Library of Congress's $3M Deal With Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday February 24, 2008 @08:03AM from the just-haggling-over-the-price dept.

Cory Doctorow sounds the alarm over a Library of Congress deal with Microsoft that will have collections locked up in Silverlight. I'll double the Microsoft deal and offer them $6M in perl scripts and an infinite value of free OS software if they let me (or Google or any other honest company) publish their collections in free formats. "This deal involves the donation of 'technology, services and funding' (e.g., mostly not money) with a purported value of $3M from Microsoft to the Library of Congress. The Library, in turn, agrees to put kiosks running Vista in the library and to use Microsoft Silverlight to 'help power the library's new Web site, www.myloc.gov.'"

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Re:Related by node+3 · 2008-02-24 08:54 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah, I'd be fine with that so long as I can still readily buy Cokes elsewhere, or even if I preferred Pepsi in the first place. What I *wouldn't* be fine with is having to buy a Pepsi-opener in order to view publicly-funded archives of my nation's history (er, to drink the free soda my government is entrusted with preserving for the benefit of all humankind--hey, it was *your* analogy!).