[Office-commits] r9772 - trunk/campaigns/windows7sins

[sysadmin]

Author: www-data
Date: Tue Sep 29 12:13:15 2009
New Revision: 9772

Log:
web commit by peterb

Modified:
   trunk/campaigns/windows7sins/letter-ngo.mdwn

Modified: trunk/campaigns/windows7sins/letter-ngo.mdwn
==============================================================================
--- trunk/campaigns/windows7sins/letter-ngo.mdwn        Tue Sep 29 11:02:28 
2009        (r9771)
+++ trunk/campaigns/windows7sins/letter-ngo.mdwn        Tue Sep 29 12:13:15 
2009        (r9772)
@@ -2,81 +2,75 @@
 
 ## Re: Important notice regarding impending lack of privacy, freedom and 
security from Microsoft Corporation.
 
-As a decision maker within your organization, you undoubtedly strive
-to make choices that seek to improve the working lives of your
-employees, enhance the relationship you have with your stakeholders
-and potential customers and secure the independence and freedom for
-your organization to operate.
-
-For many years, organizations like yours have relied on Microsoft and
-the Windows operating system, and because they threaten to stop
-supporting older versions of Windows in the long-term, and because
-their system is proprietary (not free/libre), you are dependent on
-them to provide regular security updates and fixes. With the threat to
-withdraw their support, they try to strong-arm you into adopting new
-versions of their software even when you don't need them and may have
-a negative consequence to your ability to operate effectively, once
-again abusing its monopoly position, explicitly inducing vendor
-lock-in.
+Dear _
+
+Re: Important notice regarding impending lack of privacy, freedom and
+security from Microsoft Corporation.
+
+As a decision maker within your organization, you undoubtedly strive to
+make choices that seek to improve the working lives of your employees,
+enhance the relationship you have with your stakeholders and potential
+customers and secure the independence and freedom for your organization
+to achieve its mission.
+
+For many years, charities and not-for-profit organizations like yours
+have relied on Microsoft and the Windows operating system, and because
+they threaten to stop supporting older versions of Windows in the
+long-term, and because their system is proprietary (not free/libre), you
+are dependent on them to provide regular security updates and fixes.
+Threatening to withdraw their support, they abuse their monopoly
+position to strong-arm you into adopting new versions of their software,
+even when you don't need the new "features" and even when updating
+negatively affects your ability to operate.
+
+The dependency of organziations working for social change and improvement on 
software owned and exclusively controlled by Microsoft is leading society into 
an era of digital restrictions. Microsoft Windows was engineered from the 
ground up as a Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and Treacherous Computing 
(TC) platform. Microsoft hides these defects under more benign-sounding names 
like "Digital Rights Management" and "Trusted Computing" -- the fact is that 
Windows is designed to monitor what people do, and in particular to limit what 
they can do with digital media files.
 
 As with Windows Vista, Windows 7 represents Microsoft's continued
-attacks against the security, privacy and freedom of your
-organization, are no mistake. Microsoft has a history of manipulating
-computer manufacturers into installing its products onto the computers
-you purchase.
+attacks against the security, privacy and freedom of your organization,
+are no mistake. Microsoft has a history of manipulating computer
+manufacturers into installing its products onto the computers you purchase.
 
-With its most recent actions, it further threatens computing standards
-by polluting and perverting the OpenDocument standard with its own
+With its most recent actions, it threatened computing standards by
+polluting and perverting the OpenDocument standard with its own
 XML-based file format.
 
-Because of Microsoft, many decision makers in America are now wholly
-dependent on the Windows operating system for their business computing.
+Because of Microsoft, many decision makers in the not-for-profit sector
+are wholly dependent on the Windows operating system for their business
+computing.
 
 **The root cause of this dependency is proprietary software (not
 free/libre) and with the release of Windows 7, you have an opportunity
 to break your organization's dependency on it.**
 
-**Free software is about freedom, and not price.** Free software is
-software that you can use and adapt independent of any one vendor,
-such as the GNU/Linux operating system or the business productivity
-suite OpenOffice.org. Free software provides all of the freedoms
-Microsoft tries to deny, and is therefore better in all areas:
-security, accountability and monetary cost. GNU/Linux and
-OpenOffice.org are available from numerous vendors ensuring
-competition for your patronage and your freedom to change supplier.
-
-Microsoft's recent 10-K reports (June 30th, 2009) speak of free
-software and tell a similar story:
-
->"The OpenOffice.org project provides a freely downloadable
->cross-platform application that also has been adapted by various
->commercial software vendors to sell under their brands, including
->IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems."
-
->"Despite these efforts, actual or perceived security vulnerabilities
->in our products could lead some customers to seek to return products,
->to reduce or delay future purchases, or to use competing products."
+Free software is about freedom, and not price. Free software is software
+that you can use and adapt independent of any one vendor, such as the
+GNU/Linux operating system or the business productivity suite
+OpenOffice.org. Free software provides all of the freedoms Microsoft
+tries to deny, and is therefore better in all areas: security,
+accountability and monetary cost. GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org are
+available from numerous vendors ensuring competition for your patronage
+and your freedom to change supplier.
 
 Free software is more secure because you and the wider community are
-independently able to read the source code of and customize any
-program you use in your infrastructure. It saves you from relying on a
-secretive third party, and the public availability of free software
-code means that many qualified eyeballs, the security experts and
-researchers around the world, are continually studying and reporting
-on its integrity.
+independently able to read the source code of and customize any program
+you use in your infrastructure. It saves you from relying on a secretive
+third party, and the public availability of free software code means
+that many qualified eyeballs, the security experts and researchers
+around the world, are continually studying and reporting on its integrity.
 
 Replacing all your desktop systems with GNU/Linux will give you
 independence from Microsoft, access to thousands of free software
-applications, and help break the social ill of proprietary
-software. Thousands of organizations have already moved to free
-software. What's your organizational plan?
+applications, and help break the social ill of proprietary software.
+Thousands of organizations have already moved to free software. What's
+your organizational plan?
 
-**Investing in Microsoft's Windows 7 will only get you more stuck and
-more dependent on them.**
+**Investing in Microsoft's Windows 7 will only get you more stuck and more
+dependent on them.**
 
 Take the next step -- evaluate your organization's opportunity to use
 free software -- and sign up for regular announcements on making the
-move away from Windows and to receive information about the work of
-the Free Software Foundation: <http://windows7sins.org/signup>.
+move away from Windows and to receive information about the work of the
+Free Software Foundation: http://windows7sins.org/signup.
+