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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.
This just proves how much of a threat MS perceives OO.o and other open source projects.
Make a conscious decision to move away from Microsoft technologies, at whatever levels of personal cost you can accept.
Buy Linux. Buy a Mac.
Getting on Slashdot and whining about this crap is goofy if you're posting from IE, running XP or Vista, running MS Office; and especially stupid if your a corporate decision maker that hasn't at least spend a good amount of time figuring out if you can migrate from MS.
MS's business practices are bad. They're rotten to the core, and that's been proven over and over again. Don't do business with them; take it elsewhere.
It's really not impossible; major corporations have made the jump before, and we're building a first class IT infrastructure that will be MS-free end-to-end.
Stop whinning. Make a decision. Vote with your $$$, and whenever you have a choice don't buy MS.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I like the nice, thinly veiled reference to campaign fundraising that was made.
So what's taking so long with election reform again?
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
The last comment about companies which have a vested interest (and let me add Google) in people adopting an open standard is very pertinent.
What do we expect Microsoft to do? Document standards, in my opinion, are the lynch pin of their entire dominance. Move to open file standards and they are in deep trouble.
Those companies who want to end that dominance need to step up to the plate. Microsoft has a right to withhold campaign funding. They have a right to lobby. But so do their opponents.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
It doesn't matter what the rules are, or how many foolish insinuations you can make about your enemies' dress codes, if your legislative process lets you put stuff in without anybody knowing about it.
"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."
When you're done hooking up your home computers with free software, make sure you notify your elected representatives that you know what bribes look like
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I've read the wikipedia article and such, but I still don't see how lobbying is any different than bribery and extortion.
Is lobbying just a superset of both those things?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
That is all that matters. Corporations shouldn't have rights, so I don't give a shit about what Microsoft's 'rights' are. Corporations have their special privledges because these privledges are supposed to impart more value to the citizens of this nation. When a corporation uses its privledges to profit at the expense of the people, they should be punished.
Of course, Microsoft is one of the few American companies that still produces things for export...the government is always going to give them special treatment.
Blar.
According to the article...
"Rep. Homan and his son Doug tried to add their little open standards boost to SB 1974 as quietly as possible. They wanted the modified bill to at least get through its first committee approval before anyone spotted what they had done."
Doesn't exactly strike me as an open or up front method of passing legislation.
So you see the absurd effort M$ must make to continue it's format monopoly. You can imagine they monitor all state legislators and are ready to send in people like this every time. Because there is such a huge performance and cost difference between M$ and their competitor's products, the "men in black" are going to be very busy.
The only person who has to be more vigilant than a free man is a slave owner.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The organizations with the money want the political influence.
The people with the political influence want the money.
Neither of those groups include the average person.
This is exactly the reason that lobbyists should not be allowed any direct contact with politicians or their staff. Imagine if they had to submit peer reviewed research/arguments for every proposal.
Of course the MPAA/RIAA would prove that it would promote piracy, Microsoft would prove that it would encourage the use of closed standards and piracy, and the FBI would say that it would make fighting terrorism and child pornography more difficult.
"That's a nice little slush fund you have there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."
-- Will program for bandwidth
Sure, MS uses all kinds of ethically suspect business practices. But if we were all to buy a mac today and continue to use proprietary formats for our data we'd have accomplished absolutely nothing.
I don't think which OS you use is nearly as important as what formats you use. If we could convince our friends and colleagues that closed formats were unacceptable, and collectively send that message to MS (and Apple, and ...), then things would change. I don't care what OS you use, but it is incredibly aggravating that for no better reason than social inertia I almost have to use .doc formats for my own ideas, at least if I want to share them with my supervisor, journal editors, etc. But once we reject undocumented, closed formats, I don't care what OS and applications you use. If you choose to edit your XML based document in MSWord, that's fine, so long as I can choose to edit that same document in OOo, Abiword, Emacs, ed, awk or whatever else.
'course, if we agreed to use only open formats, then MS would have to start competing on new features rather than the inconvenience of switching to other systems. But you never know, they might be capable of a few good ideas if we force the issue. That's the real point - not to eliminate MS, but to make them serve the needs of their customers, rather than imposing their will on their customers, and everyone their customers interact with.
yp.
