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[News] Bully Software Alliance (Microsoft Proxy) Punishing German Businesses, Lobbying Against Open Source

Unlicensed software cost firms 1.1 million euros

,----[ Quote ]
| Last year, German companies had to pay some 1.1 million euros for using 
| unlicensed software. On Thursday, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) 
| announced that this sum had been paid in damages and legal fees.
`----

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86135/from/rss09

The BSA does anti-OSS lobbying as well.


Related:

Microsoft's bold march towards open source

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft is labouring under a delusion. While the rest of the world
| thinks of it as a software company, it prefers to consider itself
| a government department. How else to see its latest scheme whereby,
| if you ignore its questions, it will report you to its private
| paid-for policemen at the Business Software Alliance?
`----

http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002208,39285719,00.htm


What about selling free software

,----[ Quote ]
| Gervase Markham, the Mozilla Foundation's licensing officer, in an
| article in the Times Online, talks about being questioned by a
| northern UK Trading License Officer about giving away software.
| 
| The trading officer was concerned by a group that was burning the
| free Mozilla Browser on CDs and selling it.
`----

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/what_about_selling_free_software


BSA all for tech neutrality [as long as the Open Source plan was abandoned]

,----[ Quote ]
| "On the other hand, even with Microsoft Corp's money and marketing
| muscle behind it, Microsoft Money did not take off as a product and
| was unable to unseat Intuit's Quicken." 
`----

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2006/12/14/technology/20061214005009&sec=technology


Report: The Business of Free Software

,----[ Quote ]
| In his Nov. 21 column, Conrado Banal said I did not really author the
| bill "Free/Open Source Act of 2006" now pending in Congress. And
| quoting the Business Software Alliance (BSA), he also derided the
| bill as a "prime model of confusion."
| 
| Let me assure him that I authored the bill. My office worked on it for
| four months. It started with a suggestion from FOSS (free/open
| source software) advocates in the Computer Professionals Union
| (CPU). Modeled after the Brazil and Peru FOSS policies, it is the
| result of inputs from various geeks, techies and FOSS
| practitioners--from my two staff who happen to be competent IT
| professionals, IT lawyers in the UP College of Law, members of
| the Philippine Linux Users Group (PLUG), GNU/Linux guru and
| prime advocate Richard Stallman of the MIT-based Free Software
| Foundation, who personally e-mailed his very valuable comments.
| It also contains inputs from the government?s Commission on
| Information and Communications Technology and the International
| Open Source Network of the UNDP.
`----

http://business.inq7.net/money/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=36605


The ISC is lobbying for Microsoft as well:


Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'

,----[ Quote ]
| leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of
| lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread
| adoption of open-source software.
| 
| Sent in response to a recent report on the role of open-source
| software in the European economy, Microsoft-funded pressure
| group, the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) warned of
| potentially dire effects if too much encouragement was given
| to open source software development.
`----

http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=7109


European Commission denies favouring open source

,----[ Quote ]
| The Commission's statement comes just days after it was lobbied to
| clarify its position on open source. The Initiative for Software
| Choice (ISC) wrote to the Commission immediately after the
| release of the report urging it to contact the "international
| press" to "set the record straight" over its stance. The ISC's
| external affairs are handled by CompTIA, which is funded by 
| several IT vendors including Microsoft.
|                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
`----

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/30012007/152/european-commission-denies-favouring-open-source.html



And there are other forces, including the US government:



EU official joins consultancy serving Microsoft

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-10-03T134311Z_01_L03693228_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-OFFICIAL.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna
http://tinyurl.com/h47g3


US ambassador to the EU was former Microsoft lobbyist

,----[ Quote ]
| Before C. Boyden Gray was named as George Bush's number one person in
| Europe, he was a lawyer lobbying on behalf of Microsoft.
`----

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34706


US politicians go to bat for Microsoft

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/26/microsoft_eu_political_lobbying/


EU's Kroes denies vendetta against Microsoft

,----[ Quote ]
| BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes on Tuesday rejected
| an accusation she was pursuing a vendetta against U.S. software giant
| Microsoft Corp. and suspected a "coordinated campaign" to discredit
| her agency.
|
| [...]
|
|  Kroes was responding to a letter published by the newspaper from a
| Microsoft business partner who accused the EU Commission of "playing
| games" with Microsoft by raising concerns over its Vista operating
| system that could delay its launch in Europe.
|
| "There appears to be a coordinated campaign to portray the Commission
| in a negative light," she said...
`----

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/060919/microsoft_eu.html?.v=3 


Microsoft Hard-Balling EU Over Vista  

,----[ Quote ]
| "This is part of the negotiating strategy," a person familiar with the
| situation told internetnews.com. "They're in a public relations battle."
|
| Microsoft made the same threat to South Korean regulators, but did not
| follow through when they lost that battle.
`----

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3631041


IDC (Microsoft-funded study) pronounces Linux unimportant to European economy

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34542 


Open Source Foes In Bed With Abramoff

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/2036223&from=rss


Study: open source needs official support; Lobbyist
disagrees with "flawed" conclusions

,----[ Quote ]
| The study, commissioned by the European Commission, Directorate
| General Enterprise and Industry, is but a small part of the larger
| FLOSSPOLS project that aims to keep the EU a leader in global
| development of open source software.
|
| [...]
|
| Now, the ISC is widely regarded as a shill for Microsoft, although
| the member list also includes companies like Intel, Autodesk, and
| RSA Security (now an EMC subsidiary). The 300-strong member list is
| mostly padded with lesser lights such as Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi(
| Turkey), ThreeSixtyDegreez (Pakistan), and Datoprogrammu Apgads
| (Latvia). The institute pushes hard for the right to patent
| software, alongside regular bashings of open source businesses.
`----

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061017-8011.html

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