Bonum Certa Men Certa

Bill Gates' Dad and His Connections with the BSA (Plus Examples from the News)

Bill Gates senior
The lesser known part
of Microsoft (photo from Wikipedia)



Summary: Another example where Gates senior may be clearing legal obstacles for Microsoft and creating some obstacles for Free software

ON SEVERAL occasions in the past month we have given examples where Bill Gates' dad removed legal hurdles for his son [1, 2, 3]. Since the early days of Microsoft, this man has been greasing up politicians behind the scenes and also interacting with people like his now-notorious employee, Jack Abramoff (serving time in jail). Gates senior apparently used him to get cheaper labour for his son.



Having just glanced over at Linux Journal, we found this old article which sheds light on the BSA and its connections to the Gates family. The BSA is responsible and known not only for its direct services to Microsoft but also for its fight against Free software [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], particularly at the political and legal arenas.

Business Software Alliance

Better known as the BSA, this firm is the most formidable opponent of open-source software of which I know. BSA employs many former members of Preston, Gates & Ellis (PG&E), a practice specializing in intellectual property law. Many registered lobbyists in Washington DC work for PG&E and represent Microsoft and the BSA.

In reviewing registered lobbyists in Washington DC, we found employees of PG&E and BSA practicing in the area. They refer to themselves as the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal on-line world. BSA also claims to be the voice of the world's commercial software industry before governments and the global market. The BSA employs highly dedicated and capable people. They believe in their cause and have a track record for getting the job done. Consider BSA to be of the highest professional caliber and experts in copyright law.

Initiative for Software Choice & CompTIA

In August 2002, Microsoft became a member of the Initiative for Software Choice. The ISC has close associations with the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) based in Washington DC. The ISC supports four principles: software should be procured on its merits, the promotion of government funded research, the promotion of interoperability through platform-neutral standards and the maintenance of strong intellectual property protections.

In August 2002, the organization reported it opposed legislation in four countries—Israel, Portugal, Colombia and the Ukraine—that require the use of open-source software in state institutions. I guess they read that Texas was once a country and decided to show up at the hearing.



We are still seeing the BSA nipping at the heels of Free software in European venues. The BSA is lobbying for software patents in Europe and it goes far beyond that. It's a lobbying gun for non-Free software.

A reader suggested that we revisit software licensing now this this article appears about enforcement which sometimes takes people to jail. Other than hunting people down, the BSA is also responsible for propaganda whose purpose is promote the agenda of companies like Microsoft. We'll come to this in a moment. Before we do, since CompTIA gets mentioned in the above article as well, here is a timely mention of CompTIA intercepting yet another open source report in Europe a few years back. The pressure came from Microsoft.

Microsoft leaned on EC to spike open source report



The European Commission has resisted efforts by Microsoft to make it abandon its report into open source software, it was revealed this week. But the EC was swayed into allowing a 10-day period for feedback before completing the report.

Harnessing the opportunity to provide feedback, Microsoft produced 25 pages of arguments as to why the report - which quantified the benefits of open source to European organisations - should be shelved. The software giant also commissioned a respected university academic to back its case and enlisted the help of a trade association, CompTIA.


This is highly relevant to us because it's happening again at this very moment, so we can do something about it.

Going back to the news, here is the BSA doing some more "piracy" propaganda [1, 2, 3] in Asia:

Still, as more Asians have purchased PCs, the size of the software industry's losses to counterfeiting has soared. In 2003, according to the BSA, piracy cost software vendors $7.6 billion in lost sales. By 2007 that number had leaped to $14 billion. In India, the losses grew from just $367 million in 2003 to $2 billion in 2007. In China, they jumped from $3.8 billion to $6.7 billion. With the huge populations of China and India, "even if the piracy rates drop, the losses from piracy grow," says Hardee.


This is PR stunt because Microsoft's actions in Asia speak volumes. There happens to be another piece of shameless deception right now, with Microsoft claiming credit for something called the "Elevate America initiative" -- essentially using a global crisis to make even more money and to spread Microsoft's software and lock-in. Likewise, the Gates family is using deadly disease to make profit.

Finally, according to some widely-circulated reports, Microsoft was "giving" in 2008, but the figures mix together donations of money and software.

In 2007, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) donated $432 million in cash and software.


How much of it was software, which does more harm than good and also increases Microsoft's revenue in the long term? We explained this point in greater depth back in January.

In education, Microsoft is known to be sabotaging migrations to Free software not only by dumping but also by bragging about the imaginary value of software that was not needed in the first place. Catalonia is the most recent example among many more that exist and which we may have covered. Microsoft is doing unethical and potentially illegal things and dares also to claim generosity for it (dumping of software cast as "donations" of software). It's all PR. For those who are not familiar with how it works, the following is required reading:



There is more to gratis software than initially meets the eye.

"That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with)."

"If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA)."

A Memo to Patrick Durusau

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025