Don't dump MS for free software, ambassador begs Peru

The prospect of Peru's legislators mandating free software for government departments continues to move mountains. First we had Bill Gates' shock donation to the Peruvian president, and now the US ambassador to Peru has written a letter to the president of the Peruvian congress opposing the move, according to Wired.

The text of the letter has fallen into Wired's clutches, apparently, but the ambassador should not be particularly surprised at it being leaked, considering the approximate direction he sent it in. There is no direct evidence in the excerpts published that Microsoft nobbled John Hamilton to do its bidding, but he protests that by excluding proprietary software companies such as Microsoft, Peru would be hurting an industry with the potential to create "15,000 jobs" there.

Presumably he got that number from the local chamber of commerce.

Hamilton, for your information, is a Clinton appointee from 1999, but Peru it would appear does not count as one of the prestige postings reserved for large-scale dispensers of pork. Hamilton is, as you can see here, a career Foreign Service man, and therefore knows what he's doing. Apparently. ®

So what's the issue here? A company sees they may lose business, and makes an effort to continue to sell product.
What would any free-enterprise minded company be expected to do? Funny how no one really complains about the campaign contributions from the Chinese, gifts, etc. but if it's Microsoft, it must be dirty.

Microsoft has been counting on the future business from these countries. So, Microsoft is trying to keep what they view as the "first domino" from falling. So, after this deal, they will likely have to start paying other governments not to mandate or require evaluation first of open source OS's. IE: Linux.

The bottom line is that MS just paid a country not to use Linux. Looks like the beginning of a trend to me because these other countries are going to see MS as someone they can shake down. And they can, because one country just proved ir can be done. KA-CHING!

The reason MS doesn't want the first domino to fall, is that it would be more like the first rock in an avalanch

If a whole govt uses linux, that creates a market for developers of MS-compatable office apps. Once people can get MS-lookalike apps for word-processing, spreadsheet, DB, and presentation-generation, MS has big problems.

You mean more big problems. Just on the desktop OS side, Linux is fairly quietly being adopted by some fairly large companies. The rock is already rolling; the avalanche has begun.

And that doesn't even begin to touch the required restatement of earnings they'll have to make by law on August 15. Although they'll probably be given a pass on that, if history is any guide.

by excluding proprietary software companies such as Microsoft, Peru would be hurting an industry with the potential to create "15,000 jobs" there.

I can understand this. Microsft's software is so bad that they would need to hire that number of admins just to keep systems running with 90% uptime, while with open-source they wouldn't need nearly as many admins to have things go smoothly.

Linux is fine for replacement of UNIX type server machines at a dirt cheap price point. It is not a replacement for a platform that supports sophisticated GUI/multi-media software. I use Windows 2000 tools to develop code that later executes on Linux. The tools are far more mature on Windows. Linux doesn't have anything that compares to fully integrated set of tools like Word, Excel, Project and Power Point. It doesn't have a wide variety of compilers with IDEs. There is a place for both operating systems. It is laughable to see people advocate for one over the other. It's apples and oranges.

This is about MS using a wing of our State Department to try to coerce a foreign nation to do its bidding.

No matter how one slices this, it ain't cool.

IBM is not without lobbying resources in Washington. This will stop tomorrow. The government has no business taking sides in a struggle between two American companies.

I wonder which has the larger presence in Peru... the U.S. Government... or IBM?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

If ya can't beat 'em, bribe 'em!!!