Letter to European Commission Warns Against Open Source 145
An anonymous reader writes "TechWorld is reporting that they have a leaked copy of a letter written to the European Commission detailing the extent of lobby pressure coming from proprietary software groups working against open source software. From the article: 'Lueders sent the letter [PDF] on 10 October to leaders of the Commission's Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, in response to an EC-commissioned study into the role of open source software in the European economy (referred to by Lueders as Free/Libre/Open Source, or FLOSS). In the letter, he criticised the study as biased and warns that its policy recommendations, if carried out, could derail the European software economy.'"
Not Personal (Score:5, Insightful)
The scary part is that a lot of these companies simply can't survive on the open market, so they turn to the government looking for a "me-too" handout. Unfortunately, they often get it. All they need to do is promise high and deliver low. For a humorous example of this, check out the Virtudyne sage over on The Daily WTF:
Virtudyne: The Founding [thedailywtf.com]
Virtudyne: The Gathering [thedailywtf.com]
Virtudyne: The Savior Cometh [thedailywtf.com]
Virtudyne: The Digital Donkey [thedailywtf.com]
BTW, I love this line: "The limited window with which we and others have had to comment clearly has hampered a more comprehensive reply."
Translation: "You didn't give us enough time to buy off the politicians."
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the one that Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez made Open, to the people of Peru, April 8, 2002. His arguments are still unbeaten, and most still apply to any democratic government.
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fp (Score:2)
Re:fp (OT) (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
Sources?...
There's more to software than Windows+Office vs. Linux+OpenOffice you know. The server market and the embedded devices make heavy use of open-source software, and I doubt its impact is insignificant.
At any rate, I'm sure the Windows operating system would be more expensive if Linux and OSX (yes, it's OSS) weren't the vaguely looming threat to Microsoft that they are. Microsoft might also be a lot more rabid against pirates and illegal users if they had a complete monopoly. If nothing else, I'm convinced the mere existence of OSS actually makes a huge difference in the economy, albeit its effect is indirect.
Re:fp (Score:4, Insightful)
At any rate, I'm sure the Windows operating system would be more expensive if Linux and OSX (yes, it's OSS)...
Well, Darwin is OSS, but OSX as a whole isn't. I mostly say this as a preemptive strike, because I know someone is going to say it, but it doesn't void what you're saying. OSX server and OSX desktop both rely on a lot of open source. It would have taken Apple far longer to bring it to market if they had started from scratch, and it's benefitting by updates to it's open source components all the time. Therefore, Apple would have a much harder time making their OS competitive if not for the effect of OSS.
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in order for it to exert some competitive pressure on
the deeply entrenched monopoly. Although being Free
Software does make it easier to survive long enough
to be a nuissance.
I, too, am convinced (Score:3, Insightful)
Economically speaking, software is weird. It seems like it should fit well enough into the established concepts of wealth, but because of the near-zero cost of duplication and distribution, it just doesn't behave the way other forms of wealth behave.
How do you quantify something that can instantly be everywhere if simply left alone in the hands of the consumer?
Traditionally, taking goods w
Re:I, too, am convinced (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem like obsoleting most successful software business models all at once, making it harder to make a living as a programmer, would lead to a net loss in software development? Obviously there would still be software, and there might be a long-term gain in pushing towards all software being open-sourced over time, but it's not a simple issue.
Re:I, too, am convinced (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd still have the kind of programmers who enjoy programming, and write software for personal achievement.
You'd also still have service or hardware driven companies employing programmers to write support software for their hardware (drivers etc, which are usually given away for free) and support customers of outsourced services. companies like Sun, Intel and IBM.
The business model of selling software will be rendered invalid, as it should be, any industry where you can produce infinite product for little or no cost is utterly ridiculous.
In fact, any industry where production costs are disproportionately small relative to the sale cost is ridiculous... And requires anti-capitalist enforcement to maintain, otherwise the natural progression of capitalism will result in third parties providing the goods at a far more reasonable cost (such behaviour is unnaturally branded as "piracy" or "counterfeiting" by those anti-capitalists)
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You'd still have the kind of programmers who enjoy programming, and write software for personal achievement.
Except that a lot of those programmers could go from working full time and developing their skills in their spare time, to working a different job full-time and never having the time to get in-depth.
