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Microsoft says “technological freedom” is political manifesto

Microsoft claims that Linux is anti-commercial, and "technological freedom" is …

At the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) last week, Microsoft representatives demanded the removal of references to free software from a critical document about creativity in IT. Known as the Vienna Conclusions, the document evaluates the role of service-oriented business models in the IT industry and covers a number of other relevant topics. Many successful companies that capitalize on Linux and open source technology profit from support services associated with the software rather than the software itself. The original draft of the Vienna Conclusions alluded to the profitability of free software as an example of a successful service-oriented business model. The original draft contained the following statement:


Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs for Microsoft in Austria, posted a blog entry with some revisions. He argues that the reference to free software should be removed because:

the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product.

Lutz also attacks several other passages, and argues that software does not belong in the public domain. He insists that the sentence, "Software must be understood as the cultural technique of a Digital Society" is inappropriate, because he feels that it "poses the notion of everybody should be a kind of software developer," and he argues that the phrase "technological freedom" should be stricken because it represents the "political manifesto of the free software movement." Lutz also insisted upon the removal of references to Linux, because he feels that Linux is "anti-commercial."

FSFE president Georg Greve was outraged by the alteration, and claims that it was made without the knowledge of panel members:

This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets -- which is what Free Software really aims at. ... Given this was a conference with hundreds of high-level participants and discussing a rather hot topic, do you wonder why are there only five entries in this blog? Do you wonder why noone tore the Microsoft propaganda apart? There is an easy answer to this: Noone on the panel ever knew this blog existed. I just learned this now.

Microsoft has been far more agressive than usual lately with its public attacks on open source software. Earlier this month, Microsoft representative Charles Fitzgerald rejected IBM's on-demand business model as "crazy" and dismissed open source enthusiasts as "dorks." Microsoft also continues to assert that the cost of software is not relevant in developing countries in places like western Africa, where the average annual salary is less than the cost of Microsoft Office.

In the final document, the section reads: "Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents," and Lutz denies that the panel was unaware of this revision. Microsoft's position seems to be that serivce-oriented businesses don't necessarily need to distribute content for free, and that the reference to free software in that particular context added unnecessary specificity that decreased the applicability of the document to a broader market.

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Channel Ars Technica