News & Commentary

Microsoft to lobby US Govt.? Part III
Submitted by J.W. Bizzaro; posted on Thursday, August 15, 2002

Is Microsoft going to lobby the US Government to prevent the use of GNU-licensed software in publicly funded projects? That was the question I proposed in the first news item about this, back in February of 2001. But it's not a question anymore. Yes, they are and have been. Here's a News.com article about it, by Matthew Broersma:

``Microsoft and other software companies are ramping up a lobbying effort that aims to convince governments to think again about adopting open-source software.

``The Initiative for Software Choice, which launched quietly in early May, is chaired by an industry body called the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), but its biggest software industry backer is Microsoft. Other supporters include Intel and software industry groups from countries in Europe and elsewhere.
[...]
``While Software Choice's principles rarely mention open-source initiatives directly, they include a provision that governments should promote a `broad availability' of the results of publicly funded research by making sure these results are kept clear of such open-source licenses as the GNU General Public License (GPL), used by Linux.

```When public funds are used to support software research and development, the innovations that result from this work should be licensed in ways that take into account both the desirability of broadly sharing those advances as well as the desirability of applying those advances to commercialized products,' the group stated.
[...]
``Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said that Software Choice's policies are a deceptive campaign designed to lock open source out of the public sector. `Their policies are written to maintain an unfair bias for proprietary software in the market,' Perens wrote on the Web site Sincere Choice, which he created to oppose Software Choice's lobbying efforts.''

Full story:
[link]

Sincere Choice:
http://www.sincerechoice.org/

Part I: [link]
Part II: [link]

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