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In case you didn't already know, a large chunk of genuinely active opensource projects have at least one regular contributor who's being paid to contribute by their employer - check the changelog of the Linux kernel and you'll see scores of people with @ibm.com, @redhat.com email addresses.
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I didn't say there was no way to make money. However, that business model won't work for everything. Redhat can make money because they're selling to businesses who care about support. IBM is a different issue. But all of these business models are a bit tricky, and require that you're selling a specific kind of product to a specific market.
So you have some open-source business models, and a some closed source business models, but right now, most businesses are using the closed-source models. If you su
Zen and the coherent dynamic holistic ecosystem (Score:3, Insightful)
re obsoleting: If that were true we wouldn't have any Open Source software, as where's the money for the programer. The answer is that companies make money selling Open Source solutions and pay the programmers. Most sucessful?. Where do these huge profits come from. Have you factored in the cost of viruses.
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Doesn't it seem like obsoleting most successful software business models all at once, making it harder to make a living as a programmer, would lead to a net loss in software development?
Yes. Of course moving to mechanized manufacturing has made it harder to get a job as a factory laborer, since fewer are needed. That does not mean this is a bad thing, in general. Using open source, duplication of work can be greatly reduced, which means fewer developers will be needed. This will probably not offset the i
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I didn't say it would be a bad thing, but only that it would probably mess things up in the short-term if everyone were suddenly forced to go open-source.
Any sudden, forced change is likely to screw things up in the short term. I did not know anyone was proposing forcing everyone to go open source? Being open source is a feature. It is a benefit to the purchaser. Mandating that feature for government purchases with the law, makes sense because the government is a very large buyer, most likely to benefit
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You do realize that the vast minority of programming jobs involve selling things at retail, right? If the entire "commercial" software industry collapsed tomorrow most programmers would be just fine, because they're doing in-house stuff for companies in other industries.
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Remember, if all this came to pass, it would only be beacuse the Free Software replacements were better. Who cares if the old software you used stopped being developed? Use the better stuff and be happy!
Besides, you wouldn't have this problem if the software you were using were Free to begin with, because you could keep developing it yourself if you wanted. ; )
(By the way, you didn't rephrase what you said b
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That doesn't make any sense, because users have absolutely no reason to care about business models (the software they're using will exist in either case, because it's not possible for commercial software to be killed by a Free alternative that doesn't exist). If you want to t
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...which is an impossible situation. If there is an unfulfilled need in the market, someone (commercial or not) will figure out how to fill it.
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Nope.. I always believed in using the right tool for the job. If OSS does not provide new software, then commercial interests will make it and sell it because there is a market.
There will always be a market for custom applications. The market is shrinking as there is more general purpose software that can cheaply be adapted for many custom applications reducing th
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I think I'll feed the troll (either troll, or just plain wrong, sorry): off the top of my head, look up Croquet (the 3D operating environment, if there's any confusion). Look at tabbed browsing, which originated from Mozilla, any of a bunch of other innovation courtesy of Firefox, a bunch of features present in Gnome and KDE that were there before Windows and Mac OS X, though some of those come from earlier software if you'd like to nit pick (like virtual desktops), and kioslaves (not sure about OS X there
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Poor example. Opera was the source of tabbed browsing, not Mozilla. (Opera wasn't the first, but was the most influential.)
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That's part of the bargain in getting exclusive rights to distribute or
use it for a time. The public gets something back for that destructive
privelege and everyone moves forward. The "Sonny Bono" mentality has
got us stuck in this rut where we think that the great-great-great-
grandchildren of authors should be able to live like trust fund babies
off of someone like Mozart who died nearly 200 years ago.
If the author is DEAD (Hubbard
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I agree. I built my kids PC. Loaded Ubuntu. The money saved from not buying XP and Office went directly into buying a NAS* box which runs Linux. I'm sure if the NAS box ran MS software, it would have been more expensive.
The difference in the economy is less money is spent on software leaving more money for other things.
