MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-02-08 |
| FROM | CEO of Brooklyn
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Re: [fairuse] Re: E-Gov-OS conference
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Looking further at the troubles with the e-gov-os conference and after
reviewing the opinions of Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, David Sugar,
Jay Sulzburger, David Wheeler, Stanley Klein, Chalu Kim, Claus Sørensen,
Jason Faulkner, Russell McOrmond, Louis Suarez-Potts, David A. Hammond
and others, comments which have expanded over 10 mailing lists, and
which have generated a few hundred private emails to me in my private
email box, I'm forced to draw several conclusions.
First, as President of NYLXS and President of New Yorkers for Fair Use,
my primary concern is two fold:
First, in my role as President of NYLXS, my primary goal is to cater to
the needs of the membership, and the extended constituency of the
organization, the Free Software development community and users in the
New York City area. In truth, all organizations have a primary
responsibility to their constituencies. It is time for others to look at
their constituency and see how they are serving them. An organization
which doesn't serve a constituency is an organization in name only.
Secondly, as an individual citizen and active member of the Free
Software movement, I'm concerned with broad policy decisions of others
in regards to individual rights with in our digitalized communications
network. I'm focused on practical activities which protect the freedom
of individuals and empower individuals and communities in education,
government and business.
These are the only two prisms in which I can view the planned events of
EgovOS conference.
I tend to be very thorough and deliberate in my conclusions. When I work
through the process of developing activities and actions, or when I
write in regard to issues of importance in a proper fashion for
publication, or when I give a formal opinion piece representing any of
our organizations journals, radio shows, public speeches, or other
formalized media outlets, I bring to bear on that presentation, not only
thorough research of the issue and much consultation, but also my 30
years of political and practical experience in affecting positive
political and social outcomes.
I bring this same effort to this current letter, which I am opening up
to the public and which will be published on http://fairuse.nylxs.com
and which will be included in the coming NYLXS Journal.
First, let's look at the stated goals of the sponsored event. As listed
on htttp://www.egovos.org/, the goals of this conference is:
Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and
EU
Goals: 1.the presentation of best practices 2.raising awareness
3.sharing of experiences among policy makers, donors, users/consumers,
universities, and industry specialists in Open Source, e-Government and
related fields.
NYLXS has, for a couple of years, worked to sell Free Software on both
the local, New York City Level and in the Federal Government. We'll had
a variety of experiences in this regard, many of them very negative. As
such, this conference seems to be important to the economic and
political health of the NYLXS membership, including The Free Software
Chamber of Commerce, our Public Educational initiative in New York City
Public Schools, and New Yorkers for Fair Use. Our direct prosperity as a
community is tied to the stated goals of the conference, and in fact,
members of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce had prepared to make
presentations at the conference. It was the concerns of members of the
Free Software Chamber of Commerce which brought the problems which have
enveloped the conference to my attention.
The main problem is the participation of Microsoft as a speaker and
presenter at the conference. In a previous email, I have already listed
the problems that Microsoft presents. But for the sake of making this a
complete document, I will reiterate them and expand upon the Microsoft
issue.
First of all, Microsoft is a reckless company which operates above the
law. It has recently been convicted twice for antitrust activities, and
has been guilty of numerous other illegal competitive practices which
have gone without prosecution.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm is a rundown of the current
conviction of Microsoft for antitrust actions which is still going
through the courts. Microsoft was not only determined have acted
illegally in regard to browser technology, but they have also had their
CEO, Bill Gates, lie under oath. The testimony can be searched here:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/video/gates/
http://www.broadcast.com/news/billgates/
investigation of his perjury is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24990.html
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3MLEDHF0D&live=true&useoverridetemplate=ZZZUGORQ00C&tagid=ZZZNSJCX70C&subheading=global
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/msdoj991107.html
They even doctored their prepared testimony which got much press:
http://www.idg.net/crd_microsoft_67162.html and to quote:
Chase's testimony last week struck a note similar to the previous week's
fiasco over a Microsoft videotaped demonstration. Government attorney
David Boies had scored by pointing out inconsistent details in a
videotape, submitted by Microsoft as evidence, that showed that
Microsoft had used multiple PCs to film a demo the company first implied
was a seamless segment filmed on one computer. U.S. District Court Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson said he did not believe that the Microsoft
witness who had testified to the truthfulness of the tape lied about it,
but trial observers said the incident undermined the defense's
credibility.
