Microsoft Attempts to Quash OSS Recommendations

An anonymous reader writes "Inside Higher Ed has a story detailing Microsoft's attempt to alter a report created by the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector division, complained about recommendations in the report to look into 'open source' and 'open content' at higher education institutions across the country. Elliott, who is on the voting committee, waited until the last minute and tried to have the report changed after a public vote. Although she does have a point that 'open source' is a development model, it still has collaboration at its heart. Can Microsoft argue against 'open' and win?"

Comments

MS up to its dirty tricks again.

[IntelliAdmin]

Before: The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Such a portal could stimulate innovation, and serve as the leading resource for teaching and learning. New initiatives such as OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative, the Sakai Project, and the Google Book project hold out the potential of providing universal access both to general knowledge and to higher education. After: The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of information-technology-based collaborative tools and capabilities at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling access, interaction, and sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Both commercial development and new collaborative paradigms such as open source, open content, and open learning will be important in building the next generation learning environments for the knowledge economy. Looks like one member was still not happy with the after and wanted "Open source" removed because of the possibility that it would enter them into a copyright debate.

Windows Admin Tools

Re:MS up to its dirty tricks again.

[ronkronk]

I'm South African, I haven't lived in SA for over 15 years, but I was an IBM mainframe operator there in the 80's and I still visit regularly and have family and friends there. The plus side of the racist white minority rule in SA is that the country got the best infrastructure in Africa, which it still has except that the current government caters to more than a small white minority and thus has other pressing problems as well to deal with.

South Africa is the original home of Mark Shuttleworth and his foundation Ubuntu has an ongoing task in South Africa to teach and install Ubuntu in schools (Hint to Microsoft: It's one fuck of a lot cheaper than a Windows solution). I chat regularly with my mom down there who has a Windows PC. South Africa's biggest problem is a monopoly telecommunication company that refuses to allow competition or lower prices on internet access, thus ensuring some of the highest access prices in the world.

However, if you go accross the border to the north, in Zimbabwe, which is in total financial ruin with an autocratic president who hates whites and the blames everyone but himself for the crap that is going on there, you'll find an infrastructure that was similarly built up by the original white minority government, but one that has almost no new investment since Mugabe came to power ensuring that growth in the IT sector there is non existent.

And that is the case all over Africa, you have some countries which have fairly decent political systems, such as South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, etc and you have others which are either run by despotic tyrants, plagued by tribal warfare or thoroughly corrupt or a mixture of these.

In those countries where there is a semi decent system, the education is usually quite good. In those which are chaotic the people are lucky if they can read or write and those who do know the internet, know it usually from an internet cafe.

Linux has advantages due to its flexibility and low price. Claiming that teaching people Microsoft is better because there are more Microsoft trained people is only true if there really are trained Microsoft people around. Usually, the level of trained Microsoft people doesn't reach the level of even an MCSE, since we all know what an MCSE POS costs, so that advantage is null. Training people from scratch with Linux is in my opinion better since a basic grasp of Linux will enable someone to manage in extremely difficult circumstances where hardware and other constraints would make it extremely difficult to keep a system running with Windows.

Re:MS up to its dirty tricks again.

[soft_guy]

Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't object to 'open learning', too.

Or just "learning"...

Re:MS up to its dirty tricks again.

[Maximum Prophet]

Unlikely. People at that level have teams of people to read and analyze everything.

More likely she planned to wait until the last moment, and squeeze it through so that nobody noticed. If it had come up for debate sooner, she might have lost, and OSS supporters might have put even stronger language into the doc.

Define Win

[Analogy Man]

Can Microsoft argue against 'open' and win?

It all depends on how you define winning. Does it mean having a few senators and congressmen in your pocket? Does it mean having a public debate where it is clear that your position is correct? Does it mean spreading enough FUD that people are confused/fearful enough not to take an "undesirable" action?

My interpretation of a Microsoft win is to perpetuate a perception that OSS is a hippy commune free for all not to be trusted by the government. It fits with the current mode of debate in DC. Adopt an rediculous position that cannot be supported with facts or logic and label anyone that challenges it a extremist fanatical zealot.

And...

[GillBates0]

...out flies a chair out of the open Window.

Re:[OT] Google unreachable??

[Anonymous Coward]

Its fine. And your retarted.

It's fine. And you're retarded.

