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Infy, TCS lock horns with Red Hat over IT patent
,----[ Quote ]
| IT majors like Infosys Technologies Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
| are opposing the open-source community’s demand that the government drop a
| clause in the draft patent examination manual as it gives scope for software
| patenting under the Indian Patent Act of 2003.
|
| The IT majors made their opposition clear at a meeting in Delhi, called by
| the government’s department of industrial policy & promotion on Thursday. The
| dispute has been sparked by the draft manual that will guide patent examiners
| in their interpretation of the Indian Patent (Amendment) Act for software.
| Section 3(K) of the Act clearly says: “A mathematical or business method or a
| computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable.”
`----
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Infy-TCS-lock-horns-with-Red-Hat-over-IT-patent/340200/
Just as a reminder, these are the shills that tried to stuff the committees for
Microsoft OOXML amidst times that charities across the country were seemingly
bribed by Microsoft to lobby. There are an accomplice in Microsoft's OOXML
corruptions. The MD of Microsoft India ran away shortly afterwards [++].
Stakeholders Meeting on the Draft Patent Manual
,----[ Quote ]
| Yesterday, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry hosted a "Stakeholders
| Meeting on the Draft Patent Manual." Around 70 people attended this meeting.
| The audience was a mix of lawyers, industry associations like CII, FICCI etc,
| civil society organizations and industry.
|
| [...]
|
| At this point, the discussion became pretty heated and the chair of the
| meeting decided to call for a separate meeting on software patents. I'll keep
| you updated.
`----
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2008/07/stakeholders-meeting-on-draft-patent.html
They represent other countries, trying to loot this country using monopolies.
Infosys already uses the USPTO for this.
Recent:
[**] Wipro Microsoft alliance is a shame for all Indians – alliance or slavery?
,----[ Quote ]
| The alliance uses Microsoft technologies instead of challenging Gates in his
| own game. Wipro is just a servant of Microsoft facilitating Indian cyber
| slavery under the American corporate banners.
`----
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/19365.asp
[++] Microsoft bails out its Indian managing director
,----[ Quote ]
| Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director of Microsoft India, will leave the company
| as of 30 June. Some media sources cite the Indian ooxml debacle as a reason.
|
| [...]
|
| In relation to the failure of Microsoft India to get a positive vote outcome
| Neelam Dhawan's bail out casts a negative light on the company. If standard
| setting gets performance based and a standard is not let through due to its
| technical merits but the fear of managing staff to lose its position it comes
| at no surprise that the management will fight with all means for the adoption
| of suboptimal solutions. Microsoft India even filed a complaint against the
| standard body No vote that caused the outrage.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-65836/microsoft-bails-out-its-indian-managing-director
Microsoft India MD joins HP
,----[ Quote ]
| In a major setback to IT giant Microsoft, its India Managing Director(MD)
| Neelam Dhawan has decided to call it quits and will join Hewlett-Packard
| (HP).
`----
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3108755.cms
What's up with Microsoft India?
,----[ Quote ]
| The CVP, MD and all her direct reports made this company a miserable place to
| work for! They created a feudal fiefdom for themselves.
`----
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-up-with-microsoft-india.html
Microsoft influencing partner NGOs to support OOXML in India
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML
| specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of
| IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF)
| who fear that the "soft" Indian state may not be able to stand up to
| Microsoft pressure tactics.
`----
http://www.linux.com/feature/128528
Finally, My open letter on OOXML happenings in India
,----[ Quote ]
| 3. My personal anguish.
|
| My first anguish is the way the name of my colleagues and my Institution,
| along with names of several others on the committee LITD 15, have been
| maligned and tarnished by Microsoft. My second anguish is that Microsoft
| persisted in its attempt to pressurize Indian leadership to change the Indian
| stand, in spite of the fact that a due process established by the Government
| had completed its job, recommending no change in the Indian vote. These two
| things, amongst others, have caused me to lose my peace of mind and my sleep
| over last two months. I share my thoughts (which sometimes have been rather
| wild), and my anguish in this section.
|
| [...]
|
| To illustrate how someone could react to this mudslinging by Microsoft, I
| have written a hypothetical complaint titled ‘Microsoft is looting the nation
| in alliance with Indian IT giants'. While constructing this hypothetical
| complaint, I have used what I call the ‘Microsoft patented mud-slinging
| algorithm’. I have included it as a stand alone appendix (Annexure A) to this
| letter. The purpose is to demonstrate that such complaints and counter
| complaints would lead all of us to disaster. This hypothetical counter
| complaint shows Microsoft as working at national and International forums to
| maintain and enhance its monopoly in global markets, and as attempting to
| ensure its monopoly strangle-hold on Indian desktop Market. It also paints
| INFOSYS, TCS, WIPRO and NASSCOM as willfully helping Microsoft in this evil
| design, and thus acting grossly against Indian National interests. The last
| one has hit me very hard emotionally, even though the construction was done
| by myself and it is purely hypothetical. The significant contributions made
| by these organizations to the Indian IT story are well known. The past and
| present leaders of these organizations are icons of modern India. I have the
| privilege of knowing them closely and being counted amongst their friends. I
| am sure that a large number of my countrymen will react very strongly if
| anyone was to really engage in such slander against them. I will be one
| personally eager to counter any such foolish attempts to malign these great
| names. These people and their Institutions are and must be treated with
| genuine respect.
|
| [...]
|
| If no citation from the new standard (as on 20th March 2008) is available
| from these members, should the nation now conclude that these 4 organizations
| deliberately acted against Indian national interests? If there is any
| evidence of support now found to have been given by any one of these 4
| organizations to the efforts of Microsoft to pressurize the Indian Government
| to change our vote, should the nation now conclude that there indeed is
| a ‘secret alliance with Microsoft to loot the country’?
|
| Hard questions friends, with no easy answers.
|
| In conclusion, I will reiterate that my anguish, caused by Microsoft by
| slandering Individuals and organizations represented on committee LITD 15 of
| BIS, runs very very deep.
