How To Hijack an EU Open Source Strategy Paper 112
Glyn Moody writes "Thanks to the indispensable Wikileaks, we have the opportunity to see how an organization close to Microsoft is attempting to re-write — and hijack — an important European Union open source strategy paper, currently being drawn up. Analyzing before and after versions visible in the document demonstrates how the Association for Competitive Technology, a lobbying group partially funded by Microsoft, is trying to widen the scope of open source to include 'mixed solutions blending open and proprietary code.'" And reader Elektroschock adds some detail on EU processes: "The European Commission lets ACT and CompTIA participate in all working groups of the European Open Source Strategy, which defines Europe's future open source approach. A blue editor questions the objectives: 'Regarding the "Europe Digital Independence" our [working] group thinks it is, in general, not an issue.' 'European digital independence' is a phrase coined by EU Commissioner V. Reding, that is what her European Software Strategy was supposed to be about. She didn't reveal that lobbyists or vendors with vested interests would write the strategy for the Commission."
Groklaw is down, due to coverage of MS vs TomTom? (Score:1, Interesting)
Groklaw (www.groklaw.net) is down, due to coverage of Microsoft vs TomTom? Or, is it just a coincidence?
Re:Could rewrite, EU tries to kick Americans out. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Could rewrite, EU tries to kick Americans out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really.
Outside of Ireland the the UK, Microsoft is simply not as big in Europe as it is in the states. Time and again I have heard the same story. Linux shops and linux systems are simply more common in mainland Europe than Microsoft systems. Which is not to say that Microsoft systems are not there. They're just not there as much.
A lot of this is down to language and cultural barriers. A lot. It is very difficult for American companies to adapt to business on the continent. Going from an environment of 50 states with the same currency, culture and language, to 25 states with different languages, cultures, currencies (less now), and even legal systems is difficult. In North America, it's common for a franchise to expand across the entire continent at a rapid pace. I doubt there even is a franchise across the entire continent of Europe.
But, it's also true that European governments do balk at the idea of an American operating system controlling all of their computers. The English and Irish do not really see this as a problem, but I'm sure that the French view the situation as an anathema. The same goes for products like Oracle. But this is not a new development. These problems have existed for years.
Re:Could rewrite, EU tries to kick Americans out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Money has no homeland.
Microsoft is a multinational, it has employees and shareholders all around the world. The shareholders don't give a fuck about the USA or any other country.
Re:EU should get out of this (Score:3, Interesting)
This is like the EU deciding what oil individuals should use in all their cars.
Your opinion of this would certainly change if you had the choice between buying Shell oil (they get to set all their own prices) and growing/making all the oil you need in your own backyard. You would be screaming about anti-competitiveness, Monopolies, etc..
Re:Could rewrite, EU tries to kick Americans out. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am getting so sick of the Smoot-Harley comments whenever the topic of tariffs comes up. There are issues with protectionist tariffs, but the reason Smoot-Harley was such a disaster is that the tariffs were fixed in dollar per item rather than a percentage of price. During the deflationary spiral of the 1930's, this resulted in the tariff's being as high as 60% of the cost of a tariffed item. Personally, I think we need to have some tariffs so that imported goods carry the same load in our society as domestically produced goods to level the playing field. It does not make sense that domestically produced goods carry a significantly higher tax burden than those produced abroad.
"Open Source" could go the way of "Organic" (Score:4, Interesting)