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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.'"
its the other way around, microsoft stifles innovation
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?
Actually, if I was Microsoft, I would try and manipulate free software in a way beneficial to me and make as much money as possible off of it, instead of trying to kill a potentially huge source of revenue.
thisnukes4u.net
Pure Capitalism doesn't involve the goverment to the level that Microsoft has.
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.
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?".
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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
"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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Why should they do this? Their high profit margins will disappear because they sell software not services. They can't compete with wide spread open source and maintain their profits. Ultimately, they've decided that the best manipulation of open source is to hinder it as a competitor from as many markets as possible. 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.
Microsoft has a Price/Earnings ratio over thirty and their primary revenue generators Windows and MS Office have basically finished growing. Microsoft is taking a good hard look at entering all sorts of markets.
Being a Microsoft partner is going to be an especially precarious position to be in over the next couple of years as Microsoft looks for ways to "get rid of the middleman" between Microsoft and the end user.