Slashdot Mirror
Gates tried to Blackmail Danish Government
mocm writes "The Inquirer has a story about how Bill Gates tried to pressure the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen into accepting the European Union's proposed directive on software patents by threating to terminate the 800 jobs at Navision, which had been acquired by Microsoft." Update: 02/16 00:41 GMT by T : cfelde points out a CNET story which says that "The European vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, Klaus Holse Andersen, denied on Tuesday that the jobs at Navision were ever at risk." Believe who you'd like.
How mafioso
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Mainly it talks about how parts of the IT sector wants to block the contensted directive and how the proponents have been unable to get through due to effective lobbyism from the contensters.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Hmm... Let's weigh the options for the Danish government:
1. Loss of approximately 800 jobs
2. Implement stifling patent policies that will likely make Microsoft and other massive patent holders even more wealthy while crippling innovation within their country.
I wonder which one they should pick?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Seriously. He does. Anyone else ever hear about his name totaling 666 in askii? His name I think is actually William Henry Gates III or something - look it up. Total the #'s used in ascii and you get 666. I don't remember if you add 3 for the III or not, but it's six in the morning. Anyways, they should just nationalize the company that he suddenly, mystically, magically owns, after he fires everyone, and then no one can complain. They'll make a lot of money on top of things.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
I'm beginning to believe that what I read in sci-fi will come true (ie: in the future, mankind is ruled by corporations that want to make money).
And even more scary is the fact that for one extortion of that kind we hear of, numbers of other extortions of the same kind happen and we never hear about it. Brrr.
Gates said that he's displeased with the process of political decisions on software patents in the european union. In particular, he seems to be unhappy about the successful opposition by many european IT companies and software developers.
He further claims that Microsoft can secure their rights better in the USA.
I call BS on that: if Microsoft relocates Navision to the USA, they can patent there all they want, but guess what, their patents won't mean squat in Europe without the possibility to patent software in the EU.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
Seems like it is extortion, but only if it is illegal. Blackmail would have been the threat against Gates of revealing the extortion.
This is extortion in much the same way that if you get a better deal at store A than at store B, or if the manager at store B is rude to you, you might choose to buy from store A and you might remind the manager of store B that you have this power. Certainly it is using the power as a customer of your right to say no, but this may not be illegal, and therefore may not be extortion.
On the other hand, it may not have been a matter of retalliation at all. It may be that Microsoft was concerned that they would not own the intellectual property developed by Navision if those remained in Europe. There may be legitimate business reasons to develop intellectual property in those places where it is better protected.
Everybody gets all holier than thou over stuff like this, but I really don't see any reason why Gates is doing something wrong. Ownership has no meaning without the ability to do what you want with it. If I buy a priceless work of art for the express purpose of destroying it, that's my perogative. If MS acquires a company to use as a bargaining chip to get something they need, then that's their perogative. If the Danes didn't want him to be able to do that, they should've blocked the purchase of their company in the first place, or they should not bend to his demands and be willing to suffer the consequences.
Frankly, I don't understand why powerful people don't use their power more often. If I had been Martha Stewart, for example, I would've told the government that if they convicted me, I would liquidate my company and put all my employees out of work. I would then use my remaining wealth to buy small businesses and shut them down. And then ask the government whether my head on a stake was worth that price. It may sound like I'm advocating white collar terrorism, but I think that if you have leverage, there's nothing wrong with using it.
No, not me. I've never worked for Navision and can't recall anyone I know (personally) who's done so.
However, a while back (before her marriage to our crown prince) our crown princess did work for Navision.
I can't help but wonder if Bill Gates would have dared threaten to close the workplace of an upcoming queen...
It's 19:11:42. Do You Know Where Your Meat Body Is?
How did he respond? Or has he not responded yet? If he hasn't, is there a way to reach him? A letter-writing campaign maybe?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
When ever a story about Microsoft is posted you get those who say that people only hate Microsoft because they're number one. No, so many people hate Microsoft because stuff like this and this is only a single incident.
Software is probably the exception to the rule where each and everyone of us does have the choice of OSS, created "for the people, by the people" - okay, maybe OSS isn't always suitable for a particular task but that's another argument...
Take the food industry. I enjoy a hamburger occasionally but refuse to spend any money in McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, etc. because of what I know their combined power is doing to the agriculture industry world-wide. But this means I buy fresh meat in a local supermarket who, in turn, wield their own corporate power over the meat producing industry. The fact that there's competition in the different supermarket chains means price-cutting and probably the livestock farmers of the world suffering as a result.
I guess if I was to completely avoid any hypocrisy, I would rear my own livestock and kill it myself for food...
I think it's just about choosing the lesser of two evils - personally, I take the viewpoint that the more pervasive a corporation is with advertising in the media, the lest likely it is they manufacture a good product (because a good product would sell itself by word of mouth only).
Consequently, the more I see something advertised, the more I try to avoid buying it...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The software industry in the US is ofcourse terrified at the prospect that Europe will not get software patents... I guess they consider this an "unfair condition" for competition, since the belive that european software companies can create cheaper "copies" of US developed software.
But another thing: as I have understand it you are required to very carefully document what you patent. So, to get a patent on software you will have to decribe the used algorithm very carefully.
