“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That's 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”

--CIO.com

Summary: A look at Microsoft's manoeuvrings in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and South Africa

MICROSOFT is behaving in a very ugly fashion these days. Yesterday we wrote about the latest from Switzerland and Groklaw has found this article, on which it remarked as follows: "The article in German indicates that Switzerland signed a deal with Microsoft in a private deal, without asking for bids. This is permitted, I gather, in circumstances where the vendor is the only one who offers whatever it is the government wants. But FOSS exists."

Another European country where Microsoft behaves very badly is the Netherlands, which Microsoft threatened to sue for 'daring' to move to Free software (and away from Microsoft). Having tried to buy off the opposition (and probably failed), Microsoft is now taking it all the way to the top. An anonymous reader showed us this report last night.

‘Microsoft lobbyist criticises Amsterdam’

[...]

Recently, Microsoft was sharply criticised by the Amsterdam city council. It appears that Microsoft is now hitting back by running Amsterdam down in the corridors of the European Parliament. Or is it?

Amsterdam wants to lead the way in the introduction of so-called open source software in order to become less dependent on large corporations such as Microsoft. Recently, the company caused irritation by reportedly forcing an unneeded software subscription worth 800,000 euro on the municipality.

This is just business as usual for Microsoft, which lobbies and bribes on a regular basis (Sun too claims that it may be bribing). We've already remarked on the allegation that Microsoft is almost practically paying OEMs to drop GNU/Linux and Groklaw has just found this page.

A monthly allowance will be paid to qualifying teachers for a period of 5 years, renewable every 5 years, upon proof of acquiring the computer.

Pamela labels this "Paid to use Microsoft in South Africa," adding that "If Microsoft keeps paying teachers to use its software and has to pay for their computers too, I think they'll go out of business in no time. Are people not willing to buy Office 2007? And what does it say about Microsoft's alleged commitment to OLPC?" Microsoft goes a long way to sabotage South Africa's migration to GNU/Linux and ODF. It's a targeted attack. ⬆

“There's a lot of Linux out there -- much more than Microsoft generally signals publicly -- and their customers are using it...”

--Paul DeGroot, a Directions On Microsoft analyst