This just proves how much of a threat MS perceives OO.o and other open source projects.
It also shows the costs of maintaining the monopoly we are all paying. The slave holder gets all tools and income from slaves.
It's a death spiral for M$. The harder they try, the more expensive the monopoly becomes the more people will want to escape. News of this "success" will quickly turn into dozens of challenges. Real successes, where states and businesses actually save time money and trouble by bucking M$, will be promote even more challenges.
It's funny that consideration of any alternative should be considered a "challenge" but that's they way M$ sees it and acts. Kudoos to you, Peter Quinn! The M$ monopoly is on the way out.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
my suit's black you insensitive clods >:(
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Microsoft must win every one of these battles. Let any reasonably sized enterprise outside of Sun/IBM, or governmental entity show that they can use OOS successfully and they'll become an example showing Microsoft's lies. It's a Whack-a-Mole game for MS, and sooner or later they'll miss one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I thought Bill already tried and failed. :)
(Yes, yes, I know, you mean some distry... It just HAD to be said!)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is Slashdot, so Microsoft will get crucified here for sure, but they are a BUSINESS, and they are working to protect their business. Every shareholder of every company wants management of that company to protect their business. It is their duty to the shareholders.
The people who should be receiving scorn are the CAREER POLITICIANS who write legislation in exchange for corporate dollars. Substitute any big corporate interest for Microsoft (Tobacco, Oil, Autos....etc) and you will see that Microsoft is not the only company that engages in these shenanigans.
Sure bitch and whine about Microsoft and how evil they are....you don't have to buy their products.
I would much rather bitch and whine about elected officials that are not doing the jobs they were elected to do.
If they take corporate money - vote the fuckers out.
-ted
Watch out, Texas is next -- I hope one of the news agencies pick this up, somebody call 60 Minutes (a CBS TV show). http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History. aspx?LegSess=80R&Bill=SB446
Here in Colorado, we passed an amendment 41 recently. Roughly, it prevents money from changing hands between lobbyists and (state congress|state employees). What I find interesting is how many congressmen are fighting this. In particular, it is the dems that are most upset. I think that an updated version of 41 is needed for ALL states and then finally at a federal level. But this does not go far enough.
Joel Hefley was a Colorado congressman who was on the house ethics committee. He was responsible for pushing the ethics committee to go after Delay for his numerous abuses. In turn the republicans booted him out. After having spent many years on the group, he came back that the only way to stop all of this is to move to public Financing of campaigns. Then ALL money would be prevented from moving from ANYBODY to a congressman. Many will fight this, and will claim that it violates their first amendment rights. But every time we have put limits on money flow to congressman, it has been approved by SCOTUS. IOW, it would probably pass muster. This would have a nice benefit in that we would get to see how politicians run a campaign on a limited amount of resources. If they fail at it, then we do not want them. They will prove that they are incapable of running a state|country. This would also stop these kind of wil situations where a companies needs are put above the states or even the countries. This is the cheapest way to get back our gov.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here come the Men in Black
Monopoly Defenders
Here come the Men in Black
Cash your party members
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Those companies who want to end that dominance need to step up to the plate.
They have, of course. Netscape, IBM, Sun, Google, Caldera, Red Hat, Novel, and many others have and are doing everything any company should be expected to do. They are producing superior alternatives and offering them at a fair price. It is only because of M$'s abusive anti-trust activities that their sub standard software "dominates" government and business data transactions. In response to M$'s many abusive practices, many of these companies have gone further than they naturally should. Sun has fostered and supports an entire alternative Office Suite, which is M$'s big money earner, as free software and spends real money reverse engineering M$'s dirty tricks. The result is competitive on both features and cost. When M$ blocks this natural competition by legislative tampering, we all lose the benefits of a free market.