*(Network Attached Storage)
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eg: Windows, Office, SMS, Citrix, Exchange CAL, Sharepoint, Server CAL, SQL CAL, CRM, Terminal Server CAL, Altiris / Ghost License, Backup Agent, Two Factor Authentication, ISA, Web Filtering, Anti-Virus, Archiving / Retention Systems, Voicemail / Phone Switch / Fax Licensing etc. etc. etc. the list is almost endless.
A subset of that list could easily reach over £1000 per user, multiple that by a few thousand desktops or
Re:fp (Score:4, Interesting)
Many commercial products (and frameworks) have gone belly up in the face of OSS competition...while others have lost market share...and the future continues to look rough for folks who make their living selling development tools, libraries, and frameworks. It's tough to compete with legions of altruistic neckbeards.
Hey...how many folks here still use JBuilder, Cafe, PowerJ, CodeWarrior or one of the many other Java IDEs that dominated 5 or 6 years ago? I fight an uphill battle to buy IntelliJ for each one of my projects...and Eclipse makes it tougher everyday. My last project is currently undergoing a migration from WebLogic to JBoss...and my current project is just now adopting OSS Jasper Reports...unlike my last project, which paid over 20k for licenses for a reporting framework. Yes, Oracle may serve most large sites, but Postgres, MySQL, and others are most likely affecting their bottom line. We are certainly using them whenever we can.
It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy. It certainly does, I'm just not sure what the net effect is. It certainly hurts some people while befitting others...but, as a developer, I find it hard to believe that legions of folks giving away their labor helps enhance my bottom line. It may, but it is a very complex equation. That said, I find that writing custom software for enterprises is a heck of a lot safer than working for a software product company...and OSS has a lot to do with that situation in my opinion...and I liked working for product companies.
Re:fp (Score:4, Insightful)
It benefits the economy, just as a cheap, abundant, renewable and nonpolluting energy source would benefit the economy. Specific industries might be harmed, but society as a whole benefits. To argue otherwise is the inverse of the broken window fallacy. And in the case of software, I'd argue that developers are helped more than harmed. What would the demand for web sites be if Apache and PHP cost $1000/seat?
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No it wouldn't - energy users who now no longer have to pay huge energy costs would be able to do more without the "energy tax", and would therefore employ more people. You could quite easily argue the other way that free energy would create more jobs than it would destroy in the energy in
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It's quite simple really.
Less than 2% of software development is for packaged sofware.
The other 98% is custom software.
It was bound to happen really. Look at how the bar is being raised with time and operating systems today include software that would have never made it 3 years ago.
In the 1970s a licence for a database for an IBM mainframe would cost thousands of dollars per month. No
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Yeah, isn't it great? Now all those people that used to be making development tools can start working on something newer and better (that the OSS crowd hasn't gotten to yet) instead of wasting t
Perception is different (Score:2)
Wereas, open-source is seen as something "partly developped in our very own universities".
There are a lot of small european companies relying on open source.
Fench ISP like Free are developping and distibution several different set-top boxes (ADSL modems, ipTV reciever, simplified "MiniTel [wikipedia.org]"-like computers for surfing the web, etc...)
VLC player was born in europe (France).
Several Linux
Open source (Score:2)
My wife has been home with the kids for seven years now. According to the tax forms, she has no income. However, she has a substantial positive economic impact on the household. Caring for children, cooking, etc., etc., needs to be done, and it would cost a lot of money to farm it out.
Similarly, how much money has our company spent on open source software? If you add up all the
Only the lonely... (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at the funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Say no more.
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And the plot thickens...
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Giving this away usually increases adoption of the hardware, just look at intel's video drivers.
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For example, what is Intel (primarily a hardware manufacturer) doing on that list?
Because projects like Arduino [arduino.cc] show that Open Source can also work on the hardware side of business.
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back to the coders and grunts on the front lines.
Companies really don't need 265 different applications to get their job done.
A lot of the closed source out there could be written into modules that plug into
a front end, and make it open source and transparent.
That is what terrifies companies like M$, and the others.
OSS has the potential to end their business model.
Piling up billions at a few dozen companies will be replaced , by
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Nonsense. "MBA-types" would still be needed to run companies if all software was open source. They can work with "support" or "solution" companies instead of retail software. Programmers won't have nearly as much opportunity to make money. Sure, some companies like Red Hat might hire them, but most software companies rely on the proprietary model and it's hard to programmers expe
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Most of these large software companies are foreign, so money paid to them is being exported from the EU.
