The Economist on Open Source in Government 331
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."
Economy 101: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Economy 101: (Score:5, Insightful)
well put. i am tired of hearing that capitalism is based on competition and risk. it isn't. capitalism is based on mitigating risk as much as possible and eliminating the competition if feasible. all capitalist systems tend towards monopolism naturally.
Re:Economy 101: (Score:2)
The zero-sum games balance out in the long run.
While the trend of world governments away from MS is alarming, particularly if there is a lot of MSFT in your portfolio, it really is a cause of rejoicing for the rest of us.
The death of the 800 pound gorilla will foment a golden age of IT employment. Somebody has to figure out what to do with the bazillion different configurations that are going to come out of all this.
Massive Shift! Multi-lateral
Re:Economy 101: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Economy 101: (Score:4, Interesting)
We are not supposed to base analyses of communism on failed models such as the Soviet model. Why then do you think it is any better to base an attack on a semi-failed model of US capitalism? Over the past 200 years, there have been many well-regarded economic analyses that show that only a few markets lead to a single player. Even in those cases, it is unlikely to last except when there is government support. If there is government support (and the US gov't buying tons of, say, MS operating systems IS support) you aren't talking about capitalism. You are talking of a failed attempt at capitalism.
Re:Economy 101: (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I'm more Libertarian than that. I hold that the only power the State should have over monopolies is to correct it's mistake that lead to it. For example in Microsoft's case the government should adopt a pure POSIX requirement in government purchasing. That and an open document interchange format would level the playing field without undue meddling in the marketplace. All the state would be doing is ceasing to assist the monopolist by using it's influence over it's subjects[1] to enforce the monopoly.
[1] Free people are citizens, unfree ones are subjects. We stopped being a Republic over a century ago.
Re:Economy 101: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like a true ignorant rightie.
Blaming the MS monopoly or other monopolies for that matter (in Sweden there is a sugar monopoly) on the state, is so dumb my eyes hurt.
Re:Economy 101: (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Think about the probelms (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Think about the probelms (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think about the problems (Score:3, Funny)
It wasn't Truman (Score:5, Funny)
Wilson later became Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense (1953-57). Sometimes a good quotation gets in the way of good history.
Re:It wasn't Truman (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Those damned commies (Score:3, Insightful)
Shit, so much for using Linux. Damned scandanavian socialist pinko bastards are just taking over the world. First they gave us reliable celluar phones, then reliable OS kernels. If we don't stop them, they might bring us other scourges like affordable healthcare and pensions. They must be stopped.
Next thing you know will be trading with China. Oh, wait... In other news, the Senate just voted to allow Americans to travel
Open the document formats (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open the document formats (Score:4, Informative)
I'm glad that Opera, Mozilla...etc,etc,etc and Apache server kept Microsoft from controlling the HTML standards completely!!
Re:Open the document formats (Score:2)
Apache, maybe (although I have no idea what Apache has to do with HTML), but Opera and Mozilla? Are you fucking kidding? With something along the lines of 3% usage, how can you say they've had *anything* to do with influencing standards? That's insane.
Re:Open the document formats (Score:2)
As far as the other browsers being such a small part of the market, their share will only grow as more people use Linux and OS X. Microsoft can make IE as proprietary as they want, but it won't matter at all if Apache is delivering the content.
Re:Open the document formats (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Open the document formats (Score:4, Insightful)
No, Apache is not content-centric. In simple terms, it's a "file fetcher". It speaks HTTP. Apache delivers what ever "content" it is requested to [GET | POST | PUT] -- if it deems it a legitimate request.
What has helped keep the Internet out of monopolistic harm's way has been the influence of multiple, larger forces: AOL/Time/Warner, educational institutions, govenment organizations, standards groups, etc.
Microsoft may be the largest software entity in terms of revenue, but it is not the largest entity in terms of influence.
Thank the gods for that!
