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Thanks to Rik for a balanced and useful intervention and to all others
participating. <br><br>
There are lots of people/entities cozying up to M$ - this is part of the
'natural' winner-takes-all dynamics of proprietary standards (early leads
are hard to overcome and can become <i>de facto </i>standards). It is
certainly a conscious part of M$ strategy. <br><br>
From the European perspective, it is interesting that the IE-free
version of Windows required by the settlement with M$ probably would not
work with ODS either. <br><br>
But the bottom line is network externalities: the more who use this
'standard' the more dominant it becomes. This can justify lots of
apparent altruism: giving SW to 'public' organisations, schools etc.;
cooperatively developing new applications for 'worthy' recipients;
endowing higher-education institutions and research; and even turning a
blind eye to 'IPR violations' - as long as the knock-on effects of these
'loss leaders' bring lots of new customers who have to interact with the
recipients of this generosity, it pays for itself.<br><br>
Rik is absolutely right about the values of openness, transparency and
involving users in product development. Perhaps this could be ca concrete
CS recommendation for eGovernment and eParticipation initiatives that use
the Internet.<br><br>
Cheers,<br><br>
J.<br><br>
At 15:42 06/01/2005, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Rik, thanks as always for your
wonderful help "on the ground." Just a comment regarding the UN
agencies making themselves vulnerable to accusations that they are cozy
with Microsoft: In the interest of transparency it might be best to just
acknowledge that they *are* cozied up and cozying up to Microsoft.
Whether or not this accounts for the present problem may be another
question, but as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like
a duck, it's a duck.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br><br>
Lisa<br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Robert, et al,<br><br>
I'm already on this and am bringing some people at the UN in the
loop. I am happy to compile people's feedback and suggestions and
put it to the UN technical people directly.<br><br>
I urge folks for the time being not to start a media-flurry on this
before we get some kind of response from the UN. If they ignore or
dismiss our criticisms then we can start taking to the airwaves. My
guess is that the German coalition folks have already alerted their media
contacts.<br><br>
The truly sad part about this is that if the UN IT people had
beta-released this and asked for volunteers to run it through its paces,
folks would have jumped at the chance to help out. Instead they put out a
product that doesn't work for a large population of users. So they
make themselves vulnerable to criticism and accusations of cozying up to
Microsoft.<br><br>
Rik Panganiban<br><br>
On Jan 6, 2005, at 10:06 AM, Robert Guerra wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">trying to be
productive...<br><br>
Any way we can communicate the results of our "tests" to the
relevant UN Officials so that they can perhaps try to fix it
ASAP.<br><br>
If they can not, then i would suggest that we start the process of
formulating a formal press release to inform the world about the lack of
standards..<br><br>
regards<br><br>
Robert<br><br>
At 3:41 PM +0100 1/6/05, Vittorio Bertola wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Georg C. F. Greve ha
scritto:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> rp> Regards to all and
Happy Transparent and Accessible New Year.<br><br>
I just tried this and had problems actually getting to the
documents,<br>
others have reported similar problems with non-IE browsers on
Windows<br>
and Macintosh. It appears the site is running on Microsoft and is<br>
using Microsoft-only functions for
Javascript.</blockquote></blockquote><br>
--<br>
###<br>
Robert Guerra <rguerra@privaterra.org><br>
Privaterra -
<<a href="http://www.privaterra.org/" eudora="autourl">http://www.privaterra.org</a>><br>
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RIK PANGANIBAN Communications
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