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Open Source, Open Standards Under Attack In Europe

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-can-take-our-source-but-you'll-never-take-our-freedom dept.

Glyn Moody writes "A battle for the soul of European IT is taking place behind closed doors in Brussels. At stake is the key Digital Agenda for Europe, due to be unveiled in a month's time. David Hammerstein, ex-Member of European Parliament for the Greens, tweeted last week: 'SOS to everyone as sources confirm that Kroes is about to eliminate "open standards" policy from EU digital agenda; Kroes has been under intense lobbying pressure from Microsoft to get rid of interoperability and open source goals of EU.' This is confirmed by the French magazine PC Inpact (Google translation), which also managed to obtain a copy of the draft Digital Agenda (DOC). It's currently supportive of both open source and open standards — but for how much longer?"

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Engineering new jobs by moteyalpha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a point there, what politicians want is a revenue stream to support them. Open source does not provide that. There is an advantage for slaves layman in open source or open technology, as they work less to achieve the same effect with open source, but this is counter to the interests of government. I doubt that anything that people say will be heard as the one common interest all political parties have is to keep the revenue stream and companies that sell products can take money from people and give it to them and in return they support monopolies and those who keep them in power.
    If open source simply established a trust that sold compiled versions of open source software and used the money to <strike>bribe</strike> pay sales tax and place ads, they could possibly supplant Megalosoft..

  2. Re:Desperation? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because they want to make money just like the corporations who will sell the software based on those open standards?

    Apparently by competing with said corporations in the halls of the bureaucrats, rather than in the open market.

    Shame on you, Microsoft. You used to say 'I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this.' Now you're buying governments just like Larry Ellison does.