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Microsoft's Lobbying In Massachusetts
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Dec 04, 2006 01:26 PM
from the schmandards dept.
from the schmandards dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Carol Sliwa at ComputerWorld has posted two excellent stories just now on ODF in Massachusetts, based on over 300 emails secured under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (the local analogue of the Federal Freedom of Information Act). The longer and more intriguing article focuses on Microsoft's lobbying efforts in Massachusetts, and confirms, as I reported last week, that Microsoft lobbyist Brian Burke was spearheading an effort to bring pressure on the state's Information Technology Division (ITD) by promoting an amendment that would have taken away much of the ITD's power to make technology policy. The article goes on to describe the back-channel negotiations between State CIO Louis Gutierrez and Microsoft's Alan Yates, and the way that Microsoft played the lobbying card throughout those discussions in an effort to protect its wildly profitable Office software franchise against potential erosion by competing products that support ODF." Andy has a blog entry on the lobbying effort.
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MS Anti-ODF Lobbyist Named As MA Tech Advisor 170 comments
Andy Updegrove writes "For the last year and a half, Massachusetts has been a battleground between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Sun and open standards advocates on the other over the state's plans to implement ODF. That effort has sparked similar initiatives around the world that threaten to erode Microsoft's multi-billion dollar profits on Office software. Now, we have a new governor set to take office, and observers are waiting to see if he will continue to support ODF like his predecessor, or back off in favor of Microsoft Office. Last week, Governor-Elect Deval Patrick named a new transition advisory group to make recommendations on the state's IT structure, and one of the eight members he appointed was none other than the Microsoft lobbyist that has been leading the charge to not only defeat ODF in the Bay State, but to gut the power of the State's CIO and Information Technology Division as well. Not a good sign of independence from special interests for an administration that has yet to even take office."
[+]
Texas Bill For Open Documents 197 comments
Ditesh Kumar tips us to a blog entry by Sam Hiser noting a bill filed in Texas that would require state agencies to conduct their work in an open document format. After Microsoft's grueling battle against ODF in Massachusetts, bluest of blue states, it must be galling to face te same fight in the reddest of the red. Hiser notes that the bill includes a rigorous and sound definition of an open document format, which ODF would meet but Microsoft's current OOXML submission would not.
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Call a spade a spade (Score:4, Insightful)
s/lobbying/bribing
s/pretexting/lying
Re:Call a spade a spade (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Corporate PETITION -- Re:Call a spade a spade (Score:2, Interesting)
I work at a tech company in Massachusetts.
MSFT has obviously monopoly leveraged *huge* extra costs on virtually all businesses in this state and others.
Does anyon know if there's any such thing as a "corporate petition" that I could pesuade my company to join?
Moral (Score:4, Insightful)
In their defence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:In their defence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Reality Check (Score:5, Insightful)
In my limited experience working on the contractor side of gov't projects, I promise you lobbying of all kinds is done for every single expenditure. Standard Operating Procedure.
I don't know how much of it is legal versus illegal, but this is an excellent example of how gov't IT expenditures really work. Nearly all of the decision making is done via back channels, then the appropriate public documentation is created and the money is spent.
If there was ever a better application of the term "textbook case" I cannot think of it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like somebody has never looked into purchasing RHEL ES or AS + support...
Cheers.
Is that the sound... (Score:2, Funny)
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Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, the Microsoft that got sued.
Having learned the lesson that ignoring politicians is not good for your health, is it any wonder that Microsoft is lobbying as hard as it can?
Good luck to them. I'll be happy to see them take their lumps when they screw up their technology badly enough that the world moves en masse to something better. Meanwhile, I'm smirking at the do-gooders and busybodies who are being hoisted on their own petards.
Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're prepared for disappointment, because it's on the way. No matter what Microsoft does, they always win. Even the worst of their worst (WinME?) or the EU fines didn't even put a dent in their operations and profits.
It's like the dreamers claiming that "Nobody wants Vista" or "MS miscalculated this time!", and "Who needs to 'upgrade' to Vista?"...the same shit was said about every other Windows release, yet each very quickly became the new standard.
If Microsoft shipped shrink wrapped boxes of horse shit they'd still dominate. Yay.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft ships shrink wrapped boxes of horse shit and they still dominate. Yay.
It needed still more fixing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile, I'm smirking at the do-gooders and busybodies who are being hoisted on their own petards.
And ultimately, the taxpayers of Massachusetts may be hoisted along with them.
The penalty for moving viloation in MA? (Score:2)
The people deserve the government they get. And they deserve to get it good and hard.
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Every penny MS spends paying lawyers and paying penalties is a penny they are not spending on engineering, design, or bribing politicians.
In the long run opening up the legal fr
Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
I see now that your new Muslim Overlords are changing the tenor of discourse in the Netherlands. Instead of live and let live, it's a slit throat and knife in the chest for Theo van Gogh, and nukes for Microsoft.
Nice.
Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, instead of spending time and money on making a better product, Microsoft decides to spend it on removing the power of choice from potential consumers? It's beginning to seem like the only products actually available in a free market here are the legislators themselves.
If Office is so good, why is Microsoft so afraid?
Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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First off, you're assuming that I didn't recognize this, even though I pointed out the lack of any sort of free market thanks to lobbying.
However, beyond that, you're assuming that monopolization has nothing to do with capitalism, denying that a monopoly (or at least an oligopoly) might simply be the natural outcome of a capitalistic market with no stat
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Who won? (Score:2)
What is the current state of Massachusetts switch?
