A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows software would raise concerns over fair competition, the world's No. 1 software maker said on Friday.
Japan, the world's second largest economy, made a proposal at an Asian economic summit this week to build an inexpensive and trustworthy open-source operating system that would be based on a system such as Linux, which can be copied and modified freely.
"We'd like to see the market decide who the winners are in the software industry," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's Tokyo-based director for government affairs in Asia, said in a telephone interview. "Governments should not be in the position to decide who the winners are."
Robertson said that Microsoft had a "direct and open line of communication" with Japan's government over software security, standards and development.
Japan's computer and consumer hardware industry -- which includes global heavyweights such as Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial and NEC -- have long searched for an alternative to Windows, which they contend gives the Redmond, Washington-based software company too much control over the personal computer and electronics industry.
Japanese media have reported that the government would spend 1bn yen (£55m) on the project and endorse an open-source forum set up by Japan's electronics makers.
But Japan's trade minister, Takeo Hirunama, took a different tack at the ASEAN economics ministers meeting in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh by raising security concerns over Microsoft's software.
Citing the recent high-profile virus attacks by the Slammer and Blaster worms against Windows-based software, Hiranuma told reporters it would be useful to "pursue a new kind, a different kind, of software code".
Microsoft's Robertson said that all governments and consumers were concerned by security and that it was an industry-wide issue.
"Pointing to a particular software vendor and to a particular software (standard) gets you nowhere," Robertson said.
Robertson said that Microsoft has been working to have Japan participate in its Government Security Program, which gives national governments and international organisations access to Microsoft's source code, the underlying blueprint for its programmes.
China and Taiwan have already signed on to Microsoft's government security initiative, as have Australia, Britain, Russia and NATO.
The Government Security Program, launched in January, aims to address concerns by governments over the reliability and security of Microsoft's software by providing source access as well as technical advice on security.
"We are in discussions with Japan about the (Government Security) programme, and we're eager for them to join the programme," said Robertson.
Asked if the establishment of an open-source initiative by Japan, China and South Korea would raise international trade concerns, Robertson, a former US Trade Representative official, said that it was too early to determine any course of action.
"You would have to look at what a government does, whether it's a protectionist issue," Robertson said, "As with any trade-related issue, Microsoft would look to its peers and colleagues in the information technology community for guidance."
Talkback
Government support is either acquired directly, as is the focus of this article, or indirectly, as is derived by Government sponsorship of target related Government based projects. The latter often leads to patentable derivatives which Governments often negate in their strategic assesment of the values/"true costs" of each project. Organisations, which benefit from such contracts, do not however, misunderstand the long term profitability, -taking patented income and capability growth in to consideration-, of their association with Governments, and the latter's financing of their individual development models/positions.
Mr Robertson, as stated in the article, would like the market to decide, yet in saying this, he fails to accept "Governments as market participants" in their own rights. He also fails to see governments as the largest single acquirers of software, hardware and services in each country. He, in addition to this, casually negates a governments role/responsibilty, as the greatest expenditure body of an economy, in using their expenditure patterns to encourage activities/"develpment of philosophies" that promote the future comptitiveness of their environments.
Much like every participant in any market, Governments have a responsibility to make acquisitions in a manner that is, in the long term, strategically advantageous to them and their clients (their citizens) -all taken in line with their assessment of opportunity costs and, as stated above, the future competitivity of their environments.
This strategy of citing gov intervention as unfair, as Mr Robertson wishes to exercise again, was seen with the noises made when the free Japanese Operating System TRON, began to look as if it was going to gain the support and backing of the Japanese establishment well over a decade ago, threatening a trade war. It worked to suppress TRON then to the benefit of US commercial interests, one wonders if it will work to suppress the Linux momentum now.
We have already seen the nonsense made of the Nationalistic arguments Microsoft reps advanced a year or two ago -i.e. "The adoption of Open Source is fundamentally un-Amarican." As if to say individuals are too stupid to tell the difference between productivity and Nationality. It will be nice to see if the new arguments the organisation produces, for their new round, can be a little more innovative and productivity based -this taken from the purists standpoint of "virtually" stripping gov support from both proprietary and open source products on all levels to identify/"create a more aprorpriate model to assess" real benefits on all levels of economic and, I fearlessly add, political activity.
One can only say to mr Robertson now - "It is unfair, for you or for Microsoft, to expect that the citizens of an independent country, when faced with alternatives, should be made to subject themselves to a system that encourages their participation in the development of counter-beneficial environments that will do no less than encourage the further extraction of Monopoly rents from them, the type of which are outward bound and therefore serve to lessen real productivity and competitivity - (their survival)."
I am sure that mr Robertson knows enough about trade balance issues as well as corporate and national development to understand the above. Since the Organisation he represents has once played the Nationality card, if I may call it that, one is also sure that he is well aware of the manner in which affinity, when related to productivity, helps propel not only competitivity but also future interactivity. However, much as he well knows, Japans future accelerated interactivity with the US, may just not include Microsoft..