This latest blog from Dana Blankenhorn is the silliest thing I have read in a long time. He claims that "Open Source Needs Lobbyists" to defeat the evil proprietary firms in state capitols and Washington. He doesn’t seem to realize that they already exist…lots of them.
I haven’t made any trips to Florida recently, but there are some that would lump me in with these supposed "Men in Black." I lobby on behalf of proprietary and mixed-source companies around the globe. However, we’re never the only ones there. The are always just as many men from Big Blue and friends.
Sun and IBM have spent billions on promoting Linux and ODF, and hundreds of thousands directly lobbying on ODF.
Here are just a few examples:
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In Texas, IBM VP Bob Sutor testified on behalf of ODF
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In Minnesota, Mark Bohannon from SIIA and ODF Alliance Director Marino Marcich testified, and the IBM contract lobbyist participated in the closed door meetings with the bill sponsor.
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In California this week, Piper Cole from Sun, Mark Bohannon from SIIA and Marino Marcich from ODF Alliance all testified; in fact Sun paid for other Sun people to attend to discuss “accessibility issues”.
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And here’s a March 27th article in competitor InfoWorld discussing the ODFAlliance and their succesess!
None of the people listed above flew across the country to testify out of the goodness of their hearts. None of the contract lobbyists did their work for free.
The very fact that an ODF Alliance exists, has offices in the heart of the lobbying world in DC, and has, as a mission statement:
"the ODF Alliance seeks to promote and advance the use of OpenDocument Format (ODF) as the primary document format for governments."
belies the whole premise of this article. Let’s not be naive, there’s big money on the table and big money is here to play. Open Source isn’t just a bunch of hobbyists anymore. It’s supported by some of the largest tech firms in the world, all of which have significant lobbying teams.
Besides, weren’t the Men in Black the good guys??