InfoWorld: WSIS Delegates Fail to Agree on Open-Source ‘Support’

“A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments,
organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
ended Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that,
among other things, calls for encouraging the development of
open-source software. A draft of the declaration had called for
open source to be ‘supported’ but was changed after objections from
the U.S. government delegation late Tuesday night.

“The U.S. opposition was largely perceived to be support for its
domestic software companies and in particular Microsoft, said
officials from other governments on the sidelines of the conference
on Wednesday. After a short debate with a number of countries,
including Pakistan, that wanted the original language to remain,
all sides finally reached agreement and the declaration was changed
to read: ‘Development and deployment of open-source software should
be encouraged, as appropriate, as should open standards for ICT
(information and communications technology) networking…'”

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