Summary: A repeat offender, Microsoft, wants more direct control of government affairs

SHORTLY after Nasscom had opened the national doors for Microsoft to enter [1, 2], this abusive monopolist from the West was taking further steps towards digital colonialism in India. According to the following new report, "This is viewed by many players as a 'back-door’ entry vied by Microsoft."

Microsoft must be going against the interests of the vast majority of this country's population, relying on those fraudulent partners who help Microsoft colonisation in exchange for personal benefits. It's just like British imperialism in India, only many decades later (and in digital form).

Even as advocacy for using open standards for the e-governance programme proposed by the Centre is assuming increasing popularity, there seems to be nothing that is plugging Microsoft’s ambitions.

Reacting to Deccan Herald’s story, dated July 19, 2009, “Rat race begins among vendors for contracts,” the software giant said that being a platform based company, Microsoft has worked with a lot of open source players and is even willing to work with industry opponents to get its hands on the projects. This is viewed by many players as a 'back-door’ entry vied by Microsoft.

As the sole commenter points out, "We should go for Open Source and ditch any monopolistic approach of vendors like Microsoft...Open Source is the future of computing and especially they are being used by so many Governments and companies. The previous excuse and reasons given by vendors towards support and security no longer holds good now. We all know how secure microsoft OSes are considering every now and then out of band patches are released...So much money they charge for such pathetic security of their softwares. OpenSource should be the path taken by Governments simply because they are cost effective, easy integration, and SECURITY!"

“Windows has had remote kill switches for quite some time...”To let a foreign company control computing (including databases) is absolutely insane. It gives Microsoft (and by extension the United States) access to all data in India and it also permits them to disable all the computers in India, in case of a political dispute for example. Windows has had remote kill switches for quite some time [1, 2, 3] (and back doors too). There is nothing which prevents them from being misused for diplomatic reasons, not even legal restrictions. Free software, on the contrary, is under complete control by its user/s.

Speaking of Microsoft's inappropriate interference with government affairs, some time ago we wrote about how Microsoft had used NASA against GNU/Linux. Now, what on Earth [pun not intended] is this? Watch the sponsors and venue. ⬆

Related:

• Microsoft influence in the United States government
• Microsoft influence in the Indian government
• Microsoft influence in Europe
• Microsoft influence in Asia
• Lists of Microsoft- and Gates-Hired Lobbyists in the United States of America
• Details of Microsoft’s Lobbying in Europe