Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
{{Cleanup|date=February 2008}}The
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (abbreviated
AdTI) is a
Washington, D.C.–based right-wing
think tank that produces reports and policy research. It is named after the French historian
Alexis de Tocqueville. AdTI's reports are intended primarily to influence public policy debate. Founded in 1988, its president is
Ken Brown and its chairman is
Gregory Fossedal. It has 14 staff researchers.It is 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.
Funding sources
Like most think tanks, AdTI refuses to publicize its backers and donors. Like all non-profit organizations, some of this information is available in its annual filings with the IRS. In 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:
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.
Activities
Microsoft and Linux
The AdTI rose to notoriety with a controversial book that claimed that
Linus Torvalds, creator of
Linux, had plagiarized Linux
source code from Professor
Andrew Tanenbaum (creator of the
MINIX operating system). Both Tanenbaum and independent
source code analysis have refuted the claim. Tanenbaum, an
operating systems theorist, produced an account of how the institution wrote a book about the history of
Unix.
weblinkIt has also published reports attacking Linux and
open source software.{{Fact|date=September 2007}}Microsoft has been one of the Institution's backers for five years, although a Microsoft spokesman said they had not funded any specific research.
weblink Microsoft funds several think tanks, including the
American Enterprise Institute, the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, the
Heritage Foundation and the
Cato Institute.
weblinkweblinkOpen 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 (book)|Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code) (prereleased May 2004, but unreleased
as of March 2008), 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
message board 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." weblinkThe 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.
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
weblink 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
weblink, the
Cooler Heads Coalition weblink,
Consumer Alert weblink,
Heartland Institute weblink weblink and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute weblink weblink weblink.
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.
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 weblink.
Health
The AdTI published
Newt Gingrich's 2003 book,
Saving Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare.
Global warming
AdTI is a member organization of the
Cooler Heads Coalition which asserts that the theory of
global warming is a myth.
Notable members
References
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External links
Media coverage
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