Windows 2000 to be banned in Germany?

tjansen writes "The German Site Heise reports in this article that Windows 2000 may be banned in Germany. The reason is the included deframentation software Diskeeper that is written by the Scientology-owned company Executive Software. Many state agencies and companies have policies that they are not allowed to use services from a company that is related to Scientology. " A good number of you will probably need to use The Babelfish.Update: 12/03 11:28 by H :Check out the English translation.

Comments

Good old Bablefish

[kmcardle]

The connection between the Psycho company and the software giant is sparkling wine assigning of the large churches a thorn in the eye.

Ah. Good. Things are much clearer now.

Redmond will quickly work around this one by removing the offending program. Good thing the guys didn't write IE 4.0. The Germans never would have gotten win98. :)

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Re:Good old Bablefish

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, actually, the translation isn't all that bad. The original German used the word `Sektenbeauftragten'. `Sekt', as you may or may not know, is a sparkling white wine. But `Sekte' is used for sect. And a `Sektenbeauftragter' is a person assigned with studying sects, not an assignment of sparkling white wine... ;)

In a way, this isn't surprising

[jd]

If Germany makes a law, or passes a ruling, it does at least stick to it, through thick or thin. We've seen that with Compuserve, and other interesting episodes.

This -could- be interesting, though, as Microsoft is likely to drop support for ALL other versions of Windows, in order to force people to upgrade.

If Windows 2000 is banned, even if only in Government departments, that will essentially force the de-Microsofting of the German Government. And that could spell some interesting times for *BSD and Linux vendors.

They are serious...

[zorgon]

I'm not too sure about that article (Babelfish implied that the spokesman was the Catholic church's official in charge of sparkling wine, which I think would be a pretty cool job actually, Dominus vobiscum), but the German federal government is really serious about Scientology. If I'm not mistaken the legal sanctions being imposed against Scientology are pretty much the same as those being used to suppress Nazism... it would not surprise me if the German government goes toe-to-toe with Microsoft over this one if it proves correct.
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Re:It's a "Bann", not a "Verbot"

[jw3]

You are wrong: they also quote an official from the Innenministerium, the ministry for internal affairs, section devoted to Scientology. And the "bann" in this context meanst that it would not be used by public offices - and this does not have to do anything with the church.

Regards,

January

P.S. No, I'm not using babelfish. I just speak German and live in Germany.

Is the "Natalie Portman" AC from the Co$?

[Get Behind the Mule]

The Co$ has a history of attempting to disrupt online discussions about them, if they are likely to be critical of the "Church". The Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology is legendary for this.

So I wonder if this loon with the "Natalie Portman" posts has been hatted to disrupt Slashdot?

Translation of German news text

[harmonica]

Everything in [] are my comments to explain things. Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth! ;-)
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Windows 2000 threatened by ban

One component of the Windows 2000 software is coming from a Scientology enterprise. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" is going to be released in February as integral part of the
NT successor. It was developed by Executive Software, an enterprise belonging to the confessing scientologist Craig Jensen, as C't magazine reports in issue 25/99. The connection
between Scientology and the software giant is not liked by the Sektenbeauftragter (person responsible to review the activities of sects) of the large churches.

"This is going to interest not only the Catholic church but also the Bundesländer (states ), the Verfassungsschutz (government institution that supervises activities that are against the German constitution) and the German industry", comments
Harald Baer, Catholic representative for sects and philosophy of life [that's a straight translation] in response to DPA [a news agency].

According to Ursula Caberta, who leads the study group Scientology of Hamburg's Innenbehoerde [an institution of the City of Hamburg], Executive Software belongs to the leading enterprises of the Scientology organization WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE, according to Caberta, "is the crucial arm of Scientology to infiltrate and spy on trade and industry". In Bayern and Hamburg [German states, Hamburg is a city state] there are laws that forbid public institutions, especially on the information technology sector, to buy services from Scientology enterprises.

Reasonable assessment of threat not paranoia

[FreeUser]

The Germans are concerned about Scientology's well documented track record for

- suppressing free speach through legal intimidation
- violating people's privacy through various means, legal and otherwise
- efforts to gain positions of trust and power
- willingness to use such positions to promote their own corporate ... ah, religious ... goals

They are concerned that Scientology is engaged in a power grab of titanic proportions which poses a direct threat to their democracy, which the above pattern of behavior appears to underscore rather clearly. Having a corporation controlled by Scientologists in turn controlling a critical peice of software (such as, say, an integral component of an operating system running on 95% of all PCs) is, they feel, a grave concern.

OTOH if a scientologist contributes to Linux, the code is under the GPL. This takes control away from the Scientologists and puts it in the hands of the user. I doubt the German government would have any problem with that, though I suspect the hypothetical Scientologist contributing software of this kind might face immediate excommunication for giving away "intellectual" property which could have belonged to The Church. :-) (one must use a very liberal definition of intellectual to include anything written by Hubbard. Talk about horrible science fiction!).