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Microsoft Government Politics

Microsoft's Lobbying In Massachusetts 148

Posted by kdawson 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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Microsoft's Lobbying In Massachusetts More

Microsoft's Lobbying In Massachusetts

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  • Call a spade a spade (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:29PM (#17102038)
    far to many re-defining words in todays world

    s/lobbying/bribing

    s/pretexting/lying

  • Moral (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:29PM (#17102040)
    Any supplier that makes enough to pay a full time lobbyist is overcharging.

  • Is that the sound... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Sneakernets ( 1026296 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:35PM (#17102098) Journal
    Of a dying company?

  • Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PHAEDRU5 ( 213667 ) <instascreed@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:35PM (#17102110) Homepage
    Long ago I remember a Microsoft that had nothing but contempt for the political process. A Microsoft that intended to dominate the market through mass, vendor lockout, FUD, giving stuff away, etc.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:48PM (#17102284)
      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.


      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.

      • Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:1)

        by PinkPanther ( 42194 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:34PM (#17103904)
        If Microsoft shipped shrink wrapped boxes of horse shit they'd still dominate.
        ...though maybe not in the horse shit vertical. Remember MS-BOB? WebTV? Or other ideas from the market leader [google.com]?

      • The end will come some day... (Score:2)

        by mangu ( 126918 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @06:00PM (#17105116)
        No matter what Microsoft does, they always win


        But every time someone announces a plan to migrate to FOSS Microsoft is forced to give them a bigger discount. Someday soon a Microsoft salesperson will tell you, "Hey, why would you install OOo for free? We will pay you to install MS-Office!".


        If Microsoft shipped shrink wrapped boxes of horse shit they'd still dominate


        Others have replied that Microsoft does ship horse shit, but I beg to disagree. Horse shit is useful as manure. Hmmm, wait, not really. I remember now that a gardener once told me that horse shit isn't as good a manure as cow shit. Cows are ruminants. By chewing their cud, they digest seeds better than horses, so you get less weeds from cow manure. Yes, perhaps Microsoft does sell horse shit, but they certainly don't sell anything as useful as cow shit!

        • Re:The end will come some day... (Score:2)

          by rifter ( 147452 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @02:40PM (#17116192) Homepage

          "No matter what Microsoft does, they always win"

          But every time someone announces a plan to migrate to FOSS Microsoft is forced to give them a bigger discount. Someday soon a Microsoft salesperson will tell you, "Hey, why would you install OOo for free? We will pay you to install MS-Office!".

          No matter what the only way Microsoft will "pay" customers to use Office will be the same way DirectTV gave free satellite systems.* It will always end up that they are charging the customer something in the end (for Windows, etc) while using some accounting/marketing BS to try to convince you that it's all free (or that you are being paid to use it). They are a business. Yes, it will still work; it worked great for everyone else who's pulled this kind of stunt. Car salesmen do it every day.

          * DirectTV used to have an ad where they advertised a program claiming to counter the barrier to entry posed by the necessity to buy a satellite system in order to use their service (versus being given the equipment, or rather renting it, as their competitors allow). They explained that the system still cost $600 or whatever it was, but then you would get a "discount" and only have to pay 19.95 per month instead of 39.95 per month for a limited time, "therefore effectively making your system FREE!" It was a marketing ploy to continue to require customers to buy costly equipment and then pay monthly fees in order to use the service (which also means that if the equipment breaks it's on you) yet somehow manage to convince you you're getting a great deal! Free stuff! yeah!

        • OT: Cow manure (Score:2)

          by ckaminski ( 82854 ) <slashdot-nospamNO@SPAMdarthcoder.com> on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @02:41PM (#17116214) Homepage
          I'll tell you this, cow manure leads to 2 foot diameter sunflowers, and zuccini's the size of baseball bats. We used to mix cow, pig and horse manure when I was a kid, giant piles 30 feet high. Good stuff for growing corn and tomatoes. :-)

          The dirt pile I have now for my vegetable garden has cow shit some 8 years old and still produces mega veggies.

      • Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:2)

        by speculatrix ( 678524 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @06:22AM (#17111174)
        there was a time when IBM were unstoppable and "noone ever got fired for buying IBM". SCO were once good guys with an interesting product.

        IBM fell from grace and became the subject for fear and loathing. SCO are the subject of disdain and contempt for their product.

        Microsoft are feared and loathed, we're all just waiting for the fall.

    • Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cptgrudge ( 177113 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:08PM (#17102622) Journal

      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.

    • Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:2)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:52PM (#17103286)
      The legal front is another and more dangerous front in the war against MS. Overall it was a great front to open up and they have been steadly loosing there. Company after company has gotten hundreds of millions of dollars from MS. This is a war that MS doesn't know how to fight very well as evidenced by their steady stream of losses.

      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 front in the war against MS will be looked as a great strategic move.

    • Yeah, because enforcing the law against a big company is somehow representative of big government and corporate influence at their worst. We should just let monopolies run rampant. That way we'll have a really excellent telecommunications infrastructure and software that improves over time and isn't subject to massive world spanning security breaches and... Oh, wait... We don't have any of these things, despite having largely not bothered with monopoly law enforcement in those industries. Well... Hmmm... I guess that failed then.

    • Re:Be careful what you wish for.... (Score:2)

      by dylan_- ( 1661 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @11:27AM (#17113396) Homepage
      and busybodies who are being hoisted on their own petards.
      [ridiculous pedantry]I think that should still just be "hoist". Like burn -> burnt, you have hoise -> hoist. You wouldn't say burnted.[/rp]

      [even more ridiculous childishness]"petard" is from the old French meaning "break wind", so you could say it's being "blown up by your own fart" (I guess petards either smelled pretty bad, or weren't very powerful)[/emrc]

  • This article is flamebait! (Score:1)

    by Sneakernets ( 1026296 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:46PM (#17102254) Journal
    Lobbying companies aren't new, but when you're Microsoft, it all changes?
    It's just good-ol'-boy business/politics in action.

    • Re:This article is flamebait! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:24PM (#17102860) Journal

      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.

      • Damn Straight (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:55PM (#17104206) Homepage Journal
        Companies lobbying the government subvert democracy. That works when the taxpayers aren't paying attention but the country seems to be getting irritable about all the corruption at this point. I'm thinking news story about any law being made should mention how much money the sponsoring Congessmen get from the industry lobbies the bill helps out. Then you could say something like "Ted Stevens tried to attach a rider to the budget bill to the budget proposal again. Sen. Stevens has received $372,140 from oil and gas companies over the course of his career (According to opensecrets.org. [opensecrets.org])" I think there'd be far fewer shennanigans if news stories took that tone. I think it'd be better still if lobbying and riders were outlawed outright but then Congress wouldn't be able to get their piggy fingers on any of that pie. And Congress does like their pie...

  • Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:46PM (#17102264)
    " 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."

    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)

      by tokul ( 682258 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:57PM (#17102458)
      If Office is so good, why is Microsoft so afraid?
      OpenOffice might be good enough and has lower price tag.

    • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:1)

      by LParks ( 927321 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:26PM (#17102890)
      You assume that Microsoft could spend the time and money on making a better product. Placing these resources elsewhere, Microsoft couldn't really do much to actually improve Office.

      We've already seen a recent topic about the number of people involved in the Vista shutdown menu, so new hires wouldn't really help. They could spend their lobbying money on streamlining their processes and allowing better connectivity between different work groups, but is much more costly and will have less short term rewards. Throwing money at Office can't help Microsoft right now, and even a momentary lapse in market-share is disastrous for a monopoly.

      Lobbying is cheap, effective, and can help meet both short and long term goals. While I think corporate influence is one of the largest problems in the political process today because it doesn't represent the people, it is the right move from a business standpoint to invest in lobbying such as this.

    • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:1)

      by Moofie ( 22272 ) <lee@@@ringofsaturn...com> on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:48PM (#17103218) Homepage
      "So, instead of spending time and money on making a better product"

      OK, what? We're talking about Microsoft. When has "making a better product" ever been their goal?

    • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:5, Informative)

      by tbradshaw ( 569563 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:33PM (#17103882) Homepage
      So perhaps it's futile, but I have to mention that this isn't capitalism. It's corporatism or "crony capitalism". Capitalism doesn't involve lobbying for government assistance. Lobbying could be seen as a "short cut" to avoid having to deal with the market pressures of capitalism.

      • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:2)

        by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @02:27AM (#17109948)
        "Lobbying could be seen as a "short cut" to avoid having to deal with the market pressures of capitalism."

        A business is dealing with market pressures by following the path of least resistance. I was under the impression that this is one of the basic principles of capitalism; after all, a business isn't supposed to actually resist those market pressures, but give way to demands and adapt. So it seems that you're saying that it's not capitalism not because it violates core philosophy, but because this particular path of least resistance, this adaptation is personally disagreable to you.

        And what would you do about removing this distasteful "short cut" of yours? Preserve "capitalism" by enacting a new law restricting what busnisses can do?

        • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:2)

          by tbradshaw ( 569563 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @03:37PM (#17117280) Homepage
          No, not because it's personally disagreeable.

          Capitalism in the ideological sense bars the use of force from interaction. That same ideology defines government action as force. (Indeed, government has a traditional monopoly on force.) So it's ethical for a individual/business/corporation to do any voluntary negotiation, the use of force is never voluntary.

          On the other hand, lobbying government is requesting the single monopoly of force to act on their behalf for something other than personal self defense. (A corporation can't claim self defense, that's a right for individuals, not fictitious legal entities.)

          A person that doesn't personally believe that the capitalist system is the most ethical method to run a society benefits from at least understanding the difference between capitalism as it is defined and capitalism as it is practiced. While I am a fan of capitalism, I can recognize and identify a ton of real problems with capitalism (like income inequality) without needing the bullshit problems of "capitalism" (as it is wrongly defined) that comes with "crapitalism" (crony+capitalism) as it is practiced in the USA.

    • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:49PM (#17104116)
      It never fails that those who criticize "Capitalism" are always actually criticizing the lack of Capitalism. Monopolization is the opposite of Capitalism.

      • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @07:05PM (#17106120)
        "It never fails that those who criticize "Capitalism" are always actually criticizing the lack of Capitalism. Monopolization is the opposite of Capitalism."

        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 state intervention, if only in certain industries. Often in the United States, the state does not create a monopoly but rather passes legislation that merely recognizes that a de facto monopoly has come about. Examples that come to mind are the telephone industry and, until recent decades, the airline industry.

        Denying that monopolies have anything to do with capitalism is like denying the collapse of the Soviet Union had anything to do with socialism.

    • Re:Capitalism at it's finest! (Score:2)

      by leoxx ( 992 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @05:21PM (#17104580) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, but Bill Gates is giving all his money to charity, so that makes it okay.

  • Who won? (Score:2)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:00PM (#17102498) Journal
    I remember there was a lot of effort put into ODF, then there was a change of political leaders in Massachusetts, and then .. I can't remember - did they scrap whole project, or not?

    What is the current state of Massachusetts switch?

  • Fourteenth! (After half an hour on Slashdot). (Score:2)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:01PM (#17102536)
    Fourteenth! (After half an hour on Slashdot). Woot!

    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)

    by netsfr ( 839855 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:02PM (#17102548)
    Wasn't there an article recently about Gates for President??? I think MSFT is attacking on several fronts now...

  • Please submit resume in ODF format. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arthurpaliden ( 939626 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:02PM (#17102552)
    Why do tech companies that work with OSS not insist on resumes only in ODF. Gently force the issue. After all other companies only accept DOC.

