Microsoft's 'Men in Black' Kill Florida Open Standards Legislation

A NewsForge article was handed to us talking about pressure Microsoft recently brought to bear on a piece of Florida legislation. A few short paragraphs in Senate bill 1974 added by Rep. Ed Homan discussed the need for open data formats, but Microsoft's men in black responded by pressuring legislators and staff employees about the bill's language. "A legislative staff employee who would lose his job if he were quoted here by name said, 'By the time those lobbyists were done talking, it sounded like ODF (Open Document Format, the free and open format used by OpenOffice.org and other free software) was proprietary and the Microsoft format was the open and free one.' Two other legislative employees (who must also remain anonymous) told Linux.com that the Microsoft lobbyists implied that elected representatives who voted against Microsoft's interests might have a little more trouble raising campaign funds than they would if they helped the IT giant achieve its Florida goals. Note that lobbyists for IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Novell -- the only three companies with a major interest in open source who have registered lobbyists in Florida -- did not weigh in on this matter." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

Re:Just goes to show

[Rukie]

The media has always been one sided, defintely democratic and not republican. Amazing to think that the two parties used to be the Democratic Republicans ;). In my own home town there are a ton of legal arguments about the lake, the media always represents the side that does more harm. Although, it would be great to see John Stossel do a report on this. (He just slammed Nike not too long ago.)

Re:Run away chain reaction.

[Red Flayer]

It's a death spiral for M$. The harder they try, the more expensive the monopoly becomes the more people will want to escape.

s/b: The harder they try, the more extensive the monopoly becomes the more people will be unable to escape.

What bothers me about your post is that it's the same as the rest of your posts -- all you ever really say is "haha M$ is PWNed".

It also shows the costs of maintaining the monopoly we are all paying

How? It doesn't show any costs to me. What it shows is that MS is willing to use its considerable clout to get what it wants politically.

The slave holder gets all tools and income from slaves.

Huh? This says nothing; you're just trying to draw an unjustifiable link between MS and slavery.

Real successes, where states and businesses actually save time money and trouble by bucking M$, will be promote even more challenges.

Agreed. But what does that have to do with the parent post or TFA? It's so obvious that it doesn't need to be stated anyway -- we all know it.

It's funny that consideration of any alternative should be considered a "challenge" but that's they way M$ sees it and acts.

Why is that funny? Any time one of my clients considers using a competitor's product, it's a challenge. Why is it any different for Microsoft?

In all, I'm not surprised to see the same post from you as always -- but I'm also sure you actually have interesting and insightful observations. Why not bother thinking a bit before you post and include them in your comments?