The size of those losses is the size of Bill Gates' fortune and the pile of money his company sits on. The cost of all the dirty tricks is rolled up in the billion dollars a month they spend on "marketing." Every dollar they spend comes out of your hide. It's part of the cost of everything you buy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Unfortunately, I have to deal with journal editors who require 'word processing' documents, preferably .doc format. I'm not sure why exactly, as they must convert it to something more robust before it gets sent for printing, but at the submission stage it has to be .doc. And my supervisor and several other professional contacts use the 'track changes' option in Word for their comments, which doesn't seem to work with OOo. Thankfully my thesis can be submitted as pdf, so my supervisor is going to have to deal with pdf|rtf|tex for final revisions. She actually prefers to read left-justified double-spaced word documents over tex-formatted pdf output. I think it's a form of 'Stockholm Syndrome'.
As soon as I graduate, and move a step up from the bottom of the academic ladder, it will be time for some aggressive advocacy in favour of at least .odf, if not .tex, for document exchange. Sadly, as a grad student if you don't follow the rules you don't graduate...
yp.
"This is a situation that validates the failure in our constitution and the degradation of political system. Lobbyists should not be allowed in government for a company that has a monopoly on a market. If Microsoft wants to have the governments use Microsoft products, they should donate them to the government and get a tax writeoff for it. I should not have to pay taxes so government employees can use substandard expensive software."
... what was the hilarious position of Citizens Against Government Waste (*against open formats in Massachussets)?
I forget
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The parent wasn't talking about saving money, he was talking about voting with dollars. Well, if don't buy Linux or a Mac, you're not voting with your dollars.
You have to either buy Linux (over-the-counter box) or a Mac in order to not only lower the revenues of Microsoft, but also increase the cash-counted installed userbase, which seems to be the only things "serious/public" statistics check for. Browsers stats means absolutely nothing (so many variables that it's not even valid as a statistic).
Any job ad I post includes the phrase "Word documents will be discarded unread".
I live in Florida and this infuriates me! I DO NOT want MS bossing around my legislators. So a call to action for those who care about this. Write a letter to the Representative Ed Homan. Feel free to copy my template.
Capitol Office:
317 House Office Building
402 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300
Phone: (850) 488-3087
District Office:
Suite 311
9385 N. 56th Street
Temple Terrace, FL 33617-5505
Phone: (813) 983-3330
Legislative Assistant:
Janet Roder
District Secretary:
Paula Tonelli
Representative Ed Homan,
I am writing to express my extreme displeasure with the recent successful lobbying efforts by Microsoft regarding Senate Bill 1974. As a tax payer of this state I am disgusted that the Congress of this state would cave to the wants and desires of a monopolistic company who have no intentions of serving the people or the state but only seek to increase their already enormous financial wealth. I am huge proponent of open standards and open software. The prospect of having open source software running on government computers is highly desirable. Millions of tax payer dollars could be saved by switching to free operating systems such as Ubuntu Linux (www.ubuntu.com) and switching to free office solutions like OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org). If Microsoft wants to have the governments use Microsoft products, they should donate them to the government and get a tax write off for it. I should not have to pay taxes so government employees can use substandard expensive software. When large monopolistic corporations send lobbyists to ensure the will of the Microsoft is fulfilled I should be able to have faith that my Congress will represent me accurately and realize the lies and untruths these lobbyists are spreading about open source software. Please consider ratifying the bill and rewriting it to embrace open standards and open source software. Thank you.
I suggest "Tinyflaccid" as an alternative nickname for Microsoft. It's one I'm sure the Tinyflaccid fanboys can empathize with.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Doesn't exactly strike me as an open or up front method of passing legislation.
Advertising changes to a bill before you add them is not a common method of modifying bills. The process is as open as can be because everyone will get a chance to comment on it later. What's under the table is threatenting legislators to make sure the item is never talked about.
After what happened to Peter J. Quinn, everyone has every right to fear the Men in Black. In that case they:
What policy was that? you might ask. It was simply to use a cheaper, more reliable and more open alternative to M$ Office. Peter Quinn was crucified for thinking his state could save money and have their documents available in digital form 100 year from now if they simply moved away from the M$ domination. For this correct assertion, his reputation and career were damaged.
