Article from CNET (English)

'Humiliated by the experience [the BSA raid of his business], Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

Article from Washington Post (English)

'..."open-source" software, which relies on collaboration and sharing of computer code rather than traditional for-profit development and distribution of programs, is
capturing the attention of cash-strapped governments and businesses as a less-expensive alternative to commercial products. Open-source software has been embraced by some companies that are building businesses around it. But it is the bane of others, including the industry's most powerful player, Microsoft Corp. The world's largest software maker is lobbying furiously in state, national and international capitals against laws that would promote the consideration or use of open-source software....'

'Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office, said that open-source software runs counter to the
mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights.'

The first article presents a picture of a company which had its eyes forcibly opened to the benefits of OSS by what they felt was an unreasonable enforcement of "Intellectual Property" licensing. By the explanation given in the article, and since they had to pony up $100,000 in fines and legal fees, it is a reasonable assumption to say that they had not purposefully violated their licenses. By visiting the company with armed marshalls and making an example of them, the Business Software Alliance instantly gained an enthusiastic convert to OSS. This will undoubtedly result in others making the same decision, perhaps not what the BSA or Microsoft had intended by the action.

Looking at the second article, it's interesting to note that the author doesn't present some of the more important considerations which individuals, enterprises, and governments have identified as being important to the adoption of OSS. No mention is made of security or local employment, for example. It's also amazing how the US Patent Office has over the last two centuries decided that its mission has changed from promoting innovation in society to enforcing monopolistic practices. This sentence is also telling:

"But open-source is not just a political challenge. It strikes a starkly different, and sometimes opposite, pose from that of traditional capitalist systems."

Although the author doesn't say the word "communist", it's amazing to us that something as laissez-faire in nature as OSS could be associated with being "anti-capitalist". Thus, this article ends up being an example of disinformation in the mass US media; while most people in the US may have heard of Linux and OSS, this article really does not explain many of the real issues, nor present the true nature of OSS.

One of the main purposes of this site is to help our readers transcend the boundaries that may exist in their minds from reading only their own national news media. We hope that by presenting articles from as many different cultures and languages as is feasible, our readers will begin to get a clear picture of what is really going on. The contrasts are striking to us. The chessboard is huge and the moves are complex; but the patterns that are emerging are fascinating, and promise to radically change the balance of power during the coming generation, but perhaps not in the way the players expect.

Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica

Willy Smith