`----
http://deepakphatak.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-is.html
An Open Letter to LITD15 committee of BIS
,----[ Quote ]
| On 20th March 2008, the LITD15 committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards
| voted against Microsoft's proposed OOXML standard. 29th March 2008 was the
| last date for participating countries to vote on OOXML. In the interval
| between these two dates, Microsoft went to the Prime Minister of India and
| alleged that this committee acted against the national interest. Fortunately,
| the Indian bureaucrats who met the PM did a good job of defending the
| committee's vote against OOXML.
|
| Prof. DB Phatak of IIT Bombay recently wrote a mail to the LITD15 committee
| saying that, "In my opinion, these actions go well beyond the behavioral
| boundaries for a commercial entity, some of these amounting to interfering
| with the governance process of a sovereign country." IIT Bombay was a member
| of the LITD15 committee and Prof. Phatak was part of a four-member team at
| IIT Bombay that did a very intense review of OOXML before the institute voted
| against OOXML. While Prof. Phatak is a great supporter of open source, he
| also has a great reputation for being fair and balanced.
|
| [...]
|
| As a committee member, I would like to place on record my deep disappointment
| at the fact that Microsoft chose to question the decision of this committee
| at the highest office of our country. For over a year, we have reviewed the
| proposed standard with a fine tooth comb. Every opportunity was given to
| Microsoft to put their points across. At every meeting they brought a
| disproportionate number of participants along; some of these participants
| were not even Indian nationals. I think the committee as a whole was very
| courteous in accommodating all this but drew the line when this began to
| detract from the functioning of the committee. The only words that came to my
| mind when I heard that Microsoft's complaint had prompted the Prime Minister
| of my country to review this committee's decision was "stabbed-in-the-back."
| This was a great disservice to this committee and the country and I hope this
| never happens again.
|
| [...]
|
| Standards cannot (and should not) be created in a technical vaccum. Without a
| moral and ethical framework, we cannot create standards that benefit
| humanity. Mahatma Gandhi summed it up best when he said that, “Real swaraj
| will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition
| of capacity by all.” I believe that this committee should be focused solely
| on the user's swaraj (freedom) to encode and decode their data.
`----
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-litd15-committee-of-bis.html
Microsoft wins Open XML vote, frowns at Indian panel
,----[ Quote ]
| Industry experts said they were "unhappy" with the Microsoft which has almost
| accused the committee of being packed with "open document format (ODF)
| supporters".
|
| "I am very upset and uncomfortable with such complaints. In fact, the
| chairperson of the committee (LITD 15) offered to step down over the
| allegation," D.B. Phatak, professor at IIT Mumbai, told DNA Money.
|
| IIT Mumbai is a member of LITD 15, and Phatak was part of the deliberations
| that have been taking place within IIT on the issue.
|
| Phatak said a Microsoft official was asked if it would withdraw the
| complaint, but the company refused as the "complaint was made by some higher
| officer in Microsoft".
|
| Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director of government strategy for Sun
| Microsystems India, a company that has been at loggerheads with Microsoft for
| years, talks in a similar vein.
|
| "I am surprised that such allegations are made against India's top academic
| and government institutions … such allegations lack credibility,'
| Bhattacharya said. Venkatesh Hariharan, co-founder Open Source Foundation of
| India said, "I am just amazed and shocked at the depths to which Microsoft is
| willing to descend."
|
| He said Microsoft's complaint is a "great disservice to the committee, its
| chairperson and the BIS".
`----
http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14636329
OOXML: decision time is nigh
,----[ Quote ]
| Wipro, Infosys and TCS are the three big companies that accept business
| process outsourcing from the American and other markets, hence their vote for
| Microsoft is not a surprise at all. These are companies that maintain the
| status quo, conservative to the core and willing to do the bidding of the
| piper. Nasscom represents the interests of the bigger IT companies and it
| probably had no choice but to fall in line.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17353/1148/
Microsoft files complaint on OOXML vote to apex office and Ministry of Consumer
Affairs
,----[ Quote ]
| At the meeting held on 20th March 2008, we were informed that Microsoft has
| complained to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and to the apex office of the
| country about the constitution of the committee and also cast aspersions on
| the impartiality of the chairperson of LITD15, Mrs. Neeta Verma. The
| chairperson was furious and offered to step down from her post. She pointed
| out that the committee has met numerous times and Microsoft never brought
| this issue up in front of the committee nor did they check the facts with her
| or her organization before complaining to the apex office.
`----
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2008/03/microsoft-files-complaint-on-ooxml-vote.html
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