WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

[Posted January 17, 2003 by ris]

InfoWorld covers U.S. opposition to a declaration for open source. "A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments, organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ended Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that, among other things, calls for encouraging the development of open-source software. A draft of the declaration had called for open source to be "supported" but was changed after objections from the U.S. government delegation late Tuesday night." Thanks to Magnus Lycka

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Posted Jan 17, 2003 3:43 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Mostly I'm bloody sick of my frikkin' country calling itself "free".

-Rob

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 6:46 UTC (Fri) by ami (guest, #5280) [Link]

I wouldn't get too stressed about this. Developing countries aren't stupid. They say what they have to say in order to please the U.S., but in the end they'll do what they think is in their best interest.

The interesting thing here is that the U.S. felt they it to press the issue. Somebody somewhere is feeling pretty threatened, and putting pressure on/paying off the U.S. government to oppose Open Source. I wonder who that might be :-).

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 7:28 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

This is of course encouraging but OpenSource is a pretty weak term.

Ciaran O'Riordan

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 8:04 UTC (Fri) by beno (guest, #9146) [Link]

Maybe I am missing something here, but what is the U.S. doing in a "... meeting that brought together ASIAN governments..."? (emphasis mine)

Last time I checked, the U.S. were not part of Asia.

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 8:39 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

You're rigth. The US is not commonly considered part of Asia.

However (atleast to an European like myself) it appears that your government sees itself as the "world police" and is of the opinion that the entire world should be run in such a way as to promote US-interests.

I would expect the US-government to send delegates to anywhere where any significant countries debate anything.

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 12:02 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

I would expect the US-government to send delegates to anywhere where any significant countries debate anything.

As a US Citizen,pretty much "Yup". What's more, those "US Interests" aren't what the most naive might think the interests of a democracy might be, i.e. the interests of the people. Rather, those interests are goign to be the interests of the entities who pay the campaign finance bills for the president and for the legislators. Witness, for instance, the US ambassador (or whoever it was) being rushed down to Peru trying to convince them that moving away from Microsoft was a bad idea.

-Rob

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 13:59 UTC (Fri) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link]

The whole thing just measure how weak political represesentatives are
in regard of major economical entities.

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 17, 2003 14:34 UTC (Fri) by brokeninside (guest, #8722) [Link]

Last time I checked, the U.S. were not part of Asia.

The continental United States is indisputedly in North America. Hawaii, US Samoa, Guam, the Midway Islands and other posessions of the US can fairly be said to be part of Asian Pacific region. Hence, the US has a valid interest in attending this conference.

Do you have the same criticism of the delgation from Australia?

WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' (InfoWorld)

Posted Jan 18, 2003 17:16 UTC (Sat) by Penguin_roar (guest, #8885) [Link]

I think its obvious that the US is meddling everywhere to protect their own industries. Sometime in the future this protectionism will give the upper hand to other countries since the US companies just sit back and lets the US gov. take care of business. Its pretty obvious that linux is here to stay and that the battle against it is futile. Considering Microsoft has made their best year ever in an economic slump someone is paying too much for their software no matter how cheap they pretend it is.

Heck, a small country could develop their own friggin office and still have money left compared to what they spend on MS office yearly.

I say lets ignore Microsoft and let them fight a thousand ghosts like they are doing now.