Re:Open the document formats (Score:5, Insightful)
They incorporated all sorts of browser specific code that only works on IE in the hopes that they could curtail the HTML standard into their own bastardised version of it.
Thanks to Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror we didnt completely go down that road.
Re:Open the document formats (Score:3, Insightful)
an open documents format would be suicide for company like Microsoft.
In the short term, Microsoft generates lock-in and better profits with their proprietary file formats. In the long run, they are their worst enemy. Notice that PDF, as a format, is 100% backward compatible in that you can load EVERY PDF document ever made with current generation PDF viewers. With Word, there are a significant number of documents from old versions of the software that will not load in current versions.
Companies and
Re:Open the document formats (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way to avoid that mess is real live competition. Code escrow is essentially dead competition with a bunch of buts and maybes thrown in.
Note that PDF is not just Adobe. There's also ghostscript and maybe others. This makes PDF a safe format to store stuff in so that you can recover it at some much later point in time. It will be better and easier to recover if Adobe is still around, but regardless of Adobe's survival and anything that Adobe does or does not do, those documents will still be readable 10, 20, 50 years from now.
AutoDesk is much the same in that ALL of any
Re:Open the document formats (Score:2)
Re:Open the document formats (Score:2, Interesting)
Just speculation, though.
Time for a new argument! (Score:2)
If you're using MS Office XP, imagine what the guy with Office 97 sees, or even Office 2000. Not pretty, too much of the time! Same is true going the other direction, version-wise.
The same may become true of OpenOffice's legacy file formats, as well, some day. Who knows. The point i
Re:Open the document formats (Score:5, Insightful)
In another post, I stated that I did not want to see a mandate of open source software, but a mandate that I could live with and see the benefits of would be exactly this, a mandate that document standards (and, I would add, communications standards) be open.
Unlike the mandate of open source, a mandate of open standards would not be open to the risk of a legally enforced monopoly. Quite the contrary, it would make it much more difficult for a monopoly to be established. Anyone could implement the standard, whether proprietary or open source. Then the consumer could be left with a clear choice. With no vendor lock-in, the playing field would be truly level.
Mainstream Gets It (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just as easy to lie as to tell the truth. What's hard is keeping the lie standing long enough to fool your target. The truth takes less energy to maintain.
Re:Mainstream Gets It (Score:2)
Re:Mainstream Gets It (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen these issues well reported in the nerd community, but this is the first time I've read it in The Economist. Their circulation, shall we say, differs substantially from the user list at Slashdot. I think the ideas carry even more weight with decision makers in government and elsewhere when a mainstream publication like the Economist publishes them. And that, I think, is bad news for Microsoft.
Economist starts to get it (Score:2)
I think of them pretty highly when they're talking about the economy and politics. In fact it's ha
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many businesses behind the open source movement: Red Hat, IBM, Sun. Don't doubt that they aren't competing just as hard for the same contracts. And open source has a big advantage over Microsoft - the number of vocal advocates that are willing to promote it without payment. In fact, you'll find many of them here on Slashdot.
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Something of a mixed blessing, I think.
Damn, it feels good to be a gangster (Score:5, Interesting)
The part of me that says "I told you so" has been informed by recent experiences with managment/executives in our small business. They LOVE the fact that we run Linux on everything (well, there's a couple of BSD and Windows machines where we need them) and they never hesitate to brag about it to clients. They love feeling ahead of the curve.
The surprised part of me read the article in the WSJ last month (on the SCO thing) that warned the "Linux crunchies" to be wary of SCO's ability to win scummy IP lawsuits. The article betrayed a complete lack of understanding of what the "Open-Source community" is (to the extent that it's anything at all). And the same execs that love having Slackware stickers on everything need to be reminded during every internal licensing audit that GNU/Linux IS free as in beer, too.
They love it, but they don't get it. Makes me a little worried, sometimes, where they'll want to take it.
