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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, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday May 22 2015, @11:38PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday May 22 2015, @11:38PM (#186709) Homepage Journal

    "You have to be brave."

    Britain held off the NAZIs.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:12AM

    by isostatic (365) on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:12AM (#186747) Journal

    Britain held off the NAZIs.

    Not without help from Poland and members of the commonwealth (mainly NZ and Canada, some Austrailia). Also a dozen French, 10 Irish and even 10 Yanks.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:05AM

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:05AM (#186754) Homepage Journal

      it is not widely understood that Turing didn't exactly crack the enigma, rather he cracked the daily rotor settings.

      the wiring pattern of the rotors was obtained by two polish cryptographers who nabbed an enigma that was left behind at a polish navy base after the germans moved on to russia.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:31AM

        by isostatic (365) on Saturday May 23 2015, @03:31AM (#186759) Journal

        the wiring pattern of the rotors was obtained by two polish cryptographers who nabbed an enigma that was left behind at a polish navy base after the germans moved on to russia.

        No, it was americans! I saw a documentary [wikipedia.org]

      • (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.
        --
        sudo mod me up