The Economist on Open Source in Government

locarecords.com writes "The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements. Particularly interesting are the issues relating to proprietary software and government and how other countries are mandating free software in government software projects."

Think about the probelms

[Anonymous Coward]

Some foreign national cyber-terrorist could include malicious code in our govermental code. Think of the security implications. Plus, we'd be indirectly supporting the effort of another, possibly communist country. The majority of Microsoft's money comes from the US government, their biggest client. To paraphrase Harry S. Truman, "What's good for Microsoft is good for the United States."

Re: Notice this Zealots

[Black Parrot]

> > That said, open-source is no panacea, and there are many areas where proprietary products are still far superior.

> I wish the zealots would at least concede that much before blasting the horrible , horrible, evil, closed, proprietary software.

OK, consider it conceded. Now can we please get on with the blasting?

Re:Think about the probelms

[Agent Deepshit]

Darrell McBride, we know thats you...Quit it.

Re:Think about the problems

[Pig Hogger]

Some foreign national cyber-terrorist could include malicious code in our govermental code.

Don't forget to think of the children, too!!!

Phew

[tarquin_fim_bim]

"Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons."

All you MS developers are safe now. There'll be no outsourcing there any more.

It wasn't Truman

[Jeremy Erwin]

"What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country." -- Former GM President Charles Erwin Wilson, 1952.

Wilson later became Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense (1953-57). Sometimes a good quotation gets in the way of good history.

Governments Are Wise

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obviously a good thing that governments are mandating the use of OSS. Thus, OSS must be superior. Consider, for example, some technologies that the US government has mandated:

- Ada over all other programming languages
- ISO OSI protocols over the TCP/IP suite
- Interlaced HDTV

An official government stamp of approval on Linux can only be viewed as evidence that it's the best technical solution available.

Re:It wasn't Truman

[Anonymous Struct]

And don't forget, everybody has a share :)

Excellent article

[Anonymous Coward]

The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements.

And by "excellent" you mean pro-open source.