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MICROSOFT STEPS ON VETERANS' TOES ONCE
AGAIN --
Microsoft is in hot water again for again taking
the name
of the VA's software for one of its fledgling
products.
Story here...
http://www.theregist
er.co.uk/2008/11/05/microsoft_m_va/
Story below:
-------------------------
Microsoft's 'M' treads on US veterans' toes
Vista all over again
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Microsoft is in hot water again for again taking the name of someone
else's software for one of its fledgling products.
It's emerged Microsoft's M programming language shares the same name as a
30-year-old, open language used by the US Department of Veteran Affairs
(VA) along with tens of thousands of users in medicine and business world
wide. Even the former Soviet Union's iron-fisted rulers and its KGB spooks
used the language.
What is that language? The Massachusetts General Hospital Utility
Multi-Programming System, or MUMPS that officially become just "M" in
1995.
It's the second time Microsoft has employed a name of a piece of
technology already in use at the VA, which runs healthcare, benefits and
services for millions of former US servicemen and women. The VA operates
the open-source Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology
Architecture, or VistA, it developed using M.
Name ringing any bells?
People are understandably angry. One Reg reader contacted us to say
Microsoft should look around before taking another language's name.
Rick Marshall, executive director of the VistA Expertise Network and vice
chair of the MUMPS Development Community, called Microsoft "arrogant" and
"rude". He believed Microsoft could do this because of its size and
because he felt organizations are unlikely to push back.
 Marshall
added, though, while some in the VA and M community are angry he had
little problem with Microsoft co-opting M as it didn't sound particularly
medical, which is MUMPS's claim to fame. "I think the MUMPS name is just
fine," Marshal said.
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Reg M is a codename for its Oslo
declarative language, but - at this point - a final name had not been
picked.
M is an open standard that vendors have implemented to often build closed
systems. M's used in business world-wide but is perhaps best known for its
use in medical systems from the VA to Berlin's German Heart Institute,
which conducts 70 per cent of open-heart surgery in Germany.
M was also employed in the former Soviet Union in machines to elect
members to that country's governing Polit Bureau.
Microsoft has been in trouble over product naming before. Microsoft's
hardware/software-based digital rights management initiative Palladium -
canned long ago - had to be renamed Next Generation Secure Computing Base
after the existence of a similarly named product was discovered. Also,
Microsoft landed in trouble with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) over
Windows Workflow Foundation, which it abbreviated to just WF in
presentations and literature following some heavy phone calls from the
nature conservation organization.
-----
posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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