Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (not "institute;" abbreviated AdTI) is a Washington, D.C.-based right-wing commercial think-tank and consultancy that produces reports at the behest of its sponsors.
It is named after the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville. AdTI's reports are intended primarily to influence legislators, and are also sometimes used by newspaper editors and talk show hosts. Founded in 1988, its president is Ken Brown and its chairman is Gregory Fossedal. It has 14 staff researchers.
It is best known for its criticisms of Linux and its work supporting the tobacco industry. Its detractors claim that the AdTI is a freelance "astroturfing" organization and that these reports are written at the behest of its financial backers and various lobbyists.
Contents |
[edit] Funding sources
The AdTI refuses to reveal its backers and funding streams. 2002, Greg Fossedal stated, "it isn't our general policy to discuss who does and doesn't fund de Tocqueville, except in the case of qualified press or public officials who are willing to make symmetrical disclosures." (communication with David Skoll of Roaring Penguin Software)
Ken Brown summarized the Institution's funding policy: "We don't talk about money with anybody ... but we'll accept money from anybody." (LinuxInsider, 19 May 2004)
Brown later denied influence from the Institution's backers: "I publish what I think and that's it. I don't work for anybody's PR machine." (ZDNet, 20 May 2004)
As reported by MediaTransparency, the AdTI's backers from 1988 to 2002 include:
- Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
- John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
- Philip M. McKenna Foundation, Inc.
- Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
- The Carthage Foundation
Projects funded include:
- numerous grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation "to support education-reform research and activities";
- a number of grants to support the Teacher Choice Project;
- $50,000 in 2000 to "support research on teacher unions and education reform" from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation;
- in 1998, $168,750 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation "to support research and writing on new tactics of U.S. progressive movement in the Post-Cold War era";
- A total of $30,000 in 1995 and 1996 from the John M. Olin Foundation for "the Action Plan for Defense Privatization, conducted by the Committee for the Common Defense";
- In 1998 $5,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation to "support promotion for The Democratic Century, a book by Gregory Fossedal."
The Capital Research Center reports funding by the Fannie Mae Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, and the Amoco Foundation.
[edit] Microsoft and Linux
The AdTI rose to notoriety with a controversial book (funded by Microsoft) that claimed that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, had stolen source code from Professor Andrew Tanenbaum.
This claim has been repeatedly refuted by Professor Andrew Tanenbaum and by independent source code analysis. It has also published reports attacking Linux and open source software. Tanenbaum, an operating systems theorist, produced an account of how the institution wrote a book about the history of Unix. [1].
Microsoft has been one of the Institution's backers for five years, although a Microsoft spokesman said they had not funded any specific research [2]. Microsoft funds several think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. [3] [4]
[edit] Open source and Linux
The AdTI is known for publishing a series of studies beginning in 2002 on the theme of intellectual property in the software industry. The Institution's reputation among free software advocates suffered when it emerged that it had obtained funding from Microsoft concurrent with authoring Opening the Open Source Debate (June 2002), a report critical of Microsoft's open-source rivals. This report claimed that open source software was inherently less secure than proprietary software and hence a particular target for terrorists.
These studies culminated in Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code (prereleased May 2004, but unreleased as of November 2004), questioning the generally accepted provenance of Linux and other open source projects, and recommending that government-funded programming should never be licensed under the GNU General Public License but under the BSD license or similar simple permissive licenses.
The book claims that Linus Torvalds used source code taken from Minix, a small Unix-like operating system used in teaching computer science, to create Linux 0.01, on the theory that no mere student could write an entire Unix-like kernel single-handedly — although writing a kernel of similar size and capabilities is a standard part of many computer science degrees. These claims have been seriously questioned, including by many of those quoted in support, such as Andrew S. Tanenbaum, author of Minix; Dennis Ritchie, one of the creators of Unix; and Richard Stallman, leader of the GNU project. Others have said that quotes attributed as being from an "interview with AdTI" were in fact from prerelease papers (Ilkka Tuomi) or from messageboard posts (Charles Mills, Henry Jones). Alexey Toptygin said he had been commissioned by Brown to find similarities between Minix and Linux 0.01 source code, and found no support for the theory that Minix source code had been used to create Linux; this study is not mentioned in the book.
