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German Free Software Group asks Gov't Say No to MS
A reader writes "A German free software advocacy group has asked local government officials to halt their agreement with Microsoft to sponsor a new e-commerce center.. The group has made a good arguement, stating that taxpayer dollars are being used to pay for something that can already be obtained for free. The government's current reply is that partnering with Microsoft doesn't preclude involvement from other operating system.
Here is the corrected link
This is it:
Users balk at German state's deal with Microsoft
There's a closing bracket at the end of the address. Remove it to be able to go to the article.
The group are entirely correct that the government is, in effect, subsidising Microsoft in this way, even though naively it looks the other way around.
End corporate welfare! Something both libetarian socialists and libertarian capitalists should agree on :)
Female Prison Rape in NY
It's interesting that Micro$oft is able to sign big contracts with European governments. You'd think Europe would be a little more selective about choosing which elements of American culture to import (along with the required McDonald's French fries and Hollywood movies).
It's good to see that free software advocacy is alive and well in Deutschland.
parallax
Given that MS faces an uncertain future, with the outcome of the DOJ case yet to be decided, I'm actually a bit surprised that any entity as large as a German state would sign any NEW serious agreement with MS right now. Maybe the DOJ case isn't as big news there as here in the US? Power to the protestors!
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Well, given the way everyone around here always whines (rightfully so) about MS's unfair business practices, don't you all think it is a bit unfair for these people to go on and ask the government to halt their agreement with MS, solely because they are Microsoft? I could be wrong, but I wouldn't like it much if it were me.
--- Stampede linux for me! I play with fire to break the ice..
here is a link to FFII
and the Open Letter it's not too long and a good read.
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
German citizens pay their taxes in Deutsche Marken or in Euros, not in dollars.
The German gov't sure is tip-toeing around this one. They don't seem to understand (or maybe the do understand) the power that Microsoft is going assert over this project. Yes, other organizations can (and should) sponsor the project, but they won't have nearly the same financial power when it comes to buying computers, setting up classes, etc.
And 'Linux' won't be able to sponsor this, no matter what the government thinks. Linux isn't a corporation.
You know, given the German response to this (and the other incident mentioned in the article), I'm surprised that such a movement hasn't taken place in the US. Given Microsoft's funding of school computer labs, one might think that similar organizations here (here being the US) would possibly want schools to also look to alternatives. Maybe Apple's a bit more powerful in these situations or perhaps our country just isn't as open to these new ideas as Europe is.
Hmm.
that is look here
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
More than 700 IT users signed the protest letter...
I find this quite funny.
Methinks that Microsoft can't take nearly universal acceptance of it's product by the public for granted anymore!
I like the rational way that they laid this out.
Gov't shouldn't be speding money on stuff that is
available for free. How many other goverment programs feed the evil giant? Can we use a similar attack any of those?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
the article wasn't too descriptive.
a) is it a place to demo e-commerce stuff(lots of silly ads and propaganda)?
b)is it that the gov. is gonna help small business set-up and host their e-comerce sites?
if its option b then that's a cool idea.
either way it's too bad microsoft had to get their grubby hands in it. they just can't leave anything alone can they.
>It doesn't seem right that I should aquire a "bad moderation" record for trying to fix a problem.
On the other hand, if there are redundant posts, there's no reason for readers to read several of them. Does having a low score on a post in any way really affect you overall? My understanding is that at worst, it might trivially affect your odds of getting moderator status.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yes, this is a great position; some sort of government watchdog group would probably be the best place to start... if you're in the US, you could always try here
Be prepared for an uphill battle - most people in power are pro-corporate welfare (which this would be considered..) think of your congressman, his first line of defense would probably be "but we NEED to spend money on this, because it keeps all those citizens employed."
This would probably work better in other countries, where that particular defense wouldn't work... (for you Canadians reading, try The Canadian Taxpayer Federation
Moderators should not punish people attempting to help others. Help is not redundant.
This is absolutely moronic. They ought to have their moderator status revoked.
This is why we have so many moderators, I think; to help curtail any abuse of moderation. I also think it's a failure of the moderator "buzzwords" -- I never considered looking at replies as "Redundant" until they were introduced.