There. All better.

Uninformed Submitter

[Bob9113]

Although she does have a point that 'open source' is a development model,

No she doesn't. Not it is not. It is a collection of software licenses.

Will the report have any impact either way?

[Infonaut]

We're talking about government and academia, two worlds that produce mountains of papers and reports each year. Does anyone know if these reports from the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education are ever given any attention by the leaders of colleges and universities?

Fine, let MS object

[MECC]

Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she "vigorously" objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education.

Why does anyone take an MS VP 'opinion' over those of people actually working in higher education. Why is anyone even listening to her? What does she have to do with the process at all? What's her background in higher education? Why is MS a part of such a discussion anyway? Why would anyone not think that the only reason MS is involved is to find ways to extort more money out of higher education?

Elliott, though. She thanked Duderdstadt for his suggestion but objected to his proposed inclusion of "open source" ("it's a method of coding software, and one of several available, period") and "open content" (a "term which can mean different things and enter us into some copyright debate"). She suggested language that struck those phrases.

It's worth pointing out that the Internet itself is the result of an OPEN collaboration, not entirely unlike OSS, which is also an open collaboration. The right thing to do would be to let her "never sign" the report, and thank her for her 'input'.

Re:There is an interesting question here

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. The GPL might prevent companies trying to sell me stuff my tax dollars have already paid for once... If anything it's better than the (often blatantly ignored) rule that software developed with public money is supposed to be public domain and uncopyrightable in the first place (NASA gets, or at least used to get, this right, at least).

Of course companies would "have a beef with it", but government is by the people of the people and for the people. And corporations aren't people, no matter what mere law says.

Re:There is an interesting question here

[ultranova]

If public money is used to push certain products, outcomes are presented for public use but you are not allowed use it, even though they paid for a portion of it; I think lots of companies probably would have a beef with it.

You mean like I'm not allowed to use Windows XP despite having paid a portion of the school's copy ?

Re:There is an interesting question here

[Bob9113]

But if they are thinking GPL way, ... outcomes are presented for public use but you are not allowed use it, even though they paid for a portion of it;

GPL covers only redistribution without providing source, not use. Proprietary software has all the same restrictions, and many more. You can read more about it, including seeing the actual license (something you apparently have not done), at http://www.fsf.org/

Billy Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why Bill Gates is represented as a Borg on Slashdot. When mid-level employees such as these are willing to go so out of their way to fight open source it's obvious the guys on top are pressuring them to do so. A lot of people think I'm strange for refusing to purchase any Microsoft product - even mice, Xboxes, cheap PCs running Windows, ect. I just don't want to contribute to a company whose goal is to control all software standards. They want every software technology - media, game development, networking, encoding, advertising, search, internet browsing, office software, ect. ect. to all be under their control. Then they can halt development and move on to their next project. I buy my stuff from companies which are financially committed to their products. When a company relies on a product for their bottom line they tend to care more about it. Employees at Microsoft know they have an infinite amount of money and no matter how half assed their products, people will buy them because the marketing people will sqaush any competition by making them look insecure next to the big bad Microsoft. Look what's happening to Sony right now. They've created what should be every nerd's dream - a new, complex processor, Linux, a killer GPU, free online service, and many many ports, HD so internet text can be read on T.V., and all the tradtional Playstation games - but everyone seems to think that Sony's out of touch with gamer. It's because Microsoft has people like Gerri Elliot who will do anything and everything to stifle competition. Why do you think Joe Shmoe thinks that there's no Mac software? In America, people respect money. Bill Gates is known as the richest, most powerful man in the world. Everyone assumes their competition is doomed to failure and doesn't buy because they're afraid M$ will just dominate the market anyway. Open source intitiatives like the one in the featured article are a way around this. We need to take note when Microsoft tries to cut off open source at a political level.

Re:There is an interesting question here

[ElleyKitten]

So wait, you think the GPL is too restrictive because it requires you to give out the source if you modify and redistribute it, but someone complains about Microsoft's licensing and you think they're being unreasonable? WTF?

