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

pathetic

[__aalwyc6372]

i really wonder, why microsoft even cares? they got billions anyways!

Re:Your rights end on conviction.

[Achromatic1978]

You failed to read the rest of the article. THE FINDING WAS OVERTURNED ON APPEAL. In the eyes of the law, it never existed.

If you are found guilty of a crime, appeal and are found not guilty, are you still 'found guilty'?

Re:Your rights end on conviction.

[dedazo]

Sometimes I'd like to think about what it would be if a GPL case had gone to trial and the judge had conducted himself in the way Jackson did with Microsoft. Oh yeah, the GPL "apologists" would be coming out of the woodwork to point out that the trial was bogus because the judge was an asshole who got on Oprah to discuss the finer points of the case. But of course this as applied to Microsoft is just an inconvenient detail better swept under the rug.

A Microsoft "apologist" would be contesting the fact that Microsoft abused its monopoly. So far I've seen requests for you to prove that Microsoft was "convicted" of something, which I haven't really seen. But hey, it always helps to get in the quippy about how you're unfairly being targeted by people with different opinions about issues than yours.