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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
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.
Lobbying is a legal occupation that pays somewhere in the high-6-figure to low-7-figure range. Bribery and extortion are crimes that often result in prison time and heavy fines. Other than that, there's not much difference.
My blog
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.
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
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.
This is rather like the difference between the numbers games run by the mob, and a state lottery.
The mob corrupts the public by offering games of chance. The state lottery corrupts and fleeces the public by offering games of chance with much worse odds than your neighborhood numbers runner. Of course the states have to make running numbers illegal -- it undercuts their product.
Lobbying is theoretically not like bribery at all. You aren't supposed to give quid pro quos. You just give public servants the benefits of your opinion. You can, in a completely "unrelated" way give modest donations to the candidates who listen to you.
Which is where campaign finance reform comes in.
To understand this connection, you have to separate the role of money in campaigns from the influence of money. Candidates use money to get their message out. Money in politics is a good thing. The problem is the influence of money. Some pigs are not supposed to be more equal than others. Just because I donated $1000, I shouldn't be more worth listening to than some other citizen. So while money in politics is a good thing, the influence of money in politics is a bad thing.
The problem is you cannot get rid of the influence of money by choking off the money supply. In fact you end up throwing out the baby and keeping the bath water. What happens is by the process of elementary economics is that the marginal value of the next dollar becomes much greater. It ensures that obtaining more money is the highest priority of any candidate.
That's pernicious effect #1. Pernicious effect #2 is that while the price political influence is now at all time low in real dollars, campaign finance reform makes the process of moving dollars to where they are needed awkward. Far from favoring the average citizen, it means that highly professional organizations which do influence peddling on an industrial scale are favored.
And, like the state lottery, their competition is illegal. You as a citizen can't walk up to your elected representative and pay him an honest buck to do you a favor. You have to use lobbyists, who don't exactly pay him a buck so much as get rid of a buck's worth of headache for him.
Now, if you want to get rid of the influence of money, there's really only one way to do it. Matching funds. This is not just public funding -- which does not work. In public funding, Candidate A agrees to take public funds and in return limits his spending. This means Candidate B has an incentive to opt out, then raise and spend an unconscionable amount of money. This gives him a clear advantage over A that A cannot match. We can see the uselessness of public funding, which also turns out to increase the marginal value of the next donation dollar. You want your sucker opponents to starve to death on public funding while you feast on special interest donations.
Matching funds works like this. Candidate A raises $500 million dollars to run for president. The United States Treasury cuts a check to the campaign funds of Candidate's B and C, in the amount of $500 million. Except that it will never happen. Nobody will bother taking the time to raise $500 million when their competitors can spend their time on more worthwhile things, and collect their check at the end of the day.
But of course, that would be like the states closing down their lotteries and letting their citizens run a legal numbers game.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.