Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Library of Congress's $3M Deal With Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on 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.'"

6 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Locked up? by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can someone explain to me where the term "locked up" applies to this news article? I read the (very brief) article linked to - and didn't see how anything in the library would become 'locked up', which I assume to mean, available only to people using Windows software. Yeah, they're going to accept some 'donations' of OS's and stuff (so Microsoft spends $10 burning a bunch of CDs and calls it a multi-million-dollar donation, with all the relevent tax perks as well - why does the government let them get away with this?) for their new kiosks (which if my experience with Windows kiosks is anything to go by, will be sitting at a blue screen or an empty Windows desktop 50% of the time), but how does this equal anything being 'locked up'?

  2. LOC website = horrible by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As I noted on Slashdot recently, the library of congress website is possibly the most dysfunctional site on the internet. If you ever browse their collections, it's literally impossible to get a permanent URL (which makes it incredibly difficult to copy their public domain stuff to Wikipedia - all the URLs to confirm the copyright status break after an hour) What's even worse, it feels like somebody spent a lot of my taxpayer money to put together something that is functionally useless.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  3. Re:So? by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bad publicity? Like when MS bought HotMail? Replaced the Free Software with their own stuff, and the site failed under the load? Not like this would be the first time, for sure...

  4. Re:Another 50 Years by Moonpie+Madness · · Score: 4, Interesting

    SO TRUE!

    I remember actually going to the library of congress, and they refused to allow me in. Why? Because I didn't actually have anything specific to research... I just wanted to check out what the library had to offer, browse around, read a book or two. Of course I waited five minutes and invented a research topic, but nonetheless it's absurd not to allow me, a taxpayer access to my library.

    Bureaucracy.

  5. Re:Honest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that's an honest question. Google has not been "evil" to the extent that Microsoft has, but it seems like people here give them a free pass. Google benefits from and actively encourages domain parking, which I think most of us agree is one of the sleaziest "businesses" on the web. Again, that's nothing compared to what Microsoft has done, but that doesn't mean it's nothing.

  6. Silverlight and Accessibility by xswl0931 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Silverlight, unlike Flash, is designed with full accessibility support including screen readers.