Re:Damn, it feels good to be a gangster (Score:2)
I have experienced the same things. Management initially did'nt belive in Linux, we (as in consulting) convinced them into testing it for some tasks like web servers, DNS, firewall, proxy.
Management love it because, quote: "Linux rocks". Its free (as in management-no-pay-free) and stable.
But some of them never got the concept behind Linux. GNU? Open source/free software? Freedom to change the code?
Closed format (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Closed format (Score:2, Insightful)
This is an important issue, from a political standpoint. Instead of the government sending their money to Microsoft, which would just be a net loss, they can spend it in the local economy and provide jobs and incomes to local workers. This not only helps politicians stay in office, but can also help create local software industries and development in undeveloped countries. A feedback loop is the result,
Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments want the freedom to set their own technology course, not be dependent upon a proprietary software company that is beholden first of all to its shareholders. Governments want the security of knowing precisely what their machines are running on, by checking the code themselves. Governments want the abililty to set their own upgrade schedule, not wait until a company tells them the new version is ready. Governments want the ability to squash bugs immediately, not just when a company decides that bug is worth fixing instead of just adding new features.
Microsoft is so focused on winning the bottom line that they don't seem to have caught on to the biggest appeal of FOSS: Not free as in cost, but free as in speech. It's a principle that individuals find appealing, and now governments are finding that this freedom works for them as well. So no matter what Microsoft does, they can never compete on those terms. It's a principle now. Game over.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
We use GNU/Linux at work because it works really well for the small-to-medium environment we have. There are a gazillion more choices with Linux than with MS, and it's rare (in my experience, anyway) to find any specific apps at this level where OS can't do it better or equally well.
Open source software (in our environment, for the tasks we have, and as we use it) installs fast, it's user friendly once you get to know it, and there's no license management, vendor contracts, or other ancillary bullshit to make headaches. It's just so simple, so easy, and it works so well.
That's about the money, BTW, because time is money. GNU/Linux is a cheaper, better alternative to MS, and that's why we use it.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
This is fine - private institutions can do whatever they want.
However, governments cannot do whatever they want. They're spending our money.
Let's say the state needs some program to perform a specific function. Say, they need a complex statistical analysis program to compile something out of census data. Let's say they have two choices: they can write their own program (and then open up
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
So judging by their responses, I'd say Microsoft "gets it" completely. They are perhaps the most clever, and ruthless, practicioners of marketing the world has ever seen. Underestimate them at your peril!
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
Microsoft is so focused on winning the bottom line that they don't seem to have caught on to the biggest appeal of FOSS: Not free as in cost, but free as in speech.
Nahh, they get it. They're smart people, and it's pretty obvious. But they really have no response to it, so they're doing what they can. They're trying not to lose on price, they're FUDding in several directions (security, IP [e.g. SCO], economic impact, TCO, etc.), and they're doing their shared source thing. None of that addresses this
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Do tell. In fact, you have no idea what I do for a living, and your assumptions are laughable from where I am sitting. In fact, "free as in freedom" is directly applicable to the bottom line when you can control the destiny of the software your business depends on. While Microsoft tells you where you are going today, those who control their own software get to make that business decision themselves.
And THAT is what helps you pay your bills.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly what controlling destiny means. It's not just an obi wan kenobi thing you know... And you might not be a programmer but getting source code and being able to tweak it should be HIGH on your list if you're in any tech business.
I'm glad the founding fathers thought a little different. Or did they have excess disposable income that they created such convenient constitutional freedoms?
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Government must consider its responsibility to the people - locking its data in proprietary formats doesn't meet that responsibility. Heck, even if OSS winds up costing more than proprietary solutions, it's the right thing for government to do, since publicly-owned information will be available long after anyone can get their hands on a copy of some long-defunct proprietary software.
