Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access To Free Software

walterbyrd writes: Fresh on the heels of the entire Munich and Linux debacle, another story involving Microsoft and free software has popped up across the world, in Chile. A prolific magazine from the South American country says that the powerful Microsoft lobby managed to turn around a law that would allow the authorities to use free software. "An independent member of the Chilean Parliament, Vlado Mirosevic, pushed a bill that would allow the state to consider free software when the authorities needed to purchase or renew licenses. ... A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted. To make things even more interesting, some of the people who voted in favor of the first law also voted in favor of the second one. ... The new bill is even more egregious, because it aggressively pushes for the adoption of proprietary software. Companies that choose to use proprietary software will receive certain tax breaks, which makes it very hard for free software to get adopted."

Comments

Re:Easy to lobby when funded by the taxpayer

[i kan reed]

You know, screw your libertarian paranoid fantasies. Just fuck them right in the ass. We have an entire, rather expensive department of our government purposefully dedicated to meddling in the affairs of other nations(the State department), and several others that join in on the fun(The CIA, Energy, NSA, not to mention "Defense").

But you're worried that somehow there's been this specific misallocation of public funds to help Microsoft lobby, as if they don't have plenty of profits to put towards that end in-and-of themselves. And you can't even go as far as alleging a mechanism. You just go straight to "out to get me".

Get off the conspiracy train. There isn't some collusion of various actors to maximize how much you(or Chile) is screwed over. That only exists in your head.

Lincoln to the rescue

[Tablizer]

Just start a company that charges $0.01 for each OSS title.

PS. Please Diecrosoft