M$'s efforts are both civil and criminal violation and those responsible should be held accountable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Microsoft is not just any old self serving company. There is a full spectrum of bad corporate behavior and
Microsoft is way over toward the end where market control by indirect means (political and otherwise)
dominates over competitive service and products. Additionally the service that they are controlling is vital
to national security and indirectly to an increasing number of quality-of-life services.
Unfortunately many would argue that their products and services are superior. As Microsoft reaches deeper
and deeper into our pockets and lives many more will be inclined to argue on Microsoft's behalf rather than admit what
they have allowed Microsoft to do to them.
The ultimate solution is as you indicate: If at all possible don't buy their products. It seems to be the
only remaining type of voting that almost matters. Unfortunately, at this point in time,
the file formats for Microsoft products are not sufficiently readable by any other product to make
them a reliable substitute in today's business environment. Open Office is a great product but
the file format issue will eventually kill it unless these battles can be won.
"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.'
OK. But when looking at the disputed text of this legislation as shown on the linked article, it would seem that anyone believing this ODF=proprietary MS=open hullubaloo, would also believe that this MS=open should be compatible with that same text, and not see a reason to change it.
One would hope that politicians being told that MS's format is the most open one, and also being told that MS wants this "open format" legislation text removed, would notice some degree of conflict between the two things. If you want me to believe you're the open guy, then why do you also want the open text removed from the legislation? Hmmm...
This is another Microsoft (help I'm bleeding money) tactic. Recently Microsoft proclaimed it will end support for XP on January 31st 2008; this, a quick decisive 'squeeze as much blood out of the turnip before the turnip dries up' tactic which will keep money streaming in for Microsoft a little while longer: people will run out and buy whatever they need to keep on Microsoft-ing away.
Taken into consideration with this article on Florida bureaucracy out-bureaucracy-afied by Microsoft henchman.
And what of the empires (that'd be Microsoft) attempts in California? What about Texas and Minnesota-- Microsoft is there too?
Are our public (synonymous with open standard) bureaucrats bureaucratic enough to represent us and what is good for America?
Politicians/Bureaucrats are blind to the monopolistic efforts carried out by Microsoft -- maybe its time we elected some 'Slash dot-ers.'
Seriously, though, you are correct that the legislature is culpable for being influenced in this way. No individual nor any corporation has any business running the Government, which is what this kind of stick/carrot lobbying amounts to, and no government employee (including public officials) has any business deferring matters of state to those individuals or corporations.
Microsoft does indeed have its own interests at heart, though one might quibble over whether protecting file standards is helpful or harmful to them. In the long run, lockins poison the vendors as much they do the consumer. It is also debatable as to what they may lawfully lobby for, given they are a convicted monopolist. (They don't have to agree with the decision, but they still have an obligation to abide by it. It is not for Microsoft to determine the law.)
However, ultimately nobody made the officials take what amount to bribes. Nobody held a gun to their head, although politicians probably have a hard time distinguishing immediate physical danger from a loss of election funds. I truly hope that there is a thorough investigation as to what was said and what was done by whom, and that those public officials found guilty of violating the ethical standards required of them are removed from office. In the end, as much as I dislike Microsoft's role in all this, and as much as I like to diss Microsoft for their conduct at times, this is ultimately not a tale of Microsoft's operations but a tale of corruption and manoevering in assorted halls of power. There are millions of companies no better than Microsoft and many are probably worse. The only common denominator, the only place you can throttle back on will-legislate-for-cash mindsets, is within the political system itself. You still need to fix the flaws in corporate politics, but one major scandal at a time, please.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How the hell is this insightful? It's even a blatant lie. Microsoft WAS convicted, even if they weren't punished: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit019.html
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
What a confused and insulting post. It does not take long for the Microsoft Defenders to act, does it?
s/b: The harder they try, the more extensive the monopoly becomes the more people will be unable to escape.
You can't expand a monopoly, you can only lose it.
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.
Microsoft spends about a billion dollars a month in marketing and dirty tricks like this. These three "Men in Black" are part of that, according to the article, costing a minimum of $100,000 in Florida alone. You pay for it everytime you purchase something from someone who's passed their M$ costs along to you. Slavery is one of the names used for situations where you have to pay and you have no choice due to fraud and force others have used.
