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.

Comments

Bad Link

[Aaron M. Renn]

Here is the corrected link

MS hope to gain more than they lose

[greenrd]

Obviously. There is no element of charity involved here. Microsoft clearly hopes to get its money back, either directly or indirectly. Steve Ballmer once said quite openly that IE is not "free" (i.e. free beer) because it increases their market share indirectly. (I know, this is completely obvious, but just in case anyone didn't believe it)

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 :)

Re:MS hope to gain more than they lose

[dattaway]

What is the government's email address?

I may be biased, but if there was some cash involved, say some donations, would I be wrong to consider this as corruption?

Link to FFII

[nmarshall]

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

Doesn't preclude what?

[Hrunting]

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.

700 signatures

[Fish Man]

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!

A Model for other complaints about Govt spending?

[slashkitty]

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?

Taxpayers demanding intelligent decision making

[FreeUser]

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.

Re:Alert! Moderator abuse

[Jburkholder]

>Moderators should not punish people

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 ;-) but for some reason I can't comprehend, I like to read comments at -1 threshold anyway.

govmt contracting in general and in Germany

[gavinhall]

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).

Depends on where in Europe

[LarsWestergren]

>The idea that government should not support any particular company (ie stand back and let free competition occur) is a peculiarly American idea.

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.htm
*****************
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) .69