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What's wrong with Nader's Microsoft plan (ZDNet)

[Posted June 6, 2002 by cook]

ZDNet's Dan Farber comments on Ralph Nader's suggestion that Microsoft should release the source code to Office. " Nader even goes so far as to suggest that the federal government buy the code for Microsoft Office outright, and release it into the public domain in order to save the public money and avoid the costly upgrades from Microsoft that are designed to overcome interoperability problems. I wonder what price Gates would put on that software, which has more than a 90 percent market share. "

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Posted Jun 6, 2002 18:54 UTC (Thu) by DeletedUser1644 ((unknown), #1644) [Link]

Ralph, lets all give the taxpayers a break and just recomend a move to Linux and one of the free non proprietary office packages. There is, albeit contrary to popular belief, alternatives to M$ crud.

When did he say bug MS Office?

Posted Jun 7, 2002 11:36 UTC (Fri) by biolo (subscriber, #1731) [Link]

I don't remember him ever suggesting buying MS office itself. What he did suggest was the government investigate whether it was cheaper to buy some software product outright rather than license a competitor. So, maybe they'd ask for a cost for buying MS Office, but they also might investigate buying StarOffice, Wordperfect or something else. Seems to me the hack has just decided to claim he suggested buying MS Office to make Nader look rediculous.

Nader actually seems to get it, which, as an outsider on the US political system seems to be a unique position for a US politician (not that they are any more clueful here in the UK).