El Reg is among the first to report:
Microsoft successfully lobbied against a law that would have seen Chile's government adopt open-source software, says Elmostrador, a newspaper in the South American nation.
The publication's report tells the tale of Vlado Mirosevic, a left-leaning politician who is the leader of the Chilean Liberal Party and its only representative in the national parliament.
In April this year, Mirosevic proposed a bill[1] that would have compelled Chile's government agencies to at least consider open-source software. Buying proprietary software would still be possible, once an agency justified the decision.
Elmostrador writes that Mirosevic gathered a decent amount of support by lobbying members from other parties and the bill had prospects of becoming law.
But those members soon found themselves in contact with a Microsoft representative who, the [newspaper] says, lobbied against the bill. Mirosevic soon found his support waning and, when the bill hit the floor of parliament this week, it didn't pass.
He's now rather miffed, because one of his motives was saving Chile some cash. Chile's 2013 government spending was about US$58bn, and Mirosevic says a few hundred million of that goes into government software licenses each year.
There's no suggestion in the Elmostrador story that Microsoft did anything naughty and, like any business, it is entitled to lobby in a democracy.
[1] All content at that site appears to be behind scripts. I don't do scripts.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Horse With Stripes on Saturday August 23 2014, @11:40AM
What is money good for if you can't buy what you want? In this case it's buy government decision makers. I have to assume Microsoft, and very other large corporation, classifies this as a marketing expense because it is money used to generate sales/protect their market share via branding.
I find it appalling that this type of thing happens but it happens everywhere every day. I bet some local company is greasing the wheels of my local government, whose officials weak higher office in the county or the state so they pass they money up the line. Of course they are competing with companies that want to get the attention of state officials who are being "financially encouraged" to remain in office. Oh, the conflicts of interests. This is all just the minor leagues for what happens on the bigger stages of state and federal governments.
Corruption, buying influence, whatever you want to call it has been around for as long as there has been any form of government. At least we can't blame this Microsoft "purchase" on Ballmer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @02:32PM
Lobbying has two meanings depending on which one is on the giving side and which one is on the receiving side, Bribery and Extortion.
(Score: 2) by elf on Saturday August 23 2014, @10:17PM
I agree, the comment about lobbying is ok in a democratic government is complete rubbish. The fact that a corporation can influence people in the way they pass laws is the opposite of democracy. They are effectively skipping the whole "let the people of this country chose who to run the government based on what the candidate believe in" which is what democracy really is.
The word bribery seems to describe things fairly accurately. Corporation pays money to official, official votes the way the corporate want the vote to go.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Saturday August 23 2014, @10:31PM
I hope my meaning wasn't misconstrued. My "it happens everywhere" position was meant convey that it poisons every level of government, not just the federal levels.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday August 23 2014, @03:17PM
Even though the majority of private companies have realized that being tied to a single, closed platform is a bad long term strategy, the government of Canada seem to be heading towards Microsoft in a big way. SharePoint, Dynamic CRM, .NET, etc. MS has been doing a *huge* marketing push it seems. This in the middle of cries for support for multiple platforms, open data, etc. I don't care if a private company does it, but a government doing it is wrong.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:29PM
The Cablegate scandal revealed that back in 2006, USA diplomats were shilling for M$.
USA Gov't lies to Venezuela on behalf of M$ [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [mrpogson.com]
Note: Pogson "improved" his site a while back; the comments are now arranged bottom-to-top chronologically but are still numbered top-to-bottom.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @01:55PM
^This is why we can't have nice things.