The other point the article made was that this trend in government could trigger a trend in business, since there's a huge private sector that serves government.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
No, YOU don't get it (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
This can even happen in the Linux world (with a lot of people complaining about RH's updates policy, when they're happily running R
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
make
make install
and we're updated. In linux you don't depend on a vendor, you depend on the community to fix stuff. They've never failed us.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
And from the sounds of it, neither do you - at least not a successful one.
Principles like "free as in freedom" don't come into play when you're talking about the bottom line.
They should. Really.
That's a very, very naive viewpoint.
Yours, or his? Your viewpoint is so totally closed-minded it's unbelievable.
I don't give a flying shit about "free as in freedom" when I have bills to pay
You should. If your business uses computers, then you should care very much
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
No, YOU don't get it. You obviously don't run a business. Principles like "free as in freedom" don't come into play when you're talking about the bottom line.
You're offtopic. We're talking about government, not business, and government does have priorities beyond the "bottom line" (which governments don't even *have*, since the phrase refers to net earnings, and governments aren't profit-generating entities).
Continuing your off-topic direction, I also disagree that businesses find no value in avoiding lock-in, and the freedom to find a new "vendor" at any moment is a direct effect of the "free as in freedom" principle, even if CIOs won't typically recognize the connection. Some other salutary effects of freedom on the bottom line are freedom from BSA audits, elimination of the overhead of managing licenses and the ability to get critical defects corrected on your schedule, not the supplier's.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
They do when the proprietary alternative forces you into a licensing plan and is structured around planned obsolescence. Additionally, a Microsoft installation almost by definition forces adoption of Microsoft products by peripherals, e.g. the poor suckers like me who have to read the Word documents that they receive. Given that Microsoft forces homogeneity, "freedom" may be very valuable indeed.
Perhaps
Bass-ackwards thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
An understanding of customer needs.
Exactly why governments are gravitating towards open-source, according to the article. They can tailour the code to suit their needs, instead of expressing thier needs to a company and then waiting for the product.
Phew (Score:5, Funny)
All you MS developers are safe now. There'll be no outsourcing there any more.
This article isn't really insightful, more... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what's more telling is that it is sitting there in the Economist. Now you just have to wait for it to show up in Business Week as an editorial piece, and then It Must Be True, at least to managerial types of various calibers.
The Economist has this characterization of being for people who have their finger on the pulse of things; who are levelheaded and are already in the know, so it may sort of be preaching to the choir. It's pretty spin free, so that awkward quote from the Microsoft rep "being customer-focused" sort of stands out, and I think that was intentional.
Microsoft doesn't customer-focus unless you're entering a partnership agreement with them. Otherwise your wants and needs are averaged out across the board and shipped in a Service Pack. Meanwhile the article puts that quote agaisnt the backdrop of how open-source is being chosen precisely because it's easy to tailor for what you need.
And you don't have to be a slashdotter to appreciate that irony. It's all right there.
Who cares... you'll only end up helping open soure (Score:3, Interesting)
The same will be true of Microsoft... the more they attack open source software, they will undermine their own monopoly. This could end up causing a huge draw towards open source. Just like the RIAA they could have chose to embrace new technology (and ways of thinking), Microsoft could have embraced open source. Given grants to developers and kept their own business alive by forever by making good interfaces to those programs (after all, it's what they're good at). But instead, like the RIAA, they chose to go on the offensive and in the end it will kill their business if they don't change.
So I say, bring it on Microsoft! You're only ensuring that in the future, with those tactics, Open Source will dominate the computer world, just like P2P is beginning to dominate the music distribution world.
Re:Who cares... you'll only end up helping open so (Score:2)
I wonder if Microsoft's big "win" in the antitrust case isn't backfiring? Sure, Microsoft got off practically scott-free, but this showed the world that the U.S. government won't control it's unruly child. I think other countries now realize that they have to pay more attention to protecting their own interests because the U.S. goverment sure isn't going to.
MS in Denial (Score:5, Insightful)
They changed the world, but unfortunately, they can't change themselves and herein lies the biggest of their problems.
