Bruce Perens on the Status of Open Source

Lars Lehtonen writes to tell us that Bruce Perens has posted the text of his LinuxWorld press conference. In his talk he takes a look at many of the hot topics surrounding the open source community including ODF, NTP vs RIM, and GPLv3. From the article: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."

bipartisan scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

One more data point in the fact this was a bipartisan scandal.

Even the Minority leader Harry Reid was a big beneficiary of cash payments by clients of Jack Abrahamoff!

Re:Conspiracy Theory 101

[TheRaven64]

And then you have this story, which seems to put him firmly in "KOOK" territory.

That, at least, puts him in the same category as most well-known F/OSS advocates. Apparently outspoken is the new sensible.

Why's he so famous in the Linux crowd?

He was project leader of Debian for a bit, and was the primary author of 'The Open Source Definition' (an obfuscated version of the Free Software Definition, based on the Debian version, but with more equivocation). For more information, see bhis bio [perens.com].

Because there is a connection

[Elektroschock]

Microsoft has another connection to the Abramoff scandal. Microsoft e.g. supports IPI, a right wing republican organisation which is involved in the Abramoff scandal - in fact its lobbyist Giovanetti openly had to admit it [ipi.org] when his organisation was accused.

IPI represents MS interests at WIPO [ipblog.org] (euphemism for insults against NGOs), recently wanted to join the MS-EU antitrust case [fsfe.org]. This was rejected by the EU court of Justice for good reasons. See curia.eu.int [eu.int]

Further MS pays ACT, an SME association astroturf with the well-known lobbyist Jonathan Zuck. Close relations to DCI + ATL. I remind you of dead people letter campaigns of ATL... [prwatch.org] Guess for what company ATL did it?

Microsoft paid DCI's TechCentralStation journo-lobbying. TCS funds political radicals all over the world, spreads anarcho-capitalist ideas and insults France, Muslims, alledged socialists etc. The idea behind DCI is to inject radical views supporting their corporate sponsors into right wing sectarians and barraters.

My personal advice: when you hire the ... of US-lobbying and sent it all over the world, you'd better stop complaining about unfair reporting.

MS did not have luck before. Here at Germany Microsoft was involved in the Hunzinger scandal which forced a minister of defense, Mr. Scharping, to step down. Hunzinger's main corporate customer was Microsoft. I think it started when Hunzinger letters about a TV placement for Ms were leaked to the press and media professionals started to discuss the case. So Ms was involved in one of the few German lobbying scandals which had serious business consequences for Hunzinger. Microsoft quickly switched over to another lobbying firm but could not avoid bad press. This is a risk of MS lobbying: They burn lobbyists, they also burned Hunzinger, because smart people watch what MS does.

Last year a press worker for Microsoft Denmark, Marianne Wier, communicated to the Danish press (Borsen) a blackmail attempt of Mr. Gates himself [slashdot.org], directed towards the Danish government. They were so sure of themselves that they even communicated it intentionally to the press. The scandal was echoed in the DK Parliament. ...

Re:No It's Not Interesting

[Bruce Perens]

Tom Adelstein dug up a connection between Preston Gates and Ellis and the BSA. It's here [lxer.com].

Bruce