Summary: Cablegate returns to Techrights in the interest of spreading the truth

OVER the next few days we are going to make an effort to catch up with cables that we know we missed -- notably ones that relate to Free/open source software.

Going a few months back, Alan gave one example from Vietnam and another from Thailand:

I had a bit of a poke about in the newly released Wikileaks diplomatic cables archive looking for interesting stuff and came across a cable from the Chiang Mai Consulate that contains an allegation that the Microsoft Thailand Corporate Affairs Director was explicitly bad mouthing Open Source and being critical of Thailands Creative Economy policy of promoting the use of legal Open Source software instead of using unauthorised copies of proprietary software. The open source community generally doesn’t have this level of access into the heart of government, which is one thing that we have been working to fix in the UK with our friends at Open Forum Europe (who I work for part time). It really is important for the community to support organisations and individuals that can provide a credible voice at a high level and advocate for Open Standards, Free Software (yeah, approximately synonymous with Open Source) and a level playing field through the interoperability of systems and a lack of vendor lock in.

These cables are important because the media probably did not cover this at the time. We are trying to build a decent wiki page on the subject. ⬆