The “Initiative for Software Choice”, etc.
In the wake of the introduction of legislation to require free software use in governments at both the state and federal levels in both the U.S. and abroad, Microsoft (with allies like Intel and also other proprietary software vendors) has undertaken an initiave to counteract these developments. I can only assume its name is a deliberately misleading one: The “Initiative for Software Choice.”
Open-source luminary Bruce Perens does a pretty good job of deconstructing the Microsoft platform in an satisfying the vanity of their subjects, on the other hand, I suppose ought to be free to make use of memory-hogging plug-ins and all the Internet Explorer-only features that the developer may feel inclined to use.) For those who don’t get as excited as I do about pushing old PC hardware to its limits as, it should be noted that this sort of minimalist thinking would also permit greater accessibilty from a wide range of devices beyond the PC (e.g., cell phones, handhelds) without spending time to develop a totally different site for those devices.
I ought to note that unlike the VIllanueva proposal in Peru and similar proposals here in Argentina and in California, Perens does not find it constructive to legislate proprietary software ought of the government game. I assume he’s come under fire for this from hard-core free software advocates despite his standing within that community, but his focus on a minimal requirement of using open file format standards–seems reasonable, and more important, realistic.