very familiar. Most of ideas, changes and patches made by a random Joe Sixpack are dumb. And I mean really dumb, sometimes utterly moronic. The forked branch can be merged with the original tree only when the idea turns out to be not as dumb as it seemed to be, but most of the redundant work is wasted and dumb ideas are forgotten. Free software works a lot like Darwinian evolution. When one compares it to the intelligent design of proprietary software, it is obvious which model is right.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
And if my grandma was a bicycle I may be a motorcycle.
People have to find solutions and attitudes to the reality they have to face now, not to dabble in a hypotetical nirvana which may never come.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... because of the fucgin tree in front of you. Which you put there by the way.
Don't you have a funny feeling that the expansion and improvement of software would not create more jobs?
Improvement is in the eye of the beholder, customazition may be the biggest IT engine for several years to come if we don't allow the like of MS to derail this,
They are welcome to join, but if they keep messing around they may be left without many friends (like if they have any at this stage).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And I am not joking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But down here on Earth MS is way behind Linux.
Your outlandish ascertion that MS is easy falls miserably like a shaky house of cards when you go and visit any bookstore and see the shelves full of books guiding people through the piece of cake that Windows is suppossed to be.
People like you just don't get it.
Linux in particular and OSS in general is making software an infrastructure resource, like electricity or water.
MS does not like that because competing in a comoditized resource in a free market is the nightmare of any monopoly.
The entrenching of Linux in the server market is just the start. Eventually Linux will be as capable and more flexible than anything MS has to offer (with all the barriers currently existent it makes a perfect replacement for many people. In 5 years time there will be no major issues with Linux in the desktop, save stupid hardware manufactureres that may still be in the dark).
The fact that more people don't use Linux is just a temporary stage clearly owed to natural resistance. It is always like that with any technological change, but the writing is in the wall and that is why MS (shich is not stupid) is doing all what they can to attack the OSS phenomenon.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My company has scores of programmers adapting OSS to our needs.
Those jobs would not exist if it was not for the existence of OSS.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't think that he committed this wrong intentionally, i.e. unless/until someone shows me some evidence to the contrary I'll continue to believe that Stallman simply communicated his personal convictions and worked on creating the free software operating system which he felt is needed, without any intentions or plans for a "coup".
Under construction: swpat politics overview article
X11 offers several 3D APIs. The ones that are "dependent on mapping a window into some other API's space" are the more recent ones, mostly because Macintosh and Windows made that sort of "design" popular.
Hold on there... I just realised what's bothering me about this.
OpenGL doesn't come from Apple or Microsoft, it comes from SGI, who was at the time primarily a UNIX hardware vendor, and it's based on the software they were using in the '80s. So... it's at least as old as travesties like PEX. What's made it acceptable for X11 now is the license changes and the open source implementation from SGI, but it's going to take X11 a while to catch up with OpenGL-based window systems... if it ever does.
Calling it a "more recent" API is a heck of a rewriting of history.
I also agree with Stallman on a lot of things, actually, I believe we'd agree about the dangers of treating intellectual property rights like physical property rights, and about software patents and copyrighted interfaces. Obviously we both favor open systems and interoperating software, and open source.
But... I believe that competition is essential to the continued development of software systems, and that the open source model doesn't automatically lead to better software in all areas. Also, he seems to have an ambiguous position on interface copyrights: he believes that the GPL should apply to APIs as well as code, and I believe that this pretty much violates everything the LPF is about.
I hardly think that he was tactically wrong: his tactics were obviously tremendously successful, and that is after all the point of a tactical decision. The results, though, are that people consider RMS and the GPL to be synonymous with free software. I've talked to lots of software developers who used the GPL who never considered that there might be an alternative.
And find it hard to see this as an accident. It's implicit in the GNU Manifesto, and explicit in the preamble to the GPL where he argues the GPL is the only way to license software you want to remain free. What else does this mean but that all "free software" everywhere should adopt the GPL, either voluntarily or by incorporation into GPL-covered code. It's not just a matter of producing his free operating system, his goal was for his free operating system to replace all alternatives.
And he has, over and over again, argued vigorously with other free software developers when he didn't believe their license was compatible with the GPL, or because they didn't give enough credit to the FSF. Remember the fight over the BSD advertising clause, or the "GNU/Linux" broadside?
Calling it a "more recent" API is a heck of a rewriting of history.
OpenGL is not "recent". What Macintosh and Windows popularized is grafting something like OpenGL (or Direct3D) onto the side of an existing window system; X11 is just doing the same thing those systems are doing.
but it's going to take X11 a while to catch up with OpenGL-based window systems... if it ever does.
There are no usable "OpenGL-based window systems".
I'm surprised I don't see anyone complaining about how the Bush administration helped MS get off scot-free.
/.ers? Did we all forget?
Go back to 2000. Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust laws. The court recommended a breakup, and lost early appeals I think. The media asked the candidates. Gore supported the ruling, but Bush didn't. Bush goes into office, appoints new DOJ officials. Surprise! The government backs down, and Microsoft goes from the brink of being split up, to guilty but no punishment.
Where is the Justice here? What happened to the howling