Isn't it advantageous for EU companies to be paying less money to foreign corporations, and hiring more local staff instead? Local european companies can support open source just as well as any american company, and this is something the EU should be promoting in the interest of it's citizens.
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Red hat makes a decent living at it, as well as a few other major corporations.
Economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If there weren't economic benefits, why do you think IBM, Oracle, Sun, Google and even Microsoft (yes, Microsoft!) all have their hands dipped into the OSS marketplace? In particular, IBM is betting the farm on open source.
The money to be made in open source is in integrating all the disparate components...not just what Red Hat does with Linux distros, but true systems integration. And if IBM weren't making boatloads off this model, they would've just bough
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Indeed, one should remember that Microsoft don't have any moral qualms about exploiting OSS when it suits them. Their first TCP/IP implementation was swiped straight from BSD, something they're not in a hurry to remind anyone. As for Hotmail, unless things have changed, last I heard, the
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After that they tweaked the front end servers to *look* like windows, when in reality they were still BSD... Things like changing the Apache banner, but it was still clearly apache (some error messages, the ordering of some of the headers etc)...
When they tried again, they managed to migrate the frontend servers over, but t
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Indeed, one should remember that Microsoft don't have any moral qualms about exploiting OSS when it suits them.
Why should anyone have "moral qualms" about using software precisely as its creators wanted it to be used ?
Their first TCP/IP implementation was swiped straight from BSD, something they're not in a hurry to remind anyone.
That's hardly remarkable. Pretty much *everyone's* first TCP/IP implementation was "swiped straight from BSD" (how do you "swipe" something that's free ?).
As for Hotmail, u
Re:Economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Changing from Unix to Linux and throwing a few old bones to the OSS crowd isn't "betting the farm". IBM is still very committed to its proprietary software products. For example a few years ago IBM acquired Rational. Immediately afterword they discontinued the popular Visual Test product because it competed with more expensive products IBM owned. They won't sell you a license for it and they won't convert it into an open source project.
IBM's commitment to OSS is very shallow and if OSS disappeared tomorrow IBM would keep right on rolling' like a Hummer running over a dead mouse.
I think you mis-read it. (Score:4, Funny)
No, no no. It warns against open sores. This is the continent that was decimated by the black plague, remember?
Damaging our ecosystem??? (Score:4, Funny)
The funny thing is that if you look at the authors, these people aren't even scientists!
Usurper_ii
IMHO this is FUD (Score:2)
heh heh (Score:2)
He then proceeded to explain how cracking a fart in parliament at the wrong time could cause a hurricane that would pitch us into the next ice age.
Eleven comments and ... (Score:2)
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Microsoft-funded lobbyist lambasts European Commission.
Matthew Broersma, Techworld
16 October 2006
A leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread adoption of open-source software.
Sent in response to a recent report on the role of open-source software in the European economy, Microsoft-funded pressure group, the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) warned of potentia
Not only that, but you can't print the letter (Score:3, Informative)
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It makes sense... (Score:1, Informative)
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Re:Not only that, but you can't print the letter (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder why Evince won't print it. Does it really support Acrobat DRM?
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I looked at its souce security, not set dissallow printing
Offtopic..
I wonder if he sells printers and is looking to boost ink sales by getting everyone to try to print it?
Sorry about the offtopic comment.
oss wrecked the software business for everybody (Score:1, Funny)
Re:oss wrecked the software business for everybody (Score:1)
"supporting oss you are not undermining other software businesses, but America itself"
Last time I checked, America had this thing called a constitution, which states something about 'freedom' in there, somewhere.
If American corporations are free to expand their business using the 'free trade' or 'globalization' model, who is really undermining America? The software businesses who are run by 2-3 American citizens using OSS? or the Lawmakers who allow these corporate lo
Re:oss wrecked the software business for everybody (Score:2)
truer than you might think, rich countries generally like copyright and similar laws because (when combined with copyright harmonisation treaties) they allow them to get money from poorer countries without actually exporting anything to them.
on the other hand we europeans have a definite interest in stopping the money flow from us to the USA caused by the big american software companies who dominate certain markets. Opensou
Business model (Score:2, Funny)
Is that so?