Too many moderators means = greater chance for irresponsibility. They have no respect for their obligation/opportunity.
Oh, please. It seems to be a largely self-correcting situation; when I read the comment it had been moderated back up to 1. So it seems like "Too many moderators = greater chance for fixing mistakes" as well.
Go ahead moderate this down. Squash my opinion. Squelch my voice.
Get over yourself already.
If you really think Slashdot is becoming some kind of oppressive tyranny, then leave. It seems kinda ironic that people are crying censorship after more people have been introduced into the moderation process...
Jay (=
Well, I live in Northrhine Westfalia and I have never heard anything about FFII.. (I heard about the technology center though)
Are there any online information available? Where can I sign the protest letter?
The letter has criticized the agreement because it spends German taxpayer money on products of dubious quality, when there are superior, freely available products which do the same thing. It is true that Microsoft are the most notorious for selling shoddy software products, but they are hardly the only ones. It is the idea that tax dollars (or, rather, Marks) are being spent on inferior, commercial products when better, free (as in speach, and in many cases also as in beer) products are availabe that would cost the taxpayers little or nothing.
There is also a legitimate philosophy against subsidizing industry in general -- there are numerious ethical as well as economic arguments against this kind of thing (it does, I think anyone would agree, severely distort the free market no matter how it is done, and many people rightly think this is a bad thing irrespective of the ethical arguments pro or con). Subsidizing a monopolistic entity, which has caused such havoc in the IT industry in the last decade is to many a particularly perverse and noxious example of this practice.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And as an AC, they won't get it anyway.
>Moderators should not punish people
;-) but for some reason I can't comprehend, I like to read comments at -1 threshold anyway.
Punish? By moderating down? Boy, I gotta figure out how to be a moderator when I grow up so that I can punish people with a mere click of the mouse!
Geez, you'd think a moderator had powers to garnish your wages for making bad posts. If a moderated post is too much of a slap to your ego to bear, you need to get out more.
>Go ahead moderate this down. Squash my opinion. Squelch my voice
If only I could
The orignal post was not as an AC. I suppose the orignal poster logged out to make that comment so he didn't get another strike against him.
Posted by Mary CW:
A number of posts included some incorrect assumptions about how government contracting, esp outside of the US, works.
The idea that government should not support any particular company (ie stand back and let free competition occur) is a peculiarly American idea. Most other nations expect their governments to actively lobby and support favored businessess. This has nothing to do with what business provides the "best" products, and has everything to do with politics and whose hands are in whose pockets.
Germany follows an economic model that favors large, established organizations (business, labor groups, etc.) who avoid direct competition with each other but who instead come to agreements via a closed-door decision process. So Germany knows perfectly well what it's getting with Microsoft; the whole point is to get in bed with companies for the long haul, not for one-time contracts.
The German govmt couldn't care less about the DOJ/MS case. Much of the world doesn't think very highly of American politics; from their perspective, we get all bent out of shape over things that are common practice elsewhere (Presidential affairs, predatory business practices).
kicks ass...mondo was all that wired wanted to be...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
... don't tend to know squat about Linux. (yes, this is a generalization. tough.)
/do/ know how to do it can't get permission and c) the teachers are rather clueless, and thus scared of it.
at a high school I went to, where there are MANY computers, and have been for a long time, the only linux boxen are the servers (well, except for the Solaris one) becasue a) the faculty guy in charge of this knows squat about it and so b) the students who
I think it's more than possible to do. ask at your local hs (mostly) about that, and about helping admin them on a continuing basis, since that is one of the biggest problems. one explanation of why they don't have to just throw out their 386's and can actually run useful software on them (not to mention the lack of expense and the joy of the cs classes) they'll be at least willing to listen.
I'm still working on my old school because this is a great place to promote Linux-awareness. Apple knew what they were doing when they equipped all those schools with computers, and Microsoft does now.
Lea
yeah. but the US is suppose to be short on
programmers. By spending more on commercial
software, you are actually spending money to
bring programmers into the country. If that
made any sense.
