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Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

First, why would you expect Microsoft to not lobby against laws that prevent it from effectively competing?

Second, Why is Microsoft lobbying for non-restrictive purchasing standards bad?

It's very clear to me that this has little to do with weather the competition is FOSS - and more to do if the competition can only be indian made software. Buy $country First laws have long been recognized as anti-competitive, protectionist and generally a cause of increasing acquisition costs.

FOSS of more often then not superior on its merits alone, why does it need a protectionist anti-competitive law to help it compete?

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>FOSS of more often then not superior on its merits alone, why does it need a protectionist anti-competitive law to help it compete?

Because people generally don't choose the superior product?

>FOSS of more often then not superior on its merits alone, why does it need a protectionist anti-competitive law to help it compete?

If proprietary software is more often then not superior on its merits alone, why does it need a protectionist anti-competitive law (Intellectual property, reverse engineering forbidden by EULAs) to help it compete?

FOSS, in the form of the GPL, aggressively uses IP rights (copyright) to further their goals.

What would the phrase "proprietary software" mean if it weren't possible for software to be proprietary?

>First, why would you expect Microsoft to not lobby against laws that prevent it from effectively competing?

I wouldn't expect Microsoft to not lobby because I don't believe their PR that says that they've "changed" and are now "pro open source".

>It's very clear to me that this has little to do with weather the competition is FOSS

So which part of the Indian policy that (briefly) favored open source was not about favoring open source software?

>FOSS of more often then not superior on its merits alone, why does it need a protectionist anti-competitive law to help it compete?

This should be made policy because this is a long-term strategy to prevent lock in, and because it's much harder to bribe a high level official than it is a low level official.

It doesn't seem fair to say that Microsoft is attacking open-source software here. They're just asking not to be shut out. I think any of us would be asking the same if someone were trying to categorically exclude something we'd made.

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