Microsoft's Big Stick in Peru

An anonymous reader points out a Wired story on the continuing Peru saga. In this latest episode, Wired notes that the U.S. Ambassador to Peru has chimed in in support of Microsoft and in opposition to Dr. Villanueva's bill which would have mandated open source software be used by the Peruvian government. On the one hand, sure, our diplomats have a national goal of promoting U.S. enterprise, but do we have to promote companies which we are simultaneously pursuing in court for numerous violations of our laws? Isn't that a bit counter-productive?

hm

[zapfie]

For some reason, I read that as "Microsoft pig stuck in Peru." I got very confused..

Great Plan

[dnaumov]

He added that by excluding proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Peru would be hurting an industry that "has the potential to create 15,000" jobs in the local economy.

Yeah, that right ! Run MSFT products and you need to hire 15000 people to admin them. Sounds like a great plan to me !

Pay up!

[chalsall]

Come on Peru, be a good little third-world country, and pay your Windows tax. How can the US economy hope to recover if M$ doesn't have additional markets to rape?

And you wouldn't want to risk those potential 15,000 jobs, now would you? No matter that any real employment will be exported to the US. No, don't bother thinking about that...

We're in sad, sad times.

Re:Politics in America today

[Anonymous Coward]

and that's why you'll never win an election...;)

I call him Bill Gates...

[Inexile2002]

Maybe it's a nuance of translation from Spanish to English, but Mr. Villaneuva constantly refering to Bill Gates as "the Bill" was confusing. And I disagree with many of the things Villaneuva had to say about him.

"The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever", "The Bill protects equality under the law", "The Bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software" - As far as I know, Mr. Gates doesn't do any of these things, strange that the Peruvian government thinks so.

Re:WHAT???

[innocent_white_lamb]

I never thought computers could say stupid things until today

Eh? Computers have been saying "Keyboard Not Present - Press F1 to Continue" for years.

Re:Politics in America today

[Second_Derivative]

Yep, American Democracy is great. Every dollar is represented equally ;)

Re:Stock market

[John Biggabooty]

Corporations do not exist just to make money. Their charters require them to perform a valuable public service. They naturally want to do this at a profit, but greed for greed's own sake destroys everything it touches. If it is only about money, then they should get into theft, or counterfeiting, and out of legitimate business, if there still is such a thing.