Microsoft had FLOSS reference deleted from UN document
Heise.de and ZDNet both have articles on the extraordinary revelation that an Austrian Microsoft representative had references to open source software deleted from a UN document presented to the WSIS on the grounds that free software is anti-commercial.
The original text read…
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.
… which was deleted following this comment from the MS rep on the Vienna Conclusions’ blog:
[We] propose to delete this text part completely, as it contains only an 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. We don’t see this neither as a viable not as a desirable path for the future economy of Europe.
What is extraordinary is not MS’s behaviour - surely that is to be expected by now - but rather the utterly supine attitude of the document’s owners. A post on the FSF Europe’s blog dissects events in more details, including the revelation that most of the committee that wrote the original report weren’t informed of the existence of the blog on which the adopted changes were suggested.
This is perhaps one of the reasons for the deflated noises that have been coming from the likes of Richard Stallman in the wake of the event. The FSFE are understandably furious, rightly describing the MS’s argument outlined above as “stupid and nonsensical” and the context in which they were made an attempt to avoid their demolition in “the daylight of reason”. The organisation have already tried to turn the controversy against Microsoft, adding it to a list of complaints - along with the EC directive on Digital Rights - which it is using to back up a request to get in on the EU anti-trust suit against the company.