Further discussion of the Gate's Perjury includes
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Bill+Gates+testimony+Perjury&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=nobody-0602002327560001%40adsl-209-233-20-69.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net&rnum=5
In fact, this reprint of the original Ziff Davis Net article with a John
Hall interview is in my private archive of resources. The article quotes
Mad Dog Hall as properly urging the government to jail Bill Gates for
his illegal activities:
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/johnhall-ms.html
Microsoft has competed unfairly with Borland, FoxPro, Netscape, Sun,
Apple among others. They have actively pursued a business plan designed
to strip individuals and organization from the fruits of their efforts
by tweaking the desktop making others products function worse than
Microsoft's products. They have repeatedly hindered the empowerment of
people and prevented the empowerment of individuals, especially
negatively impacting disenfranchised communities, such as those that
NYLXS represents in Brooklyn, and the City of New York. 60 minutes even
broadcast a show which showed to fear that developers have of Microsoft
and the expectations of these developers to be damaged by their
'Partner'
Of the many corporations in the global economy, Microsoft alone has
distinguished itself as a proactive opponent to Free Software.
Things began to heat up with the Halloween Papers.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/
Microsoft then made a frontal attack on the Free Software Foundations
GPL, the most potent tool which protects the community from hostile
activities by businesses and individuals who wish to destroy our ability
to collaborate.
This article by The Register at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25891.html looks at how DRM
(trusted computing) attacks the GPL.
This certification scheme will rip the guts out of the GPL. That is, the
minute I begin tinkering with my software, my ability to interface with
the Great PKI in the Sky will be broken. I'll have a Linux box with a
GPL, all right; but if I exercise the license in any meaningful way I'll
render my system 'unauthorized for Palladium' and lose business. So
instead, I imagine I'll be turning to my vendor for support, updates,
modifications and patches. And I'll be dependent on them for support
services at whatever price they can wheedle out of me because I dare not
lose my Palladium authorization. I wonder if the cost of ownership of an
open-source system will actually be lower than the cost of a proprietary
system under such circumstances.
Prior to this, Microsoft's Craig Mundie made several false statements
against the GPL at New York University.
Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU
General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that
incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself
become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is
distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely
available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the
GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization
making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent
commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to
distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product
rather than just the cost of distribution.
Microsoft had mailed to every IT director in the US brochures which
vilified the GPL, the Free Software movement, and by extension, the Open
Source advocates. These mailings contained blatant lies about the
contribution of Free Software to the economy and threatened IT directors
and developers with unfounded negative consequences if they deploy or
use Free Software. The recent GPL FAQ, for example, has the following
excerpt:
Have your lawyers read the GPL (and the LGPL)? Because the GPL is so
frequently misunderstood and because it attempts, under certain
circumstances, to impose significant obligations on licensees and their
intellectual property rights, no responsible business should use GPL
software without ensuring that its lawyers have read the license and
explained the business' rights and obligations. They should also review
and explain the Lesser General Public License, or LGPL, a related
license that is sometimes used with open source libraries.
Businesses every day uses Microsoft Software and the software of others
which contain intrusive and abusive licensing which is directly in
conflict with logical business practices. They would never be accepted
by legal teams if the process was open to genuine contract negotiation.
The contracts with Microsoft foists on businesses through its abusive
monopoly powers constrains segments which allow the disabling of the
software and intrudes on the private ownership of data and systems by
businesses which purchase Microsoft products today. This is in addition
to the clauses which waves them from any responsibility for damages done
to business through security violations or the failure of products to
perform according to their expectations. And then they sponsored UCITA
to make sure that downloaded software from Free Software vendors can not
get the same level of protection in a blatant effort to damage efforts
of distributors of Free Software to comply with the GPL.
