[PLUG] Oregonian letter, HB 2892

[Ed Sawicki]

On Sat, 2003-05-03 at 14:29, Michael Robinson wrote:
> On Saturday 03 May 2003 01:33 pm, you wrote:
> > Ed Sawicki wrote:
> > > When our Federal government lets us down, our State
> > > governments could step in with a partial remedy but
> > > even a highly diluted remedy (HR2892) was killed -
> > > also by a Republican.
> >
> > It's not dead til it's dead. Accepting their party line only helps make it
> > appear more real. The fat lady has yet to sing.

> There are many Republicans who don't agree with this bill going down.
> Still, what will do mroe is repairing the educational system so that 
> tomorrow's IT people are better able to use OSS or any non Microsoft
> option for that matter.  A very rel problem is that open source is politically
> incorrect where making Republicans out to be open source enemies is
> only going to make it more politically incorrect.  The question of open
> source needs to be depoliticized and made to stand on arguments of
> fact.  The best argument I've heard was that the software industry was
> competitive before the 80's.  The democrats in this state are not saints,
> they gave us doctor assisted suicide, abortion, and Kulongoski.

My message was posted to this list, which is not read by
the general public so I don't think my comments are going
to antagonize Republicans everywhere. 

Facts are facts. In all major battles between corporate 
monopolists and the U.S. government (DOJ and FTC) that
I've paid attention to, it was a Republican administration
that dropped the case, or forgave the crime in some way.
One of the more obvious examples in the computer industry
is IBM (Ronald Regan administration), where the case was
dropped. Now Microsoft (Bush administration), where the
company was convicted but was not punished for the crime.

I don't agree that it should be depoliticized. This is
all about the politics of big business, special interests,
and the politicians that allow corruption to flourish.
Many of us here know that "arguments of fact" don't work
and some of us here have lost our jobs or significant
amounts of work because of this issue.   

This is not the forum for suicide and abortion issues and
they have nothing to do with computer industry monopolies.
Please let's not go off on that tangent.

-- 
Ed Sawicki <ed at alcpress.com>
ALC