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MS Has Free Software Removed From U.N. Paper
linumax writes "Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week's UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, the software giant admitted on Friday. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is unhappy that the document was changed and claims that even though it was on the panel discussing the document, it was not made aware of Microsoft's changes. The document (2.8MB PDF), known as the Vienna Conclusions, discusses issues around IT and creativity. The original draft of the document discussed how the free software model is changing the way people do business."
Like, are we supposed to act surprised here? Bill and Steve and crew continue to bully the planet. Film at eleven.
Warren
Well the paper might have originally described how free software works but what was done clearly shows how commercial software works.
MS is trying to stop the sea with its hands as they say, all it will manage to do is perhaps to slow it a bit, but everybody knows that nothing will stop the revolution. In a certain way this is pathetic.
How exactly are you going to "play dirty" with Microsoft?
And will your "playing dirty" result in better open source software? I doubt it. That's why it is probably best for the community to just continue producing superior products, and eventually people will migrate the to the best (and likely open source) products.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It's just so absurd, they walk around, flash some cash and get what they want done. This all after the whole european antitrust thing... I find it shocking they CAN have this removed. I wonder this isn't classed as attempted monopolisation, they are, after all trying to lock out other competitors from publicity.
~HTP~ Hug that tux
..is that for every token gesture they make to try and make the open source and free software movements warm to them and like them (opening up the next document formats in Office, etc), there is this kind of shit going on.
Sorry Microsoft.. you've earned your reptuation as underhanded, dirty, cheating assholes - and stupid stunts like this just continue to prove that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I am sure Microsoft was just doing whatever was in our best interest. :)
MS knows they cannot compete with open source software...... why else do they lie every chance they get, about it?
..... and they are very persistant about it.
Recently there was an article regarding a clone researcher being looked upon as being bad, when the fact of teh matter is that he only tried to hide the dishonesty of his associates upon his finding out they had lied regarding their donorship.
Now that's a case of one level disconnection from the initial deception. And consider what happened to him for it.
This MS constant lying is first degree deception, outright intentional
So why are they still in business?
Or is this only more proof that they are not genuine researchers or innovators, just used car salesmen selling the research and innovation others outside of them have done, as their own?
Its ok to lie, if you are a salesperson, but not a genuine researcher..... right?
References to free software and Linux were removed from a UN document after Microsoft claimed that such software aims to 'make it impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product'
Hello, Microsoft! Welcome to the post-GPL economy, where software income is based on services!
This is the same UN that should run the DNS root servers since they would be more independent than ICANN?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Who needs free-software, when we have Microsoft.
/. is good for you.
Guess the "ignore us" and "laugh at us" phases are officially over.
got changed to this:
These are U.N. peole (think University board members - only more useless) who play with words for a living.
"Nothing to see here, move along."
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Don't be fooled by those "market power should not be used to dominate and restrict the free exchange of ideas", this phrase can mean of anyone but established content providers.
Immediately followed by...
ICT x Monopolies = Digital Divide This document is moronic and it's authors are nothing but paying lip service to their sponsors, Corporate America.
And it's also yet anothing silent but glaring admission my Microsoft that they are VERY concerned about what is happening in the Free/Open software world. Perhaps they realize that there are several fronts they can't compete on with FOSS and would rather expunge it from view instead of, oh I don't know... COMPETING? Personally, I think competition is overrated and would rather see a more centralized system of forced cooperation by a world government. But that's just me... ;p Since a lot of you yahoos here are into "competition", what do you have to say for your capitalist masters Microsoft? (BTW... I'm not a commie either) And one last thing. Bill Gates... fuck you yet again.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
However, living in a world of new digital economy does not mean that one can break all business rules. ... The rights of creators and the protection of their intellectual property require permission and compensations ... Quality contents should pay back their creators; and not just the intermediaries. They ought not to be nor should they be seen as being available for free. Such appearances are demeaning to creators and producers, authors and developers, and they deny them the fruits of their efforts and work.
/. too smart to fall for that little diversion, aren't we?
