[wilhelmtux-discussion] FC: Bush administration's position on open-source seems... flexible (fwd)

Daniel Boos boos at trash.net
Mit Jan 29 22:27:39 CET 2003


Betrifft Wilhelmtux zwar nur indirekt. Es ist aber interessant zu sehen
was an anderen Orten passiert und zudem wo ein Lobbying gegen OSS
betrieben wird. Bedenklich...

Gruss
Daniel Boos

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 02:20:34 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
To: politech at politechbot.com
Subject: FC: Bush administration's position on open-source seems... flexible


---

Subject: US Officially Opposing Open Source Internationally?
From: Steve Withers <swithers at mmp.org.nz>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.8 (1.0.8-10)
Date: 28 Jan 2003 13:27:53 +1300

Declan

I have not seen this in notes from Politech....and thought you might
find it interesting.

The question I have is: Since when is the US Government OFFICIALLY
opposed to the use and development of Open Source software around the
world? Millions of Americans use it and the idea of Open Source started
in the US.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/01/15/030115hnwsisos_1.html

The US was the only country attending the Tokyo conference to demand
this change from "support" of Open Source to the alternative presented
below.

Extract (partial):

TOKYO -- A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments,
organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ended
Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that, among other
things, calls for encouraging the development of open-source software. A
draft of the declaration had called for open source to be "supported"
but was changed after objections from the U.S. government delegation
late Tuesday night.

  The U.S. opposition was largely perceived to be support for its
domestic software companies and in particular Microsoft, said officials
from other governments on the sidelines of the conference on Wednesday.
After a short debate with a number of countries, including Pakistan,
that wanted the original language to remain, all sides finally reached
agreement and the declaration was changed to read: "Development and
deployment of open-source software should be encouraged, as appropriate,
as should open standards for ICT (information and communications
technology) networking."

.....................


-- 
Steve Withers
swithers at mmp.org.nz




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