The last statement in the article "But the signs are that many of them have already made up their minds." is very telling. Once you have known MS's past behavior, you know why they made up their minds.
Better link to the article (Score:2)
The original [economist.com] link in the /. story goes to a page with some ad(s), however, the ads never materialize from the 3rd party server, which blocks the story from being shown at all! Control that ad server and censor what The Economist publishes on the web ;-). Smart people use CSS [csszengarden.com] instead, not HTML tables.
The Unnoticed Contradiction? (Score:5, Interesting)
More strikingly, Microsoft has been imitating the ways of the open-source "community". Last year, the firm launched a "shared source" initiative that allows certain approved governments and large corporate clients to gain access to most of the Windows software code, though not to modify it. This is intended, in part, to assuage the fears of foreign governments that Windows might contain secret security backdoors.
So, they're saying that the openness of the code makes it less secure and vulnerable to terrorism, while at the same time opening their source to prove that it isn't secure... If they willingly admit that open code can be verified as more secure, how can they accuse Open Source software as being inherently less secure because it is open? And how come nobody calls them on that?
Re:The Unnoticed Contradiction? (Score:2)
Re:The Unnoticed Contradiction? (Score:2)
While this, here in Brazil... (Score:4, Informative)
Windows to Linux 80% of all computers in state institutions and state-owned
businesses, informed the daily newspaper "Valor". This will be a gradual
migration, that will begin with a pilot project in one ministry and which will
be completed over a period of three years, according to official sources cited
by the financial daily.
The goal of the migration is to save money by finding alternatives to
expensive proprietary licenses. Highlighting the gradual phase-in approach
that the Brazilian government has adopted, Sergio Amadeu de Silveira, the
president of the National Institute of Information Technology, stated that "We
are not just going to do a hasty migration". He proceeded to say that "our
main concern is the security and the trust of our citizens. The biggest
resistance to any change comes from the existing cultural inertia".
The government, De Silveira explained, created two weeks ago the "Chamber for
the Implementation of Software Libre" to pave the way for the upcoming
migration.
A small part of the 2,095 million reals (about USD $700 million) that the
Brazilian government budgeted for information technology spending goes to
Microsoft, owner of the Windows OS. The government's decision to adopt Linux,
according to De Silveira, will boost the popularity of the operating system
among businesses and consumers. Moreover, it will foster the production of
local software and "democratize access to knowledge", said De Silveira.
Open source anti-competitive? I think not (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft thinks open source is anti-competitive? That's certainly not the case. There are multiple vendors of Linux, including big players like IBM, Novell, Redhat, SGI, Sun, and SuSE. And there are multitudes of small players. And if Linux isn't the best for you, there are other fully interoperable alternatives such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD that are open source, and still more like AIX and Solaris, that are proprietary. Looks like plenty of competition to me.
The problem is Microsoft doesn't want to be in a posititon of having to choose between losing sales or losing a lock on customers. Even if Microsoft were to have been an early adopter of Linux, they would never be able to gain a total market domination in it. And they know this. Microsoft's big fear is having to scale back to what a competitive market really means.
Governments Are Wise (Score:5, Funny)
- 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:Governments Are Wise (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, there have been very few cases of governments mandating linux or any OSS. Rather, most of the stories have been about governments declaring that such software will be considered. This is something very different.
And one could argue that the world is in a sad state when we need laws requiring that governments consider more than just one or two products. But fact is, we do need this, or in mo
Ahem, Microsoft is NOT Free Market !!! (Score:3, Informative)
Well now we are entering into the information age, and copyrights are looking far more like an untenable and eternally unenforcable restriction every day and less like a property right every day. They are not about property, commerce, freedom, or markets - but controll, and so is Microsoft and the other's like them such as the RIAA who have held themselves accountable to the same forces.
