[vox] [fwd] C-SPAN 2's FCC Interoperability Subcommittee

[Bill Kendrick]

This is kind of fun. :^)


----- Forwarded message from John Conover -----

Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 03:37:43 -0700
From: John Conover
Subject: Re: [svlug] C-SPAN 2's FCC Interoperability Subcommittee


John Conover writes:
> Bill Kendrick writes:
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 02:21:58AM -0700, John Conover wrote:
> > > I just caught the end of it, but one of the panel members (I didn't
> > > catch the name,) was from California that mentioned that Open Source
> > > was the way to solve a lot of the interoperability issues, which was
> > > one of the major problems. He mentioned Open Source about 20 times.
> > 
> > Don't you know, Open Source and open document formats are bad, and will
> > cost us taxpayers lots of money?
> >
> 
> Yea. See: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html, where
> Fox News advises:
> 
>     "Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have
>     been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process
>     for technology services. Agencies can turn to the
>     marketplace-often to small state-based systems integrators-and
>     receive bids for the best solutions at the best price to meet
>     specific needs. The proposed policy throws out this system, and
>     instead makes the blind pre-determined selection of applications
>     using the largely immature, rarely deployed OpenDocument
>     technology."
> 
> essentially advising Massachusetts to continue "competitive,
> merit-based procurement" with a company that was convicted in Federal
> Court of violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sections 1 and 2
> (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft for
> particulars[1],) in 1999.
> 
> Sounds reasonable to me.
> 
>         John
> 
> [1] The US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in United States
> v. Microsoft, and sent the case to the Federal Circuit Appeals Court,
> which did affirm in part the ruling on monopolization-albeit with
> drastically altered scope of liability. But the fact remains,
> Microsoft was convicted of violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act,
> and lost on appeal.
>

Hate to reply to my own message on the list, but Fox News' editor has
disclosed the affiliation of the author of
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html:

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170916,00.html

I guess that makes it all right.

I feel better.

Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies can rest easy and
continue to be "served by a competitive, merit-based procurement
process for technology services."

    John
    
BTW, see: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1618980,00.asp for
particulars of how fortunate "Massachusetts' citizens and government
agencies" really are.

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/