Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, yesterday held private talks in Brussels with Microsoft Corp chair Bill Gates, causing one European campaigner to demand the EC goes public with the contents and results of the meeting. Recently-formed Brussels-based internet-for-the-average-guy campaign group Save The Web said: Save The Web points out that Microsoft has never been in the vanguard of open standards… [we urge] Mr Prodi to pay at least as much attention to the European internet community as to the American Chairman of Microsoft.
Although the EC and Microsoft were not available to comment on the nature of the meeting, at least one report out of Europe suggests that EC information society commissioner Erkki Liikanen was also be in attendance. Liikanen came out last week in favor of Microsoft opening up the source code to Windows in order to help cryptography software suppliers provide more secure systems.
Gates was in Brussels to talk to the Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt. Whatever the matter and outcome of the meeting, we can only hope Gates traveled between the two meetings by car. Last time he was in Brussels, he was famously entarted (French for hit in the face with a cream pie) by Belgian pranster Noel Godin.
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