Re:Ahem, Microsoft is NOT Free Market !!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ahem, Microsoft is NOT Free Market !!! (Score:3, Insightful)
The flaw with your argument is the assumption that rights, especially property rights, come about because of government, or derive from the consent of the governed. This is not true, the only thing that derives from the consent of the governed is the right to govern, otherwise the entire purpose of government is to secure rights that already exist independently of government and independently of social opinions. It is bacially a clever way of saying that what is right and wrong, good and bad, property and
Mixed feelings (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as an advocate as I am for open source software, and a supporter of free software though not an outright fanatic about it, I have mixed feelings about the mandating of open source in government or any other area.
The problem with mandates like this is that it, in a way, sanctions monopoly. Monopoly by open source/free software may not sound like such a bad thing, but I personally have a bad reaction to anything that presents a choice as my only choice.
Example: There are forms of pornography that I find particularly repulsive (not talking obviously illegal stuff like pedophilia, but just things between consenting adults that would make my hair curl looking at it). However, that doesn't give me the right to mandate that YOU can't look at it. Moreover, if someone on high decreed "you can no longer look at this", I would fight it. Even though I have no intention of looking at this stuff, I made that choice, not someone else, and I would fight for the continued right to make that choice.
I use open source software almost exclusively. My desktop runs Linux. My wife made the choice to try Linux and now runs it exclusively on her laptop. But that's our choice, not someone else's mandate. Yes, I would love to see the whole world go open source. But it has to happen by choice, not by mandate.
Re:Mixed feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
How? It's not like IBM or RedHat is the only company in the field. An open-source mandate of the sort being discussed only makes certain requirements of software being purchased by the government. Classified installations have their own requirements for software - is it creating a monopoly environment for the DoD to dictate that software engineering must be done in Ada, or that OSes pass security certification for specific uses? Microsoft would be free to compete in the same arena if it open-sourced Windows.
I don't much care whether governments require open-source. Like many other people here, however, I do very strongly care about them requiring open formats so that I can use whatever software I want - but by your standards, that too would be creating monopoly conditions.
Re:Mixed feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that it's the duty of democratic governments to mandate open source and open standards on its own hardware and in its own publications. This so that the government process can be audited by parliament instruments (meaning it's essential to the seperation of powers in the digital age) and so that all citizens and companies can interface with government without having to buy support for closed standards.
Governments will use Linux for security reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's face it. Most governments don't trust each other as far as they can throw the Statue of Liberty. Even allied countries spy upon each other. So, you know it must scare the hell out of most countries to get a large part of their critical computer infrastructure from a company in foreign country. Especially when they can't even see the source code. I know that if Microsoft was located in Europe that the US government would worry about this. I have no idea whether anyone has ever tampered with Windows code for spying. But you know the paranoid security agencies in most countries will worry about this. And nothing that Microsoft can say will stop them from worrying about this. Even if Microsoft gave them the source code and they built their own Windows code, the compiler could be altered to secretly add malicious code. One of the Turing award lectures (I think it was Ken Thompson) talked about such bugging of compilers.
Of course, using a free operation system will bring other benefits. And from a public relations standpoint, those are the reasons they will admit publically. But let's face it. A lot of this comes down to national security concerns. Even if the various governments don't admit it.
One part I didn't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
Governments *should* act on principle (Score:4, Insightful)
These are principles:
Every citizen has a right to utilize and benefit from electronic government services from the privacy of their own homes, without having to agree to an invasive and limiting EULA to acquire a "license", which can be revoked at the whim of a private corporation. The software tools which realize this right must be understandable, reliable, secure, auditable, and accessible.
Every citizen has a legitimate expectation to access to the wealth of enabling information available electronically, for education, for health, for justice, to better themselves and help to provide a better future for their children and their children's children, in the privacy of their own homes. This access must not be only on the whim of a private corporation on the string of an invasive and limiting EULA. The software tools which realize this access must be understandable, reliable, secure, auditable, and accessible.