After the technical press gave the book a month of almost universal derision, Microsoft also repudiated it in mid-June, a spokesman calling it "an unhelpful distraction from what matters most — providing the best technology for our customers." (WSJ, 14 June 2004)
Unfazed by the response to Samizdat, the AdTI was preparing a new study in November 2004, tentatively titled Intellectual Property Left, to argue that "the IT industry sector's reluctance to pursue rampant IP infringement against public domain software developers and users is going to precipitate billions of dollars in balance sheet downgrades by Wall Street." [5]
The later papers stand in contrast to the Institution's 2000 paper, The Market Place Should Rule on Technology, which discusses Linux as a direct competitor to Microsoft Windows.
[edit] Tobacco industry work
As part of the 1998 Tobacco Settlement Agreement, the Philip Morris corporation released millions of pages of documents concerning their operations. These detail how, after the Environmental Protection Agency moved in 1993 to have second-hand tobacco smoke declared a carcinogen, Philip Morris hired the AdTI to campaign against the move. This resulted in the 1994 paper Science, Economics, and Environmental Policy: A Critical Examination.
In 1994, part of the Clinton administration's health plan proposed an increase in cigarette sales tax from 24¢ a packet to 99¢ a packet. Merrick Carey, then president of the AdTI, put a plan to Philip Morris whereby, for $30,000 a month, the Institution would conduct a campaign for them. The AdTI presented itself as a "bipartisan" economic think tank presenting an analysis of the Clinton plan, nowhere mentioning they were directly hired by Philip Morris to oppose the tax increase.
Tobaccodocuments.org [6] contains a number of searchable documents produced as court discovery linking AdTI to Lorillard and Phillip Morris corporations. AdTI is linked to Dr. Fred Singer in the tobacco documents [7], the Cooler Heads Coalition [8], Consumer Alert [9], Heartland Institute [10] [11] and the Competitive Enterprise Institute [12] [13] [14].
[edit] Education
The AdTI has produced a considerable number of papers on education policy. It runs a program called the Teacher Choice Project, advocating vouchers for education and marking unions as bad for teachers. Most of these were produced during 2000 and 2001.
[edit] Defense
When the B-2 bomber program was threatened in 1995, the AdTI organised a letter to President Bill Clinton signed by seven former Pentagon chiefs: Dick Cheney, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Harold Brown, James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Melvin Laird [15].
[edit] Health
The AdTI published Newt Gingrich's 2003 book, Saving Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare.
[edit] Global warming
AdTI is a member organization of the Cooler Heads Coalition which asserts that the theory of global warming is a myth- contrary to the position of the great majority of the scientific community.
[edit] External links
- Official home page
- Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (Disinfopedia, Center for Media & Democracy)
- AdTI Funding (Disinfopedia, Center for Media & Democracy)
- Grant data matrix: Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, 1988-2002 (MediaTransparency)
- Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (Capital Research Center)
[edit] AdTI writings
[edit] Tobacco
- Science, Economics, and Environmental Policy: A Critical Examination (11 August 1994)
[edit] Education
- A Fiscal and Public Policy Profile of The American Federation of Teachers (John E. Berthoud, AdTI Issue Brief No. 128, 2 August 1996)
- Rush Limbaugh speaking on his nationally syndicated radio program (radio transcription, Rush Limbaugh, 7 February 2000)
- "The State of American Education — An Opposition Response and School Choice Manifesto" (Richard Armey, House Majority Leader, March 2000)
- Don't let intellectual-property protection slide (9 May 2000)
- Chartering the right course in D.C. Schools (Larry Parker, Letters, Washington Times, 5 March 2001)
- Education standards win (Larry Parker and Gregory Fossedal, Washington Times, 20 March 2001)
- President Stuffs More Into Education's Maw (Gregory Fossedal, Letters, Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2001)
- "There's more than one way to teach" (Donna Garner, Amarillo Globe-News, 26 May 2001)
- Schools plan fails accountability test (Ken Evans, The Columbian, 27 May 2001)