This was extracted from the document under discussion. I would have expected this forum to be much more upset about this transparent advocacy of DRM than it would be about some trifling changes regarding free software. If I didn't know better I might think the disclosure that Microsoft had the "free software" language stricken from the document was done deliberately to draw attention away from it's other content. But we in
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
M$ has been playing dirty since the days Bill posed for "Teen Beat" magazine http://blog.monkeymethods.org/2005/01/bill-gates-s trikes-pose-for-teen-beat.html
This sig is inappropriate in a post-9/11 world.
This sig is inappropriate in a post-9/11 world.
"Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week's UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, the software giant admitted on Friday"
Which was worse? The fact that Microsoft askef for it to be removed or the fact that the UN happily agreed to it?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
...point them at this story.
If the UN were "communist", or any other relative or variant of socialism, they wouldn't allow one of the world's most famous capitalist entities to push them around.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
In a linked article in the article, Charles mentions that Linux is for "dorks".
Every time I read that "Linux is behind, incapable" or whatever, I take note that they don't understand shit. First off, Linux is a small part of the Desktop setup. The other thing I note is I'm sitting here just happy on my Desktop running Gentoo. It does everything I want [which is more than WinXP can deliver anyways] and it didn't cost me a dime other than time to set it up.
It's good that people are catching MSFT in their lies and poor behaviour but for every MSFT person saying "Linux is bad" there is just another person using an OSS kernel with OSS userland tools scratching their heads. And in the end it's really just that. Some MSFT guy saying something. Sure there are people who buy it without question but there are still more that are aware of it and people taking action on it.
It's just far far far too late. I mean all the negative press in the world won't make the millions of OSS users switch. And as long as there is 1 OSS user out there, it won't die.
So go ahead MSFT, act all desperate marketting and FUD'ing against OSS. You could be better served by actually delivering stuff of value. It sucks that an OS has lost "value" [in light of Linux or BSD + OSS userland] but that's it. No clever amount of marketting will make something that has no value all of a sudden have value.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
So where is the original draft? Why doesn't some unhappy person release it on the web with a side-by-side comparison to the final draft? Done this way it should truly embarass someone.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's odd... My friend BitTorrent tells me most of Microsoft's software is free, too. I wonder why they'd act against their own interests like this?
A free verse rap-off between Steve Balmer and Richard Stallman?
No.
If companies like Microsoft can change an official U.N. paper so easily, there is no way ordinary (non-geek) people will even know about Open Source alternatives. And everything that is propagated as "free" (either as in speech or as in beer) is considered "dangerous" (like: "there is no way software can be free, it MUST contain spyware or some other malicious threat. Microsoft says so!")
Really, I hear these things every damned day. I have a really hard time telling people that installing Win XP instead of Win 2k on their PII-233 is NOT making their PC run faster, so no one on earth is going to convince these people to use or trust OSS (unless you can teach them the difference between OSS and Freeware).
There are two options left, both have their problems: play dirty (DDoS-ing windows.com, releasing viri that attack Win-XP boxen etc) and decent marketing (some money-problems there...). Firefox is doing great using the latter technique, But I'll confess that I feal attracted to the first on days like this.
I really think the OSS-movement needs one body with some serious money that play the marketing trick on the world. And I also think that is not going to happen if "we" can't settle debates like "vi vs emacs", "GPL vs BSD", "KDE vs GNOME" and "linux vs BSD".
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
He who controls the past, controls the future;
he who controls the present, controls the past
And he who can have reports and news stories edited on a whim, controls the present.
For those of you who are interested in the entire story and its background, here are the links:
The best overall analysis and description of the situation so far was written by Germanys largest IT news provider, the Heise Verlag. They have the story online in both English and German.
9. Refer all charity organizations and any group strapped for cash to Linux. Every year when my kid's school does parent-teacher conferences, I never fail to bring up open-source after the teachers mention school budget cutbacks. (there's always a good opportunity to work that in when the teachers apologize for not getting the reports printed out because XP crashed - again!)
8. Drop IE-compatibility from your websites. Use this: http://www.stopie.com/stopie/home/ which will refer viewers to download Firefox. Aren't you tired of having to make your website botched up just to work for the lamest browser on the web, anyway?
7. Earn money by referring people to Firefox with Google toolbar while you're at it: http://downhillbattle.org/node/view/554 Who *says* there's no money in free software?