The list goes on...
We, through our government, have an obligation to, as we are able, fund the realization of these rights and legitimate expectations of our fellow citizens through the development, distribution, and deployment of Free Open Source Software.
No longer must private entities be permitted to benefit from holding back -- monopolizing -- that right and legitimate expectation possessed by every modern person to better himself or herself, and his or her children through the increase and greater securing of knowledge, education, privacy, skill, and generally acecess to those services and goods each funds with his or her hard earned tax dollars, in this age of great information.
There is no longer any excuse.
MS's "shared source" is flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
This reasoning is fatally flawed.
Since the shared source system does not allow any organization which is given access to the source to see the *ENTIRE* codebase, nor does it grant priviledge to modify the codebase (which implies, in turn, that one cannot recompile it for their own system), how can any person outside MS realistically even tell that the source code that Microsoft has provided actually directly corresponds to the operating system running on that particular personal computer?
The answer is that they can't. And frankly, if a company was going to be deceptive enough to put back doors into their software in the first place, you can bet your privates they'd be deceptive enough to lie about what their source code was.
I'm not saying that Microsoft has actually done this, but they are pretending that this "shared source" system makes them look accountable, and it really doesn't.
At least their reasoning for making the CE source available is more plausable.
Re:MS's "shared source" is flawed. (Score:3, Insightful)
And because of this, they can fix it at their leisure. Or not. Or fix it for you, and leave it in for selected other customers.
If you're responsible for a government agency's security, you really should be aware of this, or you're not competent for your position.
Developers == customers (Score:4, Interesting)
This is one of the factors that ensure that Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle against open source: in many cases, the developer is the customer, and in every case the customer can become the developer. No proprietary-software company can win against this. Why is it that otherwise very smart people can spout nonsense like this as soon as they work for Microsoft. To a lesser extent it happens with Oracle, Sun or IBM, but it seems to me that critical faculties disappear very quickly once somebody is in the belly of the Beast of Redmond.
That was a pretty honest article (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting to see the US being backed into positions by the rest of the world. Like foreign governments latching on to open source. Makes it glaringly obvious that our recalcitrance is a thinly veiled concession to corporate interests. That would make open source software doubly inviting overseas. In one move they can hit back at the US and Microsoft. Pretty tempting just for the value of the political statement, technology justifications aside.
We really are our own worst enemy sometimes. I really hope we can heal the rift some day. We'll get a chance at a good start in Nov. '04, but it's going to be a long road.
Databases: established players caught from behind (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree, at least for small databases that are OLTP in nature. Postgress and MySQL both have duplicated all the relevant featurs of Sybase/Oracle/DB2, and at a fraction of the cost in systems - let along license fees.
I am guessing that just as Linux has eaten the low end sales of HP-UX, Solaris, Irix, classic AIX, and Digital UNIX systems - MySQL and Postgress will much on the soft underbelly of database software (OLTP servers with 4 database engines or fewer that have database footprints of less than 100GB).
Scaleability, and a few decision support features are all that are left and this "battle" will have been won, and the only Oracle can do is a holding action much like IBM Mainframes have done against desktop computers.
Re: Notice this Zealots (Score:5, Funny)
> > 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:Notice this Zealots (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but considering the progress of OSS over the last decade, given time and continued success this will soon no longer be the case. It is only a matter of time before OSS dominates in 90% of market niches.
That's what Microsoft is afraid of: the democratization of computing. Everyone must have access to the law; that is what the corrupt fear. In the same way, everyone must have access to software and information; that is what the software companies and IP cartels fear.
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:4, Insightful)
So while OSS continues to make great inroads in the OS space, for example (lots of interesting work there), it's hard to picture a loose collection of programmers building a serious contender to SAP or PeopleSoft's product set. They're not interesting enough projects to inspire passion in peoples' free time, at least not the the necessary degree. And there's a LOT of money/effort spent on this dull sort of software.