Regardless. Cutting spending w/ out cutting
services is what they should be about. How
can they be against that?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Witness the Rote Linux Fraktion marching in lockstep towards their proclaimed goal of total World Domination. Witness the german paramilitary Linux clans harassing fellow citizens for no other reasons than a non-compliant choice of operating systems. Next they will publicly ostracize private enterprises and ordinary users for signing contracts with Microsoft. Nobody is safe anymore. It's like 1938 all over again. Quick, comrades, he has exposed our Master Plan; we must press our agenda quickly so we will be allowed to annex Seattle! Come on. You cannot reasonably compare a group of OS users to Nazis. If a group of people has (ahem!) arguments as to why their government shouldn't enter into an arrangement -- any kind of arrangement, then the government should listen to those arguments.
If Rote Linux Fraktion is anything like it's real life counterpart it certainly won't march in lockstep ;) RAF is/was (there has been no confirmed actions from them for years) an underground organization, and underground organizations are hardly know for their drill excersizes :-)
Does this comment come from an anti-German sentiment? Or fear of history repeating itself? I noticed that 'German' is not capitalized. Is there a reason for that?
Closet racism, maybe?
And, how is this like 1938? What happened in Germany in 1938? A lot of land-grabbing, IIRC.
Are you comparing people who use Microsoft products to the Jews? Or are you comparing Microsoft to Jewish business during that time?
Or, is this simply sarcasm?
I obviously cannot tell. So, please explain yourself, Coward^H^H^H^H^H^Hcoward.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Anyone who finds it necessary to add Nazis to an argument is admiting implicitly that they can not win the argument, and can be safely ignored.
The apeal is to the emotions, not to the brain, on the hope that just comparing anyone to Nazis will give them the ability to say something absurd and still get agreement on some level.
An oxymoron.
Once upon a time, the Great Manager deemed a notoriously slow program so important that he would set three of his top staff members to work on it.
The first employee, a computer engineer, noted that there were too many bad blocks on the disk plus dodgy memory with parity errors, so swapped out the hardw are. And there was some rejoicing.
The second employee, a computer scientist, noted that the algorithm was quartic, and reduced it to one that was merely quadratic. And there was much rejoicing.
The third employee, an in-fo-may-shun pro-fesh-un-null, went down to Radio Shack to find out whether the Great Satan had issued a Win95 Resource Kit he could buy. And there was much invoicing.
>>I once heard that if Gates lost 90% of his total wealth, he'd still be worth about 1 billion US $
;) but it certainly boggles the mind!
...I read somewhere recently that he's up to $100 billion; that'd make it %99 before he' down to a measly(sp?) $1 bil. I can't even comprehend how he's even motivated about money! I mean I understand it intellectually (monomania, etc...or is that moneymania
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
See for example Noam Chomsky, or the Anarcho-Syndicalists in Spain before and during the Spanish Civil War
Since I read it in so many comments here:
We're talking about the government of "Rheinland-Pfalz" here, wich is just a "Bundesland" of Germany, not the whole nation.
Though the plural of "eine Marke" is "Marken", the plural of "eine Mark" is still "Mark". :-)
...)
To make it simple, we say "DM" here in Germany...
(or "Steine", or
You're right. Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder
wants to be everybodys darling. And everybody
is using M$ software.
The european politicians don't have a clue
relating computers and internet.
Just look at the anti-spam petition they have
voted against.
Helu,
The Mexican government is building up every school with tons of Linux boxes to save costs and utilize the mass of free software out there. They have saved their people millions upon millions of dollars by going with Linux as opposed to Microsoft for this project.
From a strictly saving money standpoint, the Germans should go with Linux or at least one of the free BSD variants. As well as from a quality point they should go with the free software and OS's.
Although 'Linux' can't sponsor this e-commerce project, it sure as hell can be a huge part of it that saves everyone money and stays up and runs the way it is supposed to ( unlike the potential crap they will be getting from Microsoft ).
>The idea that government should not support any particular company (ie stand back and let free competition occur) is a peculiarly American idea.
;-)
:-)
m
.69
Is not.
>Much of the world doesn't think very highly of American politics; from their perspective, we get all bent out of shape over things that are common practice elsewhere (Presidential affairs, predatory business practices).