Microsoft has been such an aggressive enemy of Free Software, and the
general public that they have used the BSA to do witch hunts against
users and business. They have threatened lawsuits against those who have
reversed engineered their document formats They moved their free font
access because users downloaded them for Free Software systems. They
have proposed a DRM system designed to circumvent the freedom of Free
Software development. They have fixed benchmarking studies versus Free
Software systems. They have obstructed the legally required refund for
operating systems which are forced on consumers with preinstalled
systems. They built spyware into their multimedia players, twisted the
Java programming language to be incompatible with the implementation on
other platforms, refused to release products on Free Software platforms,
which includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, introduced in NT4 service
pack 3 changes to the SMB protocols to make it break with the Free
Software SAMBA product, built back doors into in it's CryptoAPI,
deliberately broke the Opera Web Browser when used with the MSN network,
have brought down the internet through viruses TWICE in the last year,
supported DRM in concert with Record Labels (
http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-983017.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news
), broke basic TCP/IP protocols with IE5 and IIS (
http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658 ), advertised recently
for advanced Free Software administrators to work for Microsoft in order
to create a strategy to force businesses off of Free Software, and more.
Overall, Microsoft alone as a corporation has distinguished itself as an
entity which, as a core business policy, is set to enslave Free Software
and the general population. Their mission is to dehumanize and embarrass
our membership, and to impoverish our community.
This body of evidence would be enough to reject out of hand the entry of
Microsoft to the conference. But NYLXS and NY Fair Use has a growing new
concern which is pushing it to action. In the face of the growing threat
by the Microsoft Corporation to the well-being of Free Software
developers, a threat that can be seen by Microsoft hiring GNU/Linux
experts in the effort to undermine the business efforts of our community
through lies and falsehoods, as well as technically breaking the
beneficial integration of mixed environments, and which can be further
seen by the 'shared source' media campaign which lies about the
foundation of a free society and the stake of businesses in the
promotion of both Open Sourced and Free Software legal foundation, there
is an increasing knee jerk reaction by organizations supposedly
representing the communities interests to give Microsoft a platform and
a business advantage at conferences and shows which are designed to
promote the community's effort in establishing digital rights and
economic development. This started at 'Linux World Expo' in San Fransico
and has moved into the New York 'Linux World Expo', where it directly
damaged the well being of my membership through the winning of an award
which rewarded them for creating a program only could properly write if
you have the Windows code base, and it is now making its way to the
egov-os conference.
The inclusion of Microsoft at this event directly threatens the health
of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce in New York City. There are
places for an academic style debate for Free Software versus Sun's
community license and Microsoft's "Share Source' . A conference whose
stated goals is to raise awareness of Free Software and Open Software
benefits, to present the best practices for government, and to share
experiences about the benefits of using Free Software in government, is
not such a venue. This venue is about selling Free Software and the
community's efforts to the government. It is hoped to and create a much
needed stable economic pipeline for free software vendors with
government, based on its technical and political merits. Microsoft's
goals are in direct conflict with the stated agenda of the conferences.
Allowing them to participate, based on the sole attribute that they are
Microsoft and feel that they have something to say, is not enough reason
to allow them a platform which will be used to hurt members of the
community.
Microsoft has never contributed any code to the community. Microsoft has
never advocated any benefits of the use of Free Software or Open Source
Software Microsoft has never financially contributed to any Free
Software development or promoted the education of people about Free
Software Microsoft has not, in any way, befriended the community.
Microsoft has positioned itself as an enemy of the community and has
threatened it on numerous occasions. In fact, Microsoft has singled out
the Free Software and Open Source community for abuse.
Because of the growing misconduct of those who are presenting Free
Software and Open Sourced Software to the public, first IDG and now
egovos, NYLXS and New Yorkers for Fair Use is now contemplating action,
not so much directed against Microsoft, but those wolves in sheep
closing who are more directly hurting my membership and the community at
large.