6. Go to the Ubuntu site - the page where you can order an Ubuntu disk sent to you for free - and fill in RANDOM ADDRESSES. Mystery gifts from the software fairy.
5. Anybody with a CD burner and a Linux fetish will have old Linux CDs they don't use anymore - like when you've updated to the new version. Take these CDs with you to the library, and tuck them into the Windows books in the computer books section.
4. While you're in the library, be sure to fill out those request/suggestion forms for new books to buy with the latest Linux books you're just dying to check out - and hasn't "DOS for Dummies" and "Windows 3.1 - the complete reference" gotten old, anyway?
3. Never pass a computer store without walking in and asking for software titles that run on Linux. The idea is to make them aware that Linux users *would* spend *some* money, if only anybody cared to do business with us.
2. Teach your kids Linux. This is the easiest - kids will absorb Linux like little sponges, all you have to do is install it and stand back.
1. Go to second-hand stores such as Salvation Army and Goodwill. Find a used computer on sale plugged in and running. Stick Knoppix on it. Reboot it. Walk away whistling. Trust me, I've spoken to employee and customer alike at these places - nobody would ever know the difference!
Do the math:
Amount of campaign contributions made by FSF: $0
Amount of campaign contributions made by Microsoft: > $0
We elect our leaders and they appoint people who make decisions. Why do you continue to expect them to benefit you, who contributed $0 to the winning party, if the opposite decisions are desired by people/entities that contributed?
Think of it this way: politicians and those they appoint want to keep their jobs. They will help those that contribute to them keeping their jobs instead of strangers who didn't contribute at all.
What is your goal? To remain poor and whine about injustices? Or to get rich and use your wealth to fight injustices?
Right now, our world is ruled by wealthy campaign contributors that are addicted to entitlements that are not available to the general public. Remember the good ole days when we were focused on cutting welfare for lazy poor people? Why the heck aren't we focused on cutting welfare for the wealthy? If most jobs are created by small businesses, why are most of the tax breaks going to a handful of large multi-national corporations?
You know the answer. The small handful are well-organized, well-funded, and highly focused on helping politicians get elected while the general public is distracted by abortion, religion, gays and other matters. We are distracted while they attempt to rape social security which we EARNED and PAID INTO.
If you want to change the world, objectively look at how the game is played and do something effective instead of whining. Focus on getting rich first (fix up your own damned life first), then use your wealth to make a difference. To remain poor out of laziness or out of a desire to feel self-righteous is extremely selfish if you live in a country where wealth-creation is available to anyone who focuses on that goal.
An entitlement-addicted society was annoying when those who received entitlements were dirt poor--when those receiving entitlements are filthy rich, it is absolutely disgusting. Do something about it by getting rich and getting the right people elected. You can't do this if your own life is a mess.
Hey now, microsoft doesn't suck all the time
But seriously though, googling for "Microsoft doesn't suck" on Slashdot brings up three results, of which two are the same.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The saddest thing about the U.N. at the moment though is the fall from grace of the once eminent Kofi Annan.
Wow, the guys at microsoft are really scared so much that they're becoming irrational:
Just a question, how many of you have ever written free software explicitly to put a company (say, MS) out of business?
Maybe you wrote a program after seeing a commercial implementation, but probably only because you wanted to improve on it or make it available for your favourite os. OS software is written because there is a need for it, not to push others out of business.
Yes there are other companies using open source as a business strategy. A strategy that works well against competitors like microsoft, but clearly has its own pitfalls as well...
so please Bill, keep your paranoia at home and stop messing with politics
The only way to fight a rabid dog is to put it down. Use a gun!
But Atticus Finch, who used the gun, was a really a lawyer. The reversed symbolism here is killing me. Can somebody please bring in an English Lit professor from the EFF to clear this up?
That sounds like a very reasonable thing to do. It means that Microsoft can put forward a solid, well though out and reasoned debate. In essence, what Microsoft are saying is this:
"Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh - I can't hear you, I can't hear you!"
I would be very interested in having a reference of all negative things Microsoft has done. Is there such a thing? I've googled around for a few minutes, but have not yet found anything that lists it all.