What percentage of the projects on Sourceforge would describe themselves as "businesses"?
"IPR has evolved over centuries" (Score:5, Interesting)
1500's The Stationers had a publishing monopoly.
corruption and suppression occured
1700's
Start over with a 14+14 year copyright monopoly limit.
1900's
US copyright monopoly limit extended to 14+28 years.
US copyright monopoly limit extended to 28+28 years.
US copyright monopoly limit extended to Life+50/75 years.
US copyright monopoly limit extended to life+70/120 years.
The last time copyrighted material was released into the public domain was 1977. (non-renewed material - 1991)
The next possible time for new material to enter the public domain is 2048.
That is a huge period of information suppression.
"Open Source"/"Creative commons" picks up where the "Public Domain" stopped.
Other things to note:
Source Software is near obsolete in 30 years, but still possibly useful.
Binary Software is obsolete in 10 years.
If the copyright monopoly limits were more aligned with innovation, perhaps Open source/Creative commons would not exist. (And neither would drm).
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And rightly suppressed from public release.
You recall the original intent of copyright law to encourage authors to create new works for public enjoyment?
It's pretty obvious to everyone that there is an extreme shortage of new information coming out these days. This excru
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ask microsoft... they declare their software "obsolete" 4 years after release...
Which is why my newest machine has Ubuntu instead of obsolete XP. I got tired of my kids machine joining botnets.
This report... (Score:1)
Dear EC (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely, Lawl Kathaxbie.
Open Source Warning (Score:1)
The hazardous effects of using open source software include the following:
Suddenly having the urge to not pay Microsoft for that shit they call an operating system.
Actually being able to communicate with other people not using propritary formats (PDF of open formats included for your benefit) No Virsuses or malware.
Having complete control of your system
Not being able to play games (keep your employees on task)
Hurting cute and innocent companies like Microsoft and Adobe.
Saving money
Ha
Let's Form an Anti-Lobby Group Lobby Group (Score:1)
I can't believe I just said that.
Eck.. One should never search for lobby groups in google.
http://www.circinfo.net/anti_circ.htm [circinfo.net]
All Hail our new Lobby Group overlords
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Page 4, Second Paragraph Heading (Score:2)
Heh, they could at least proofread their fancy letter before sending it.
The telling part is that .... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the public interest......means open to the public to know in such matters as this.
As such it should be made to back fire.
What about Hugo Lueders and Microsoft? (Score:1)
Googling for "Hugo Lueders" -Microsoft gives 663 results
Biased? Com' on!
USA DOD Open Technology Development more than OSS (Score:2)
The USA Congress and GWBush may not understand "Open" economics and basic S&T+R&D to future market products; So, the rest of the world will bury the USA economy in about 10 or 20 years.
Who gives a shit (not polticians, televangelist, fools
Lueders Does Not Get It (Score:2)
The myth of the broken window all over again... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other word this is the myth of the broken windows all over again : this consulting firm speaks of loosing value and strength in the economy, but in reality the money saved from paying the software would have been more likely to be reinvested into something else. And since msot big software as far as I can tell are US centric, many local economy in the world (i.e. : EU) would ON THE CONTRARY benefit by having the money reinvested locally into something else, instead of giving it away to the other side of the atlantic.
Hold on a second (Score:2)
and then we have this
This Thursday evening in London (Score:3, Interesting)
MEETING TO DISCUSS UKUUG INVOLVEMENT IN LOBBYING
All are invited to an informal meeting on
THURSDAY 19 OCTOBER 2006
18:30 - 20:30
Tudor Room, The Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BB
The purposes of the meeting are
Speakers will be Leslie Fletcher and Eddie Bleasdale.
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Also you need to encourage the same from other EU groups you're associated with (e.g. NLUUG)
Surprising? (Score:2)
What European Software industry? (Score:2)
Not a lot more really the rest is service industry installing software made in the US or India.
The biggest system level software suppliers are MySQL and SUSE (sadly now American owned)
both of which are opensource -- so the evidence would favour OpenSource as a model for
growing the undersized european software industry.
Or we could always persuade the French government to pour millions into a version Francais of "YouTube"
"VousEtUneTube.fr".
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