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". ... 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?
My message is as constant as reality, try arguing with something of substance rather than my supposed writing style, history or personality. You can't really, because there is little of substance behind M$. The people of Florida will be better off with Open Formats but M$'s dirty tricks would keep them from even discussing the issue. This is a game M$ can't really win.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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.
If we're going to allow campaign contributions, is there a possible way to seperate the money from any sense of obligation to the donor? Some organization should be set up to collect campaign contributions and distribute them to the campaigners with the money having since been cleansed of any information as to who gave it or why. Donors would get a receipt that they gave money to a political campaign for tax return purposes, but should not have proof of which campaign so they couldn't take their receipt to the campaigner and ask for something in return.
Doing things in return for possible future contributions should be a red flag anyway. If you need all that money to win an election, and can't win without it, maybe you're just the wrong guy for the job, especially if you already have it. Anyone who voted against this text for the reason of future campaign contributions should be fired immediately.
OK, if no one outside this organization can know how much money goes where there's chance that people inside could divert things to the wrong campaigns and no one outside would know or have proof. But I would like to remove the idea of obligation in return for "contributions" in politics.
Maybe a system where each campaigner gets an equal amount of money from a generic contribution pool would be more fair. Maybe not. What about other ideas?
why does being a business mean you can be unethical? That single notion which is apparently accepted by many people is the source of a tremendous amount of harm in the world.
David Welch was fired in 2002. Twice the legal system ruled that he was protected by whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley laws, and should be given his job back. He was still unemployed in October 2006, I'm betting he still hasn't got his job back. Only a fucking idiot trusts in the legal system to protect his free speech rights in a timely fashion.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So.....like a political party?
This is not about helping OOo. There is no reason for MS to do anything to help OOo. But if we let the argument get reframed into a MSword vs OOwriter debate we miss the larger picture.
The big picture issue here is maintaining access to our own data. My thesis, in .tex format, could be read by any editor from the past three decades. .doc didn't exist 30 years ago, and even over the timespan when it did there's not guarantee that documents are forward and backward compatible. There's every reason to expect that a .doc file written today will be totally unreadable by any editor available in 30 years time. My .tex file will read just fine.
The point is it's in our best interest to use open formats. MS gets the job done *today*, but at the cost of placing our trust in a notably untrustworthy company. If they change the format they force us all to upgrade to maintain the ability to freely access and exchange our data with each other. MS can choose to change the rules at any time. Or they could just get out of the wordprocessing business altogether, leaving us high and dry.
The fact that 90% of the world currently uses .doc format for exchanging formatted text doesn't preclude improving on that model. I'm not demanding that we all switch to .tex format now, although that would be most convenient for me. I am demanding that we put all public data into a publicly available format. It is a very bad idea to let ourselves stockpile large volumes of information in formats that we don't control. Granted, there is no compelling moral reason to impose this on private individuals, although it would be in their best interest as well in the long run.
Your car analogy is flawed, as they usually are. Proprietary document formats are like books that can only be read when sitting in an approved chair, or under a special light. That may be marginally acceptable when the chair or light is ubiquitous, but it is ultimately an unnecessary restriction. There are better alternatives, so why should we accept such arbitrary limits?
The .doc format isn't really the issue here, it just becomes a target because it is the main obstacle in returning to a situation where we control our own data.
yp.
Your argument falls apart the minute you say that you don't have to buy their product.
.doc files, they do not always translate and read 100% perfectly on microsoft software, and so you usually have to use MS Office to check it before sending it in to make sure it shows right, or risk fines or other government penalties.
Because you do.
You work for the government? You get stuck on microsoft office. You want to turn in a document to the government? Most require that it be in a word format.
While open office can do
As long as microsoft strongarms business and the government, you don't have a choice. And that is why this is such a big deal.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Okay, here ya go. It's the "Conclusions of Law" in the United States vs Microsoft case. Quoting from the Orders:
Happy now? (No, didn't think so.)
-- Alastair