- The Best Gift for Mothers and Fathers (Marilyn Keller Rittmeyer, EducationNews.org, 6 June 2001)
- Why Bush’s School Testing Provisions Are Worth A Fight (Larry Parker, EducationNews.org, August 2001)
- Bush Has a Chance to Lead on Education (Gregory Fossedal, Colorado Springs Gazette, 1 August 2001)
- Timing Probably Key In Education Reform (Larry Parker, Providence Journal, 11 August 2001)
- The Bush education reform: learning from experience (Gregory Fossedal, 14 May 2002)
- Offer school choice to all city children (John O. Norquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 October 2002)
- Bush and Paige: More than "just being there" in Milwaukee (Gregory Fossedal, EducationNews.org, November 2002)
- Leave No Teacher Behind (Jimmy Kilpatrick, EducationNews.org, 20 January 2003)
- Time to focus special education on reading achievement (Jimmy Kilpatrick, EducationNews.org, 17 March 2003)
- Education Debate (September 8, 2000)
[edit] Technology, open source and intellectual property
- The Market Place Should Rule on Technology (23 Feb 2000)
- Open Source Software May Offer Target for Terrorists (press release, 30 May 2002)
- Opening the Open Source Debate (PDF) (June 2002)
- The Bottom Line: Software and copyright (Gregory Fossedal for UPI, 3 October 2003)
- Convergence and the Future of Broadcast Content (PDF) (15 October 2003)
- Outsourcing and The Devaluation of Intellectual Property (Ken Brown, 26 April 2004)
- Outsourcing and the global IP "devaluation" (10 March 2004)
- Patents and the Penguin (28 April 2004)
- AdTI notes recent attacks on web site (press release, 3 June 2004)
- Samizdat's critics ... Brown replies (Ken Brown, 4 June 2004)
[edit] Other
- Afghanistan, Iraqistan: Answerstan, Electionsstan (31 March 2004)
- Gandhi's unpower-grab (Gregory Fossedal, UPI, May 21, 2004)
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Science, Politics and Environmental Policy: A Critical Examination (1994)
- Junking Science to Promote Tobacco (American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 91 No. 11, November 2001)
- The Astroturf de Tocqueville Institute (Tim Lambert, Deltoid Blog, 28 May 2004) (see also: Astroturfing)
- The ADTI-Philip Morris file (document collection)
- Alexis de Tocqueville Institution at SourceWatch
[edit] Opening the Open Source Debate (2002)
- MS-funded think tank propagates open-source lies (Thomas C. Greene, The Register, 10 June 2002)
- "Opening The Open Source Debate" — Is open source insecure? (David F. Skoll, Roaring Penguin Software, Inc.)
- Followup (David F. Skoll)
- Comments on "Opening The Open Source Debate" (PDF) (Julião Duartenn, Security Skill Center, Oblog Software SA)
- Dispelling Myths about the GPL and Free Software (PDF) (John Viega and Bob Fleck, Cyberspace Policy Institute)
- Alexis de Tocqueville Serves Up a Red Herring (Richard Forno, SecurityFocus, 19 June 2002)
- Alarmed: The Open Source (Non-) Debate (Scott Berinato, CSO Online, 20 June 2002)
- Anti-Open Source lobbyists need love too (Robin Miller, Newsforge, 25 Oct 2002)
[edit] AdTI notes recent attacks on web site (2004)
- We Know They Can't Do Research, Now What Else Can't AdTI Do? (Groklaw, 03 June 2004)
[edit] Samizdat's critics ... Brown replies (2004)
- Ken Brown Takes Off the Mask; and a Gilbert & Sullivan Parody (Groklaw, 04 June 2004)
- Rebuttal to Ken Brown (Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 6 June 2004)
- Critique of Ken Brown's response (Ta bú shì dà yú, Kuro5hin.org, 6 June 2004)
[edit] News coverage
- Did MS Pay for Open-Source Scare? (Wired News, 5 June 2002)
- Report Flays Open-Source Licenses (Farhad Manjoo, Wired News, 11 June 2002)
- White Paper Attacks GPL (eWeek, 11 June 2002)
- Think tanks at risk for corruption (Christian Bourge, United Press International, 28 Dec 2002)
- Accusatory Study: Many Open-Sourcers Steal Code (LinuxInsider, 19 May 2004)
- Is Torvalds really the father of Linux? (ZDnet, 19 May 2004)
- Report on Linux origins falls at the starting gate (ZDnet UK, 20 May 2004)
- Tanenbaum Disputes Methods of Controversial Report (LinuxInsider, 21 May 2004)
- ADTI: Open-Sourcers Skirt Copyrights (Lisa Stapleton, LinuxInsider, 16 June 2004)
- Announcement (MP3 of broadcast) (The Linux Show, 13 July 2004)
- ADTI: Ready for Round Three with Open Sourcers (Lisa Stapleton, LinuxInsider, 01 December 2004)
- This article uses content from the SourceWatch article on Alexis de Tocqueville Institution under the terms of the GFDL.