  • I agree! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Darlantan ( 130471 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:20PM (#17102790)
    We can't possibly let these "information technology" people decide what to do with our inter-nets resources. They obviously don't understand the critical nature of how this technology works. Why, just this Friday I sent an email to one of my contacts in the state government there, and their internets were so clogged that it still hasn't arrived. If they can't keep their system of tubes clean, how can we possibly expect them to make good decisions about what prograpplications are wise to run on their computers?

    Sincerely,
    Sen. Stevens.

  • ODF in Saugus, MA (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:37PM (#17103046)

    I'd read before here [livejournal.com] and there [wikipedia.org] that Saugus, MA [saugus.net] has been experimenting with the OpenDocument format for a (relative) long time. Does anyone know what the outcome there was? Is ODF still being used in Saugus?

  • It's all bloatware (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2006 @03:50PM (#17103246)
    Microsoft's shenanigans appalls. But the sad thing is all this stuff is bloatware. Oo.org is even more bloated, and rather slower, than Office. And way back when it was Wordperfect started the rot.

    Take wp programs. *Most* people could do all the word-processing they need in a lightweight application that uses rft format. Software sellers have relied on adding "features" - features that most of their customers don't understand and don't need - to keep selling "upgraded" versions of their software. And with the added complexity come sluggishness, the need for ever-more powerful hardware, insecurity - Office macros, anyone? - and instability. Heck, MS did a survey asking people what new features they'd like to see in Office, and the amusing thing is that all the top answers were *already* in it; the customers simply didn't know they were there.

    All Microsoft's products are like this - feature-driven. That's why there are more holes in Windows than in OpenBSD, which is quality-driven. But MS are not the only offenders here by any means.

  • Related: Novell to fork OpenOffice (Score:2)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:08PM (#17103518)
    At least groklaw claims it's related.

    http://groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]

  • Sue Apple!!! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:12PM (#17103578) Homepage
    SUE APPLE BECAUSE IT LAZOREDPEWPEWED THE MARKET WITH DRM INFESTED MUSIC!!!

    see how easy it is to make something that makes sense sound stupid?

    I don't get it. Microsoft gets sued because it had a better idea than everyone else (which, despite of whether you think it is bloatware or not, sales numbers do not lie...they didn't magically reach monopoly status, the market majority put them there) and yet Apple gets praised for it's "groundbreaking" mp3 player that has more restrictions on it than a 13 year old pregnant girl?

    • Microsoft gets sued because it had a better idea (Score:1)

      by alakest ( 987748 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @06:48PM (#17105846)
      Don't you mean "bought a better idea?" or "embraced and extinguished competing ideas?"?

    • sales numbers do not lie (Score:1)

      by alakest ( 987748 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @06:58PM (#17105992)
      I just saw this bit about sales numbers not lying. ("sales numbers do not lie...they didn't magically reach monopoly status")

      I'm sure Nazi knick-knacks sold well in Germany at some point, that crack sells well in some neighborhoods, and Enron stock was once sought after.

      Boosters in the midst of those markets were probably comforted by the sales figures too.

      • Re:sales numbers do not lie (Score:2)

        by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @07:09PM (#17106182) Homepage
        Again, assumptions. "booster" as you implied me as...if you refer to posts above yours, you will note that I stated that I do NOT like microsoft. Try reading the whole thread first, asshat.

  • TFA Reads like 14th century diplomacy... (Score:2)

    by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Monday December 04, 2006 @05:08PM (#17104402) Homepage Journal
    ...between 2 warring states, not what ends up being a feature request from a customer to their vendor.

    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.
  • You can lobby for an industry or a group of firms or for the rights of some group of people. I'm not sure you can legally 'lobby' for a unique product, forcing it upon government to buy. I'm reasonably sure that's something like graft or bribery or extortion. Normally speaking government procurement is sent out for bidding, such as cars or equipment. And whoever gets the bid gets to deliver on it. But in terms of lobbying - I'm unconvinced you can represent Ford and then pay out monies to politicians to award contracts for Ford.

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