Re:Ummmmm

[devjj]

It depends on how you look at it. Microsoft has certainly won countless battles to this point, but one oft-overlooked point these days is that Microsoft is hemorrhaging marketshare basically everywhere. Regardless of how fast it happens (although it is accelerating right now), people are moving away from Windows to Mac OS X and Linux. The interest in OpenOffice exists because people are starting to grow tired of Microsoft Office. Firefox won more than 10% of the internet browser marketshare, and almost all of that came right out of IE's stranglehold. AOL and Yahoo have completely and totally beaten down Windows Messenger. Apple's iTunes - while likely to take a mild hit from URGE - isn't going to lose its majority share any time soon. And let's not forget Google.. does anyone really believe that MSN Search stands any kind of a chance?

This isn't to say that Microsoft is going to lose its majority status where it is in the majority (most places) any time soon, but it's worth noting regardless.

So, has Microsoft conquered? I don't think so. A people are only conquered when there is no hope for their victory, and we are still in the very early stages of what will eventually result in Microsoft being given a more fitting role in the computing community. A role where there are viable options, and true competition. I can't wait.

Re:There is an interesting question here

[PseudononymousCoward]

On the contrary, there is a perfectly good legalese word for free-as-in-beer: gratis. It is the free-as-in-speech concept for which there is no generally recognized succinct legal term. Libre is commonly used in the OSS community to denote the concept, but in legal circles, libre is more commonly used as an astrological reference.

This looks like a stupid overreaction.

[hey!]

The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects [emphasis mine] at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives.

So, it doesn't look to me like this bears on Microsoft's products very much at all. They aren't saying ditch MS Office for Open Office, or ditch Windows for Linux. They aren't saying use open standard formats instead of closed proprietary ones. They aren't even saying you should prefer open source software development tools to proprietary ones.

If I read correctly, what they're saying is that people should develop new courseware and let other people use and improve it. Which is pretty much the way scholarship works. The job of the scholar, as we now understand it, is to innovate. You can't expect every instructor to teach the same topic the same way, much less institutions. Scholars have to use other scholar's work and have to let their others use their work. The only rule is to give credit where credit is due. Scholars who don't let others take their work and improve on it, or tailor to their own purposes, might as well move to a cave at the top of a distant mountain. Sages they may be, but scholars they are not.

This looks to me likea pointless, self inflicted PR wound.

Re:Ummmmm

[mabhatter654]

Business should be a "sport" not a "battle"! Most industries follow that model, there's only so much work one company can do RIGHT, so it's more like sports where different teams lead each season. Nobody expects the winning NFL team to hurt or maim the other players.. that's not sporting. The other teams still show up next season and play again. Microsoft, Oracle, Walmart, and others see business as "WAR".. trying to win all the games at any cost.. trouble is that it's not "fun" anymore. And you have 1000's of people out of work because some already rich company wants ANOTHER .1% profit so squashed their companies with half-rate low cost products and FUD advertizing.

Re:There is an interesting question here

[yankpop]

I think you're still missing the point. If the government were to support the development of GPL software, the product would be available for use by everyone. Microsoft would have just as much access as anyone else. If they wanted to modify and redistribute the software, they'd be obliged to release the code just like everyone else.

But no-one is forcing them to do that. They are still free to develop closed-source code and charge what they like for it. The only thing they aren't allowed to do is modify the government-sponsored GPL code and then sell it back to the people who have already paid for the initial development. Actually, they could even do that, but they'd have to provide the source code as well.

These arguments always confuse me. The GPL gives everyone more access to software, not less. Microsoft hasn't been forced to open the code to Windows just because GNOME exists. If the government sponsored some close-source software development, not only would Microsoft not be able to incorporate it into their own productes, they couldn't even see the source. GPL is no more restrictive for MS than any other software. It's actually less restrictive, since they can see exactly what the code does, should they wish to make their own products compatible.

The whole argument boils down to: no freedoms good (the status quo), some freedoms bad (the GPL), all freedoms good (unrestricted use of FOSS code, even to the point of taking it out of the FOSS realm by closing your source). This is silly.

yp.

Re:It's like a Seinfeld episode

[mabhatter654]

in this case it's is from a Federal agency... when somebody like MA wants to implement OSS in schools or offices they can point to this statement as "approval" for moving to OSS projects. M$ doesn't want ANY public recognition of OSS at the federal level. Imagine the effect if 1 State's budget for Office went to OpenOffice.org instead!!! That would cover their funding for several YEARS, but be a drop to Microsoft. The money would speed an OSS project up by 5 years or better... then still be FREE... MS can't let that happen at all costs.