Now, US software patents may render quite a dangerous tool for american companies as their european counterparts quickly will gather the needed information from the patents documents and create a substitute version. The tool will turn itself against its master...
Given the trend of governments, especially those in the EU, toward use of FOSS to run their bureaucracies, I would expect that a ploy by Microsoft like the one reported could blow up in their face. What would stop Rassmussen from saying to Gates "OK, you fire the 800 programmers. While they are looking for work, we will fund their unemployment insurance with the money we save by dumping Microsoft OS and Office products. In fact, maybe some of those displaced workers would not mind helping us install and configure Linux, Firefox and Open Office in all our departments." The Danes are not noted for caving in to aggressive ulitmatims.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
OK, so given that the main article's title changes "blackmail" to "extort", /. is probably not committing libel.
I'd change it. Even though Gates is a "public figure" it really is poor practice to throw around accusations carelessly.
Seastead this.
Couldn't Microsoft just buy Denmark?
Hmm, let's see ... Denmark's biggest bridge, that's about 6 billion USD right there? You do the math.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Why not restrict software patents to smaller start up companies? For a 7 year patent time or so?
These large corporations dont seem to help humanity in any way. Cutting of jobs, threatening governments? It's getting out of control.
Smaller businesses, on the other hand, could produce more jobs and don't jam up the justice system suing anyone against them.
It isn't illegal, but it is arrogant, not really haggling - more like classic carrot and stick. At the very least this kind of strong arm move could backfire and encourage the other party to determine how fast they could re-employ those 800 people in the native software industry, maybe even one based on OSS. That would not only resulting in lost business for MS, but give the Danish government additional incentive to resist software patents.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
> Stop putting all evil on Bill's shoulders.
/. by going to http://www.democraticunderground.com/ and opening your eyes. It's amazing how little the people here know about how Bush is trying to destroy this country and take the rest of the world with him.
Exactly! It's Bush that is encouraging companies to be dishonest. Just look at all his has done for Enron and Worldcom. He's all but given their CEO's a room in the White House!
Never forget the hatred Bush and the Bush crime family have for the common man. Maliciously putting 800 people out of work is bad, so Bush, of course, supports it. He's said many, many times how much he supports firing employees without giving them severance pay. The man is a nut. Help fight the corporate slant of
(And for the record I'm a Brit who finds some USan spelling ocnfusing/annoying.)
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
If I had to make a guess, I'd say one of two things actually happened - First BillG may have threatened to MOVE the company, which isn't quite the same as firing them all but it just about as bad morally. Unfortunately, companies do this all the time, especially manufacturing companies - hell, its half the reason auto makers have unions.
The second option is that he was planning on axing the workforce for valid business reasons and offered to throw them a bone and keep it open if the PM supported software patents.
Neither is too many shades better than the extortion reported in the article, but both are common tactics in the business world. Personally, I think we should say screw them all to all the companies that try to pull off BS stunts like this. Starting with Microsoft.
I used to admin a Navision db at the last place I worked at, here in Switzerland. I even did a training course at the Navison central in Lucerne. I aksed the boss of Navision Switzerland if they had ever had plans to port Navision to Linux, since Navision has been around a long time, from the DOS days, and also used to run on AIX and up until recently didn't even use the Windows GUI toolkit but had its own proprietry one. He said that Microsoft had told the various European regional CEO's of Navision that they were not even allowed to mention Linux, never mind think about porting it to Linux.
Navsision is quite popular in Europe as it's very easy to install and admin, has a huge set of CRM and ERP modules and is small enough to be useful for companies of up to around 250 people or so. Navision was quite clever in their set up in that they have a network of so called Navision Solution Centers in Europe where customisation specialists sit around and write add on modules and customise existing db scripts for local businesses. Imagine if MySQL or PostgreSQL had a similar setup!
This was Microsoft's way of gaining a foothold in Europe with the hope of competing eventually with SAP (Navision also has a larger db product called Axapta).
Navision being Danish helped because Denmark (and Holland) have very much become the USA's bitches in Europe in the last few decades, probably because they thought they could use the USA to balance out the weight of their larger European neighbours.
On the whole this has also worked out as Holland and Denmark are doing pretty well economically (They're also much smaller than their neighbours and thus much more flexible). The problem is that they have thus also become the USA's bitches to a certain extent in that their militaries and sections of their economies are more dependent on American good will than others. The JSF fighter fiasco where loads of countries get to pay for development of the fighter in return for industrial contracts which never materialised is a good example.
This open extortion (blackmail isn't really the word) of a Danish national politician is what they get for their trouble. Microsoft would not do the same in Germany, for example, as the resulting scandal would kill Microsoft in Germany. (Let's leave Germany's economic mess out of this for now)
This should be awake up call to Europeans that sucking up to large corporations, especially large foreign corporations, is like handing away your birthright in the long run.
(Actually, I suppose this applies to all countries, really)
Yes, his mother was personal friends with someone high up in IBM who was in a position to make the OS decision for the new IBM PC architecture. Right place, right time... through luck of birth.
Remember that he also has admitted to dumpster-diving for other people's code ("pirating") and he used time on university-owned mainframes after he'd dropped out of school.
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/