And I don't necessarily think that's important. Consider that ESR is driven by ideology: the chief benefits of computing should be available to everyone, regardless of thier ability to pay. That means operating systems and desktop applications, the web browser in particular. It means a great web server, a selection of good-to-great databases etc, all via OSS. It means everything important to the operation of the internet, which must never be owned by a corporation.
There will be plenty of niches still best filled by proprietary applications, and I think that's okay.
Random musings of the very tired...
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says development of free software has to be free? Money can potentially be made developing open source software, as long as the source code is then distributed under open source license terms.
Say a government which has mandated OSS needs a certain application written for which there is not existing project. They pay someone to write it, and release it to the open source community. Or, ventures between governments could split the cost and share the results.
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:3, Interesting)
GNUE will be a serious contender in about 2-3 years. At that point, SAP, Oracle, MS, and PeopleSoft/JDEdwards will be charging large prices for their stuff (like they are not already). GNUE will have enough time behind it to get all the core pieces in place and dissatisfied customers from the above will start backing it like Linux is today.
OSS is a very serious contender in nearly all
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:2, Interesting)
I wish the zealots would at least concede that much before blasting the horrible , horrible, evil, closed, proprietary software.
Um, are you missing the definition of the word "zealot"? By definition, zealots on either side of the issue will concede nothing! To misquite The Princess Bride, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Sadly, I think it's human nature to look for a panacea. We never learn. There IS no panacea. (And all absolute statements are wrong.) I tend to advise peo
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:2)
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:3, Insightful)
there are many areas
There are a few areas were there exists a propiatary solution that is superior to any OSS solution.
where proprietary products are still far superior
Name any closed source package that is far superior to all OSS equvilents. Can't, do it. Why? 'cause there are none.
Rubbish (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, there are deficiencies. It doesn't have a database or email/calendar programme. I'm not sure what I would use for the former but I know they are debating it in their mailing lists. For email/calendar there is Mozilla. That's not perfect either, but it's the only browser I use.
I recently gave a copy to a nurse at work who wan
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:3, Insightful)
> Lets not forget the biggest problem with open source software. It directly relates to the high unemployment rate currently being experienced in the tech sector. Programmers by the millions are unemployed because communists are undermining the great American capitalist economy by GIVING their software away. How do you expect to get work as a programmer when some guy next door is giving away the software for free? It's outright piracy and should be banned in the United States.
The problem with your fan
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:2)
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:2)
Re:Notice this Zealots (Score:5, Insightful)
Programmers by the millions are unemployed because communists are undermining the great American capitalist economy by GIVING their software away. How do you expect to get work as a programmer when some guy next door is giving away the software for free? It's outright piracy and should be banned in the United States.
Wow. So it's Open Source that's causing the extinction of the Great American Programmer? Working at a company which is oursourcing coding to another country on the different side of a large ocean, I don't know that Open Source even registers on the radar as to why people are out of work. Please.
And communist? You completely miss the whole business model of open source. And you seem to be under the impression that open source is something recent, when in fact it is as old as programming, the only difference is that now non-programmers are talking about it. Not to mention that name calling is the last argument of those who have no real argument.
Besides, this "Great American Capitalist economy" is being weakened by a government that not only encourages wage deflation in the tech sector, but is actively participating is the process.
But that's OK. You can blame open source if you just want to be angry and have something to rant about that doesn't require much thought or investigation.
Re:Stop the FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
But In order to provide what government need, it need to be open standard, allow government to switch to other product easier later.
If Microsoft will provide the open standard format of
Re:Stop the FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
And, BTW, doing it at the best price.
So, there is absolutely no contradiction in the mission of a government making mandatory OSS for its administration and the price tag. Making OSS a requirement is not necessarily related to the sole price consideration. As the example of Munich is showing us.
Re:Bye Bye Birdie (Score:2)
Re:That's the type of article you get... (Score:3, Interesting)