Slashdot Mirror
EU Will Not Divulge Microsoft Contracts
Elektroschock writes "Marco Cappato, a Liberal member of the European Parliament, wanted to inspect the EU's contracts with Microsoft. His request was denied. '...the [divulging] of [this] information could jeopardize the protection of commercial interest of Microsoft.' Apparently the European Council sees no clear public interest in the release of such contractual material, and so 'the Secretariat general concludes that the protection of Microsoft's commercial interests, being one of the commercial partners of the European institutions, prevails on the [divulging] for the public interest.'"
Anything that involves public money and is not a matter of national (or continental, in this case) security should be open to scrutiny.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The idea that governments have rights is absurd. People have rights. The people have delegated certain tasks to government for their own convenience, and have accepted limits on some minimal subset of their rights so that society can best protect the rest. Note that "society" is not the same as "the government"; the government is just a mechanism used by society to accomplish certain specific things.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
It's not in the public interest to know how much public money MSFT is getting and for what? It's a certainty MSFT doesn't want it getting out how much of a discount government agencies are getting, and what other inducements they're tossing in to sweeten the deal. If it gets out gov agencies are paying $50/seat for Windows, every other enterprise customer will want that deal. I'm not sure how keeping that secret is in the public interest...unless they're worried MS will raise the price if it gets out.
If it were up to me...if the taxpayer buys it, the taxpayer owns it. And that would be true for software, or at least for the licenses. Imagine if the federal government could negotiate for government wide enterprise license deals. If the Navy closed a program, they could take the software licenses they don't need and transfer them to the Marines or another gov agency. I always thought it should be that way. What's MS going to do about it? Not sell to the government? Yeah, that would be smart, drive gov adoption of open source.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Rights of governments? The people give rights to the government in order to serve the people, not the paternalistic other way around. Government exists to serve the people. Where do you think the money to pay MS comes from? It's like your dad taking money from your trust fund, giving it to you, then telling you that it is your allowance that you earned! The money is the public's money. We agree to let the government protect us from harm and so we allow state secrets to exist in order that our common enemies do not use that information to avoid detection. Everything else that does not fall into that narrow category should be exposed to sunlight and competition. This is a simple paternalistic monopoly protection scheme for MS.
Almost EVERYTHING governments do is not in the public interest.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This is why Ireland said NO to the Lisbon treaty.
When you see the response of other EU nations,
you can *feel* the arrogance. Not just to the citizens,
but to smaller nations.
The EU is losing touch with basic democratic principles,
especially the concept of Accountability.
They have forgotten that they are servants of the people,
and need to be reminded.
(R)ule in Hell or (S)erve in Heaven [R]?
Really? So the public should be able to view your tax returns?
Couldn't have said it better myself. The mere fact that so many people have a reversed understanding of who works for who when it comes to government is scary.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Yes, good god. Just imagine if players in the market were permitted to know current market rates for specific services. It'd be chaos. It'd be terrible. It'd allow vendors to compete on price for government contracts, and result in government potentially picking a less expensive option for using taxpayer money. Heaven forbid. At least we all know that picking Microsoft is the best possible example for slashdotters of a company that should never be put at a competitive disadvantage!
What really fascinates me is that the people high up in the EU governance food chain think that the business interests of a US company is more important to the citizens of the European Union than information about what their money is being spent on.
That's not the same thing. What he meant by "anything" was "any expenditures". The government should only have income from the taxation of it's citizens. We all "know" it's coming from us, so tax returns do not have to be disclosed to everyone.
ALL expenditures not DIRECTLY related to national security MUST be open to scrutiny. To do otherwise invites corruption into the system.