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Leaked Letter — BSA Pressures Europe To Kill Open Standards

Posted by Soulskill on from the open-and-shut-investigation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Business Software Alliance is trying to kill open standards. Free Software Foundation Europe has gotten hold of a letter in which the BSA tries to bully the European Commission into removing the last traces of support for open standards from its IT recommendations to the public sector. FSFE published the BSA's letter (PDF), and picked apart its arguments one by one."

2 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Hope by should_be_linear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lets hope their letter is already correctly tagged "-1 Troll" in EU parliament. Actually BSA has positive side-effect in Europe. Many people, like me, entered politics thanks to assholes like them. I joined Green Party to fight this scum and actually find out that IT-aware "departments" of political parties are quite small, so few informed people can influence not only party politics but also government (if/when that party is in government). Look at German greens, there popularity is skyrocketing. I bet quite few percent are young people pissed by Internet and free SW restricting lobbyist groups. Especially BSA.

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  2. Re:Concern Troll is a Troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ah yes, you're not advocating OOXML, you're just suggesting that unencumbered document formats are an IBM conspiracy. And oh how you wish there was a better way than RAND! But there isn't, so the best thing for us to do is sign licensing agreements with Novell, Oracle, and Microsoft.

    Since it's all too unreasonable to comment on, just address one point: Categorically deny that you are being paid for this PR campaign, and that your posts and the the obscene moderation thereof are part of said campaign (not that I have any hope for an honest answer).

    A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user claims to hold. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.