Ok, but its not true for ALL other countries. Yes, most of the world thinks that presidental affairs is a more a matter between the president and his wife (lying about is under oath is worse though), but if you suggest that only Americans get upset over corruption or predatory business practices, think again. In Sweden, Mona Salin, the woman who was supposed to become the new head of the Social Democracy party and therefore probably the next prime minister, was ripped apart by media after using an official credit card to buy private stuff (I think it was diapers and socks or something banal like that) for around $20, even though she had later paid back the money! She resigned from her post and disappeared from politics. (Though she was forgiven after a while and is back now.)
But yes, I have gotten the impression that in southern Europe (France and Italy especially), voters seem to accept corruption quite a lot. This is what has made Scandinavians very sceptic about joining the EU. However, things are moving in the right direction. Remember Edith Cresson (sp?), she was thrown out together with the rest of the European parliament.
But maybe I'm prejudiced as well when accusing southern Europe.
Look what I found on the net. Take a look at this. The lower the number, the more corruption in the country. Guess which country doesn't even make it into the top ten?
Cheers,
Lars
http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/democ/papers/wayne.ht
*****************
Table 1. 1996 Transparency International Corruption Index By Country
Country Corruption Ranking
New Zealand (NZL) 9.43
Denmark (DNK) 9.33
Sweden (SWE) 9.08
Finland (FIN) 9.05
Canada (CAN) 8.96
Norway (NOR) 8.87
Singapore (SGP) 8.80
Switzerland (CHE) 8.76
Netherlands (NLD) 8.71
Australia (AUS) 8.60
Ireland (IRL) 8.45
United Kingdom (GBR) 8.44
Germany (DEU) 8.27
Israel (ISR) 7.71
United States (USA) 7.66
Austria (AUT) 7.59
Japan (JPN) 7.05
Hong Kong (HKS) 7.01
France (FRA) 6.96
Belgium (BEL) 6.84
Chile (CHL) 6.80
Portugal (PRT) 6.53
South Africa (ZAF) 5.68
Poland (POL) 5.57
Czech Republic (CZE) 5.37
Malaysia (MYS) 5.32
South Korea (ROK) 5.02
Greece (GRC) 5.01
Taiwan (TAI) 4.98
Jordan (JOR) 4.89
Hungary (HUN) 4.86
Spain (ESP) 4.31
Turkey (TUR) 3.54
Italy (ITA) 3.42
Argentina (ARG) 3.41
Bolivia (BOL) 3.40
Thailand (THA) 3.33
Mexico (MEX) 3.30
Ecuador (ECU) 3.19
Brazil (BRA) 2.96
Egypt (EGY) 2.84
Colombia (COL) 2.73
Uganda (UGA) 2.71
Philippines (PHL) 2.69
Indonesia (IDN) 2.65
India (IND) 2.63
Russia (RUS) 2.58
Venezuela (VEN) 2.50
Cameroon (CMR) 2.46
China (CHN) 2.43
Bangladesh (BGD) 2.29
Kenya (KEN) 2.21
Pakistan (PAK) 1.00
Nigeria (NGA)
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The artcile talks about a letter to Wolfgang Clement who 'governs' Nordrhein-Westfalen (or northrhein-westfalia) not Rheinland-Pfalz.
Nevertheless you were right about that its just a state... though the one whith the most inhabitants.
Hi.
I live in Germany. Unfortunately, the DOJ case ist not in the news at all.
Microsoft has also has made a contract with Rheinland-Pfalz. They will buy software for eduction puposes. It is sayed, that the value of this Software is much more than 1 million DM. An article about this contract written by the German Magazin c`t can be read there: Auch Rheinland-Pfalz unterschreibt bei Microsoft. Sorry, only in German!
Female Prison Rape in NY
I'm not sure if anybody is reading this, because the thread is rather old alredy, but still....
t
On 06.26.99 and 06.27.99 the maybe biggest european linux exhibition takes place at university of Kaiserslautern. Have a look at : http://www.linuxtag.org/ (I'm sorry, but it's in german only).
And on 06.27.99 at 3 PM there is a public discussion about free software for public use.
Several state officials and even a microsoft employee attend so it promises to be very interesting. http://www.linuxtag.org/presse/Presse:17-06-99.tx
It would be nice to meet many of you in Kaiserslautern.
Matthias