Fourteenth! (After half an hour on Slashdot). (Score:2)
Seriously, is this really surprising to anyone? I guess I'd be more interested to know who's pimping the blogger who spends so much valuable free time following this minutiae. (I only wish someone followed FEDERAL requisition contracts with as much interest.)
Gov Microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
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http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9430 [networkworld.com]
Even have a followup, of sorts, today, headlined 'Gates for President': Stocking-Stuffer Edition': http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9495 [networkworld.com]
Doubt the Massachusetts CIO will be getting any of this stuff
Please submit resume in ODF format. (Score:3, Interesting)
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I agree! (Score:4, Funny)
Sincerely,
Sen. Stevens.
Related: Novell to fork OpenOffice (Score:2)
http://groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]
TFA Reads like 14th century diplomacy... (Score:2)
This is why Microsoft must be crushed, for no other reason than the "we know better what you need than you do" mentality that this just exemplifies. You do not continue doing business with clients being a jackass in any other position than that of MONOPOLY.
Re:Usability???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
ODF has usability issues? (Score:5, Informative)
ODF (Open Document) does not have usability issues. Period. It is a document format, nothing more. Now if you are talking about OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, KOffice, the next version of Wordperfect or any of the word processes/document systems that support ODF, then you might have a point. All the talk of ODF having usability issues is just the sound of FUD smacking the media around. Accessibility for the disabled should ultimately be superior with the ODF format because it is a completely open, machine readable format and therefore should be easily transformed into what ever media is required for disabled access (Large Print, audio - speech and speech recognition, braille, etc.).
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Parent
Re:ODF has usability issues? (Score:4, Funny)
In related news, has anyone fixed the usability issues that Dvorak discovered for us in CSS?
Parent
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Separation of code from content is a key component of sound security. Not to mention that it's just good design practice.
It's not that hard to grasp, is it?
Re:haha (Score:4, Insightful)
What? You mean unlike every other major corporation on Earth?
Companies want to do whatever they like unimpeded and what they like to do is earn as much of our money as possible and control as much of their respective markets as they can. But to disparage Microsoft like this is somehow unique to them is a bit foolish. Right now Microsoft draws all the ire. Someday it will be someone like Google or Apple.
I'm not necessarily defending Microsoft. I'm just trying to point out what I feel are childish perceptions some people have of companies. How people can go to absurd lengths to put one company on a pedestal, Apple is one of the first examples to come to mind, and then go to the most absurd lengths to bash a company Microsoft. Look at Sony. Imagine what people would think about Apple if they had 80% or 90% marketshare. Would Apple also be sued by various nations for including Quicktime, Mail and Safari with OS X? And lets see how people feel about Google in 10 years.
Parent
Re:This article is flamebait! (Score:5, Insightful)
So lobbying isn't new. So what. Just because the article lambastes Microsoft for lobbying doesn't mean it is flamebait, nor does it mean that the article is wrong. I could understand your angst if you were complaining that there are no articles on the net attacking other companies' lobbying efforts as being bad (like for instance, when you google for 'haliburton and lobbying'). I could also understand you being angry if perhaps you had previously, in this forum, tried to point our attention to lobbyists from other companies who were trying to create vendor lock-in in public/government sectors and were rebuffed.
Lobbying is shite pure and simple. This story is an example of lobbying and conflict of interest in the technical/computer world. Seeing as how this is a forum on technical and computer related topics, it works here. So maybe you should have titled your post "This post is flamebait"... and I shouldn't have bit. Ahh well... can't help my nature.
Parent
Damn Straight (Score:4, Interesting)
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The model corporation for leftists? It seems to me that they might have been considered a triumph of capitalism and the free market before all these anti-trust issues. Now they're a perfect case for people who want government intervention in the market.
The unfortunate thing is that, whenever the current US government gets into managing things, they seem to go wherever the money is. Lobbyists have too much influence, and they're good at what they do, so whoever is paying the most for lobbyists is likely
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The unfortunate thing is that, whenever the current US government gets into managing things, they seem to go wherever the money is. Lobbyists have too much influence, and they're good at what they do, so whoever is paying the most for lobbyists is likely to come out on top. Therefore, government intervention tends to take the form of things like the DMCA instead of meaningful anti-trust actions.
I know people are still going for all it's worth to try to assign charges of corruption to the US government, Bush, Republicans, and/or the US population in general, but pointed qualifiers such as "the current US government" are unnecessarily restrictive. Your statement holds true for all governments, everywhere, always. To claim otherwise is disingenuous and only exposes your blinders.
Sherman act violations are criminal felonies (Score:2, Insightful)
> Now, congratulations, people. You've awakened a sleeping giant.
Sorry, I don't see what basis a software vendor has to lobby against a document format chosen in the public interest. Microsoft are free to support ODF or not, a
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I despise Microsoft. Not because it is "the cool thing to do." Because I think they make a shitty product.
Just because the other team scores a touchdown doesn't mean that I cannot say it was a good play.
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Because a vast majority of people obviously DO NOT CARE that microsoft does what it does. If they did care, Macs would have a larger market share. Linux would have a larger market share. Microsoft is very slowly losing ground, but again, they didn't put themselves there. The public did. Now, the public didn't tell them to break laws, but the public did indeed make them big enough to become the monop
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Explain your analogy to me. How has Microsoft's shady buisness practices DIRECTLY affected Mac, or Linux, or OS/2, or any of the other OS choices out there? If anything, those companies should be HAPPY! Microsoft's greed is starting to bite them in the ass, and more people are shifting to OSX and to Linux. Apple and co. should be ENCOURAGING microsoft to continue shooting themselvse in the foot.
If you are going to say that it harmed them because it made it harder to gain traction i