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

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.

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.