Association for Competitive Technology
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. ACT was founded in 1998 by independent software developers who were concerned that the Microsoft antitrust case would cause great disruption of the platform for which they wrote software. The organization has evolved to become the leading voice of app developers whose issues primarily involve: .
- A competitive ecosystem in the mobile marketplace providing app developers with the best opportunities;
- Strong support for intellectual property rights;
- To limit government involvement in technology (such as antitrust actions or mandates to use free softwareFree softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
/ open source software instead of proprietary alternatives); and - Concern governance of global internet infrastructure maintain a balance of government and industry interests;
The Association for Competitive Technology has played a prominent role in educating lawmakers on technology issues affecting app developers testifying before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees as well as the House Judiciary and Small Business Committees.
In recent years (circa 2005-2007), ACT lobbied against the Massachusetts endorsement of the OpenDocument
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
standards.
It is sometimes claimed to be a front organization
Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations...
for Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, though it has other large, independent members such as eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, Intel and VeriSign
VeriSign
Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...
.
On March 9, 2006, the President of ACT, Jonathan Zuck wrote an opinion piece which was published on news.com, criticising the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
's plan to fight Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
(DRM) with the new version 3.0 of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
A draft of a European Commission strategy paper on open source software with modifications by ACT's Jonathan Zuck was leaked (via Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
) in February 2009, showing, in the words of Linux Journal
Linux Journal
Linux Journal is a monthly technology magazine published by Belltown Media, Inc. of Houston, Texas. The magazine focuses specifically on Linux, allowing the content to be a highly specialized source of information for open source enthusiasts.-History:...
, "how lobbyists operate in their attempt to neuter threats to their constituencies through the shameless evisceration and outright inversion of content."