[Ecommerce] WSIS: Delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support'

[Manon Anne Ress]

WSIS: Delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support'
[SNIP]
A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments, 
organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ended 
Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that, among other 
things, calls for encouraging the development of open-source software. A 
draft of the declaration had called for open source to be "supported" 
but was changed after objections from the U.S. government delegation 
late Tuesday night.

The U.S. opposition was largely perceived to be support for its domestic 
software companies and in particular Microsoft Corp., said officials 
from other governments on the sidelines of the conference on Wednesday. 
After a short debate with a number of countries, including Pakistan, 
that wanted the original language to remain, all sides finally reached 
agreement and the declaration was changed to read: "Development and 
deployment of open-source software should be encouraged, as appropriate, 
as should open standards for ICT (information and communications 
technology) networking."
[SNIP]
http://www.idg.net/ic_1020582_9677_1-5043.html
-- 
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176