wish i had a clue stick to smack buffet upside the head!

[Evan Leibovitch]

John Van Ostrand wrote:

>My concern with this was that the B&M Gates Foundation would tie microsoft products to the donations. Does anyone know how much of this is happening?
>  
>
If MS or B&G donates to a cause, the software used in the delivery of 
that cause is usually Microsoft because it's donated as part of the 
charitable contribution. (It's also cheaper to provide $X worth of 
software than $X worth of cash.) Use of MS software then tends to spread 
through the recipient organization, beyond the specific program being 
funded, for matters of simplicity. There is not to my knowledge any 
contractual demand that MS be used exclusively; however, orgs that 
receive such benefit are unwilling to do _anything_ that might be 
perceived to annoy or upset their benefactor. Combine this with the fact 
that there is often fierce competition amongst orgs who want the money.

As a result, even orgs who are inclined to support open source have a 
double disincentive to use it anywhere in their organization. The 
availability of (legal) free Microsoft software, together with a 
well-known (and largely accurate) perception that Microsoft and Gates 
don't like open source leads to a self-imposed (rather than explicitly 
forced) embargo. The donors get to say that they do nothing to prevent 
their recipient orgs from using open source, yet none gets used.

This problem is nothing new, and predates the creation of the B&MG 
initiative. I first encountered it within the United Nations Development 
Program. In 2003, the UNDP was quite open source friendly, and started a 
special open source lab and program:
http://www.apdip.net/projects/2003/iosn
In 2004 Microsoft signed a deal with the UNDP offering $1B of support. 
While a lot of that support was in the form of contributed software 
licenses and forgiven piracy, there were also a good amount of computers 
and cash involved.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Jan04/01-23WorldEconomicForumPR.mspx
Almost overnight, support for open source within the UNDP worldwide 
evaporated, without a single formal request coming from Microsoft. The 
IOSN project was maintained, but appeared to evolve into something of a 
rogue. It's certainly underfunded, succeeds largely on the sheer 
willpower of its people, and has been moved from Malaysia (which has a 
very active and government-supported open source movement) to Thailand 
(in which there is some activity but nowhere near like Malaysia's).

In other words, I'm fairly certain that there is no formalized required 
abandonment of open source by orgs receiving Microsoft or Gates money. 
They don't need one. There is certainly an inferred and assumed dislike 
of open source, and people don't want to risk the patronage.

While of course it would be hugely bad press if the foundation were to 
cut off funds from an org using open source, that will never happen. 
Methods of coercion can be subtle enough to be essentially unprovable.

- Evan

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