This piece of news doesn’t at all alleviate accusations of PTB being anti-Microsoft, but no matter.
Microsoft admitted censoring a document (link to PDF), known as the Vienna Conclusions, presented at the recent UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference from any references to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).
“Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example,” stated the original document, according to the FSFE.
But the final version of the document contains no reference to free software. “Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents,” states the final version of the document.
Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, asked for this section to be deleted as “it contains only a one-sided perspective on the ICT industry.”
“The rationale for this is, that 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,” he added (source)
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) disappointed sentiments on the outcome can be found on their blog, while Lutz’s statements can be found at the conference blog.
Debating over actions like these done by Microsoft are almost always cyclical. Tug a bit of success for software freedom, retaliate with a silent massacre to champion profit-over-empowerment.