In considering actions to take, we are looking at a number of
possibilities. First, it is the opinion of Jay Sulzburger that we can
use a hour of time to counter the arguments of Microsoft. My experience
is that this will not work. On July 17th, I lead NY Fair Use to
Washington to argue against the inclusion of DRM. Despite the fact that
our presence was the most important part of the conference, to the point
where we engaged productively from the audience both Jack Valenti and
Philip Bond, we got no mainstream press. This was despite the presence
of the New York Time's Amy Harmon and others. But our action was famous
on Capital Hill. When we went back for the Peer to Peer/Berman Bill
hearing two months later, several congressional staff members sought me
out to ask what we did and to give us compliments. Simply, in regard to
Jay's suggestion, nobody will attend such a session outside of the
choir, and it will receive no press. On the other hand, Microsoft will
get much press.
It has been suggested that egov-os is better to concede a place for
Microsoft to allow an open debate. This will not be affective, and the
alternative of being tongue whipped by Microsoft in the press is far
better since they simply don't qualify for a placement at the
conference, and it will allow us to present to the government
administrators without interference. It is not NY Fairuse's policy to
play 'whack the mole' with DRM issues. Instead, we focus on specific
actions which will have broad affect and undermine the ability of our
political foes to bring endless action again and again through the
governments entire alphabet soup of bureaucracy and congressional
committees. If Microsoft objects to being excluded, NY Fair Use
(http://fairuse.nylxs.com) would be all to happy to provide a forum for
both Microsoft and Richard Stallman, and others, for the benefit of
academic debate. It would be a good fund raiser for the Free Software
Institute in the coming months. My guess is that Bill Gates has no
interest in such a real debate. His company is only interested in
marketing and damaging the community. Therefore, participation by any
Free Software advocates, or Open Source advocates, in this egov-os
conference is highly damaging to the community if it includes Microsoft.
And we are therefor calling on a boycott for this event.
It has been said that nobody is stupid enough to believe that
Microsoft's 'shared source' promotes Open Source software.
Unfortunately, this is very wrong. On the Open Office.org website, every
day people ask if they can use and distribute the products. While I
wouldn't say people are as dumb as rocks, I will say that they've been
so conditioned to think out software as a super-restricted, crash
inducing, virus ridden products, that they often have trouble thinking
straight about what they should expect from business and software
providers.
NY Fair Use is now looking to organize a protest of the event in
Washington. A protest will at least give those genuinely from the
community an uninhibited outlet. However, NY Fair Use, in general,
dislikes protests as a vehicle of change, as we feel they mostly are
ignored by a public besieged by 'the protest of the day'.
As a result, we are looking at a more organized campaign against this
convention and those who would put events like this one together without
considering the moral imperative of not harming the community by giving
those who wish to destroy use a platform such as this. Egov-os
supposedly advocates Free Software usage in business and government. It
should do so without constraint and without apologies.
We are calling for an investigation of the egov-os organizers for
misconduct. I've spoken with Tony Stanco many times and it's not
possible that he doesn't grasp the basics of the issues outlined here,
or how including Microsoft will negatively affect our community.
Therefor, the invitation of Microsoft to this conference must be either
a direct payoff, or self promotion. Since they are moral equivalents,
they are both both equally condemnable.
We insist that Microsoft should not be given any platform at this event,
because it is their purpose to undermine the community and its efforts.
Since this is not being promoted as an academic debate, but instead is a
marketing tool for Open Source and Free Software, we reject any
arguments which are based on the concept that we should open the floor
to them in order to dispel Microsoft corporate lies. This venue does not
have the most basic format to handle this problem.
If, for contractual reasons, it is impossible to remove them from the
conference, we ask the organizers to give NYLXS's subcommittee, New
Yorkers for Fair Use, both the keynote and the Microsoft slot in the
speaking arraignments. David Sugar will represent NYLXS, and I will
represent NY Fair Use.
Finally, the website for the event needs to have on the front page a
clear statement that it has determined that Microsoft's 'shared' code'
program to be directly in opposition to both Free Software and the Open
Source ideals, in that it does not promote the empowerment of the
community through the freedom of innovation and digital systems
ownership by individuals, the government or businesses.
I do not expect that these suggestions will be taken by Bruce Perens, or
the other organizers of the egov-os events. So I expect that we will
have to work to oppose the event.
Ruben Safir President New Yorkers for Fair Use http://fairuse.nylxs.com
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
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http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
____________________________
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Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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