3 ms·
I'm not saying that yours is a bad idea, but the lobby for companies who make the existing software in that space would likely disagree with that position.
by EvanAnderson 6y ago
I'm not saying that yours is a bad idea, but the lobby for companies who make the existing software in that space would likely disagree with that position.
- ddingus 6y agoBig time. In the 00's I was part of an effort to merely get the State government to consider OSS. The lobby was powerful and effective. Despite broad bipartisan support (we did a great job educating legislators on open software and open data and how that resonates with the work of the public) our house speaker blocked it solid. Had there been a vote, it would have passed. Tons of people lobbied that speaker for literally months. Fax, phone calls, visits to her office, the works. 4 guys in expensive, black suits, and some number of zeroes to the right of a donation got it done. For what it's worth, the same group was successful in part of removing that speaker from office. The damage had been done. It was hard to even bring the matter up in committee going forward.
- DesiLurker 6y agowasnt there a similar effort to convert all govt docs to the ODF or something like that. IIRC it was met with an overwhelming opposition from MSFT.
- sitkack 6y agoI too was involved in OSS wrt Government in the early 2000s and Office file formats were a huge moat that prevented a lot of adoption of OSS within government. MS did a really good job of pushing off web technologies as threat to their platform. We are only now getting to where we should have been. Netscape was way too naive and MS saw two or three steps ahead and blocked their move.