Ms Has Free Software Removed From U.n. Paper

[BWF89]

References to free software and Linux were removed from a UN document after Microsoft claimed that such software aims to 'make it impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product'

Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week's UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, the software giant admitted on Friday.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is unhappy that the document was changed and claims that even though it was on the panel discussing the document, it was not made aware of Microsoft's changes.

The document, known as the Vienna Conclusions, discusses issues around IT and creativity. The original draft of the document discussed how the free software model is changing the way people do business.

"Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example," stated the original document, according to the FSFE.

But the final version of the document contains no reference to free software. "Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents," states the final version of the document.

Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, asked for this section to be deleted as "it contains only a one-sided perspective on the ICT industry."

"The rationale for this is, that the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product," he added.

Lutz' comments were posted on a conference blog, but Georg Greve, the president of FSFE, who was involved in drafting that section of the document, claims that no-one on his panel was aware of the blog until last week.

Greve criticised Lutz' comments as "Microsoft propaganda".

"This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets — which is what Free Software really aims at," he said, on his blog.

But on Friday Lutz denied that the panel was unaware of these changes and confirmed that his blog postings are accurate.

"The Vienna Conclusions document was created through a democratic feedback process as requested by the committee and stated on the committee blog. Each and every participant of the conference was invited to publish contributions, share feedback and offer changes which facilitated discussion and an open exchange of positions," he told ZDNet UK. "All of our change requests were approved by the committee."

This is not the only change to the document that Microsoft brought about. In a later section of the same document, Lutz asked that a reference to the open source operating system Linux be removed as "this is only one particular — anti-commercial — specificity of the open source landscape."

Microsoft appears to have been stepping up its fight against Linux recently, with comments about open source 'dorks' and claims that Africa does not need free software.

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/11/25/1...tid=106&tid=219
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix...39238443,00.htm

 

[Rico]

What a fucking troll. We all know that free software can be sold, and services can easily be sold on top of it, and it is a viable business practise that it going on right now. The fact that a corporation like Microsoft can so easily have the paper rewritten to remove an entire section of software from it, as if it doesn't exist, is ridiculous.

 

[Jarska333]

They are scared... h34r:

 

[PSyMastR]

They are scared... h34r:

​

Yup.

 

[Ferentix]

This is not the only change to the document that Microsoft brought about. In a later section of the same document, Lutz asked that a reference to the open source operating system Linux be removed as "this is only one particular — anti-commercial — specificity of the open source landscape."

...SO by MS reasoning, commercial is the only way to go, and noone should even think otherwise :huh:... Because they are percieving another OS as a threat to them (and the entire OSS concept), they dare to try to have it removed from a document like this? Simply because it is "anti-commercial"? So what if it's anti-commercial? (and I'm not necessarily saying it is) It's like commercial is the only right way to distribute software, and anything that goes against that is something dangerous or wrong.

God.

I'm sorry if I've blown it up out of all proportion, I don't know if this is a particularly important document or whatever, it's just such fricking arrogance, and I can't stand it. I don't mean to sound like an anti MS crusader or anything, because I'm not (hell, here I am, sitting at a Windows XP computer, doing some work on Microsoft Office, and posting this using... Firefox )

 

[Goity]

This is not the only change to the document that Microsoft brought about. In a later section of the same document, Lutz asked that a reference to the open source operating system Linux be removed as "this is only one particular — anti-commercial — specificity of the open source landscape."

...SO by MS reasoning, commercial is the only way to go, and noone should even think otherwise :huh:... Because they are percieving another OS as a threat to them (and the entire OSS concept), they dare to try to have it removed from a document like this? Simply because it is "anti-commercial"? So what if it's anti-commercial? (and I'm not necessarily saying it is) It's like commercial is the only right way to distribute software, and anything that goes against that is something dangerous or wrong.

God.

I'm sorry if I've blown it up out of all proportion, I don't know if this is a particularly important document or whatever, it's just such fricking arrogance, and I can't stand it. I don't mean to sound like an anti MS crusader or anything, because I'm not (hell, here I am, sitting at a Windows XP computer, doing some work on Microsoft Office, and posting this using... Firefox )

​

Aye... MS windows may be shitty, but it's the best we've got at the moment. Linux is okay, but it's full of command prompts and there's no leader.

 

[Ferentix]

Well, I don't have any problems with that myself, but I guess some people would definitely not like it. On the other hand, now I have Ubuntu Linux all nicely set up, I can in fact see that it would probably be possible to use that without touching a command shell ever again, except to fix or update stuff. I'm not quite sure on that, but it certainly looks that way. And of course you can always make GUI frontends for the more regular tasks like installing new stuff.

Macs might be a good alternative to Windows, but I've never really used one for more than a few minutes at a time, so I couldn't say. I like the looks of them though (not just talking about design here)

Re-reading the original article, I'm struck again by the sheer ridiculousness of it all... <_<

 

[Ravnos]

Well, I don't have any problems with that myself, but I guess some people would definitely not like it. On the other hand, now I have Ubuntu Linux all nicely set up, I can in fact see that it would probably be possible to use that without touching a command shell ever again, except to fix or update stuff. I'm not quite sure on that, but it certainly looks that way. And of course you can always make GUI frontends for the more regular tasks like installing new stuff.

​

I'm using Ubuntu 5.10 myself, and the only time you'll ever need to use the command line is for compiling stuff from source or if you REALLY fuck things up. The same goes for SuSE and a few other distros. Unless you're fucking around with the "leet" distros you won't need the command line at all these days.

I still use it myself, though, because it's a lot more comfortable for me. I came up on FreeBSD and Slackware so these GUI tools for everything are foreign to me.

 

[rabbits with hats]

Makes me what to eat Bills eyes :angry:

 

[Hanz™]

Makes me what to eat Bills eyes :angry:

​

pardon?

 

[trooper]

I would have much prefered it to have been a baseball bat, But well, You can`t have everything i suppose. :rolleyes:

Movie and sound version here.

Creamed Gates

Trooper

 

[PSyMastR]

LOL. I saw that before, pretty funny. All I can say is:

 

[Ravnos]

I would have much prefered it to have been a baseball bat, But well, You can`t have everything i suppose. :rolleyes:

Movie and sound version here.

Creamed Gates

Trooper

​

A guy did that to the premier of Alberta and he wound up in jail for aggravated assault. The Tories are completely humourless.