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Microsoft Threatened the UK Over Open Standards

posted by janrinok on Friday May 22 2015, @11:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the threatened-or-lobbying? dept.

sigma wrote to tell us of a story that appeared in The Enquirer:

When the UK government announced plans to shift to the .odf Open Document Format, and away from Microsoft's proprietary .doc and .docx formats, Microsoft threatened to move its research facilities out of the UK.

The prime minister's director of strategy at the time, Steve Hilton, said that "Microsoft phoned Conservative MPs with Microsoft R&D facilities in their constituencies and said we will close them down in your constituencies if this goes through" "We just resisted. You have to be brave," Hilton said.

Although I am not a great lover of Microsoft, I'm not sure that this is any different than many other companies who will try to protect their profits - and, arguably, the jobs of their employees - when they can see the potential for the loss of business. But perhaps other companies are a little more subtle - especially when it is obvious that official papers will one day become public knowledge.

[Editor's Comment: This submission has been significantly edited - comment is not attributable to sigma]

[Editor's Comment: Please see public apology regarding this story.]

 
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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:17PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:17PM (#186879) Journal
    The Germans also did a number of things that made it easier to crack. For example, a few stations would always start their messages with the same text, making it easier to check if you'd got the correct decryption settings. After the war, some of the station operators claimed that this was done intentionally to make it easier for the British to intercept the messages, though it's impossible to verify whether this was actually the case or a retroactive justification of incompetence. The decision to enforce a rule that no rotor could be in the same position as it had been the previous day also significantly reduced the search space, though this one seems to have been simple incompetence.
    --
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