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Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week’s UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, the software giant admitted on Friday.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is unhappy that the document was changed and claims that even though it was on the panel discussing the document, it was not made aware of Microsoft’s changes.

The document, known as the Vienna Conclusions, discusses issues around IT and creativity. The original draft of the document discussed how the free software model is changing the way people do business.

“Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example,” stated the original document, according to the FSFE.

But the final version of the document contains no reference to free software. “Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents,” states the final version of the document.

Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, asked for this section to be deleted as “it contains only a one-sided perspective on the ICT industry.”

“The rationale for this is, that the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product,” he added.

Lutz’ comments were posted on a conference blog, but Georg Greve, the president of FSFE, who was involved in drafting that section of the document, claims that no-one on his panel was aware of the blog until last week.

Greve criticised Lutz’ comments as “Microsoft propaganda”.

“This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets � which is what Free Software really aims at,” he said, on his blog.

The paper might have originally described how free software works but what was done clearly shows how proprietary software works.

There were also some DRM remarks inserted. For those of you who are interested in the entire story and its background, here are the links:

• 16 November 2005: The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence
• 22 November 2005: The next Vienna Conclusion: So it WAS Microsoft that asked to delete Free Software
• 22 November 2005: And the price for DRM promotion goes to…
• 23 November 2005: Vienna manipulations in the press
• 25 November 2005: More news about the Vienna Manipulations
• 25 November 2005: Microsofts implementation of democracy

The best overall analysis and description of the situation so far was written by Germanys largest IT news provider, the Heise Verlag. They have the story online in both English and German.