Slashdot Mirror
Free Software Law in Argentina
Free Software Law for Argentina
There's presently a law being discussed at the Congress in Argentina, that would make mandatory the use of and migration to Free Software when possible.
That law was originally proposed by a Congressmen, but he contacted people from the Free Software Community in Argentina (non-profit organizations, LUGs, etc.), and we have already suggested many changes that are making into the law. This has already a big push from a lot of people (including RMS), but we are interested about opinions and suggested changes for the law, coming from the Slashdot community
Sorry for not having an URL published, there's one but we have very little bandwidth
This is a translation of the law being discussed. It's already in discussion at the congress, and moving on
Note: all uses of the "free" word are for spanish "libre", i.e, free as in free speech, not free beer.
Policy for Free Software use for the Federal State
Article 1: The National Public Administration, Decentralized Organizations and corporations where the State is a majoritary shareholder will only use for their IT systems and equipments free programs (software).
Article 2: "free program (software)", will be understood as software with a license of use that guarantees the user, without an extra fee, the following rights:
- Non-restricted use of the program for any purpose
- Exhaustive inspection of the internal program operation.
- Use of the internal working, and of arbitrary segments of the program, to adaptate them to user needs
- Production and distribution of copies of the program
- Modification of the program, and free distribution of the modifications and the resulting new program, under these same conditions.
Article 3: The source program of any free program must be the primary resource used by the programmer for modifying and inspecting it. Therefore, no program categorized as free can contain any restriction difficulting its access, or intermediate stages as output from a non-free pre-processor or compiler.
Article 4: Licenses for free programs used by the National Public Administration, Decentralized Organizations, and corporations where the State is a majoritary shareholder, will have, in all cases, to allow explicitly modification and derived works, as well as non-restricted distribution of these works with the same license as the original program.
Article 5: The Executive Power will set in a term of 180 days, the conditions, timelines, and ways to implement the transition from present systems to free programs as defined in Articles 1 to 4; and will move future licitations and contracting of computer programs (software) in that direction.
Artice 6: From the date established by the Executive Power on, Public National Organizations mentioned in article 1 of this law, will not be allowed to use programs that store data in non-public format, or with licenses which:
- Imply any form of discrimination to people or groups.
- Don't fulfill of the preceding Article 2.
- Are specific or exclusive for only one product.
Article 7: Once finished the transition term, with a duration regulated by the National Executive Power as expressed in Article 5, there will be exclusively contracting and use of free computer programs.
Article 8: The Public State Universities, the Provincial and the City Governments, and the Autonomous Government of the city of Buenos Aires are invited to adhere this initiative
Article 9: Communicate this to the National Executive Power"
The money "saved" by going open source would be lost in the subsequent economic slump.
Now, I have one question. Is there a study in which open/free licenses are correct for the definition of 'free software' that the law mentions?
Regards,
Pablo Baena
pbaena@uol(punto)com.ar
Have you reviewed some of the outlandish laws still on the books in the USA? We're not better than them on that regard, unless having more bogus laws makes us better...
This law project was mentioned already in Barrapunto, the spanish Slashdot. The comments was interesting (however, they are all in Spanish).
Perhaps if the government didn't have to pay so much in software licensing fees they could afford to pay their employees more.
The fact of the matter is that it takes equivalent effort to secure both Linux and Windows (actually, that isn't quite true Linux is easier to secure...). The same government employees that are currently setting up insecure Windows boxes would almost certainly set up Linux so that it was insecure as well.
Linux would at least be less expensive.
I wasn't aware that Microsoft was headquartered in Argentina (I've always heard of them as being ``in Redmond, Washington''), so I'm a bit confused about the mechanism by which Windows is deemed native and Unix is deemed foreign.
Linux, in particular, has Argentinian contributors (Quiz question: is there a country from which nobody has contributed to the Linux kernel?) so would by any normal classification system be regarded as less importado than Windows.
Microsoft must have slipped one past the Argentine populace ``tal como mantequilla en un chango pelon'' (-: BTW, since I guess you speak fluent Argentine, commentary on the language abuse in the above link would be welcome :-)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Seriously, this is not a law, it is an internal gummint regulation. The Argentinian gummint departments simply abide by it. If the director of a department refuses to comply, he promptly stops being the director, and the next director complies.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There's nothing preventing Microsoft from opening their software and continuing to not be paid for it by Argentinians. (-:
While this government regulation is selling some freedom (per se) it is maintaining at least a broad range of choices as a consequence. And in this case the tradeoff seems to be a good one. The best program for the job should win out, but that presumes the absence of salesmen and back-room deals (leaving aside proprietary lock-in effects), which in the case of a normal South American country would be an extremely stupid presumption to make.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I hate to come across all Jesuit about this, but it seems from your statements that the CIA don't understand the GPL: the modified source only has to be distributed as much as the modified binary. You could comply by shipping your GPL-software-containg grey box with a source CD inside it (taped/clamped inside the cover).
This is either perfectly normal paranoia (``every being in the universe has that'') or very bad software design. If your software becomes insecure when the source for it becomes available, you have no business doing security in the first place.
If the device the CIA are working with shouldn't exist, or if they're exceeding their mandate in dealing with something, then what they are already involved in is far more problematic to them than a mere software licence. To put this into perspective: if you are ignoring laws about dealing with drugs, murdering people, prohibited weapons etc then you're not going to give two pinches of gecko poo about a mere software licence, are you?
And I might suggest to any enemies of the CIA that it may be safer to rely on a black-box analysis of a dodgy CIA program than on the source.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I very much agree. Unlike biological evolution, Open Source clearly admits an intelligent design mechanism and directed feedback.
Biological evolution postulates mutation as an information-generating mechanism, against all common sense, mathematical principles and every shard of experimental evidence. This is so absurd a practice that bizarre ideas like entelechy are offered as alternatives.
Mutation is about as useful for providing or improving biological design as a high-powered rifle is for providing or improving Lego layouts.
To make the US gummint purchasing system work for software, all you need add is Free (libre) Software. They may get shafted once, but only once, in each segment of the market.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Boy, would Richard Stallman bounce you hard for that one! Choice is the poor, crippled cousin of freedom. What the Argentinian gummint is doing is curtailing the freedom of suppliers a little (not completely: nothing stoppping them from Opening their products and soldiering on) in order to protect their own freedom. Which is a very good idea.
If they mandated this for their citizens as well, that would not be so crash hot. It would be better to mandate open interfaces (file formats, APIs etc) and penalise corporations who fail to comply with their own APIs.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Teachers, especially those with large bustlines, face a serious peoblem in Cordoba, Argentina. A woman simply cannot be hired to teach if her chest is big. Why? Because lawmakers in Cordoba finally came to realize that a large, shapely chest is just "too much of a distraction for teenage boys in a classroom."
:)
Anyone who had Ms. Skruukrud for Biology class in my high school would realize immediately the validty of this statement.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
No comment...
--
While i for one would be irritated were my employer to demand i use a certain operating system or set of software to do my job, i do believe an employer has the right to dictate what equipment the employees use at work.
The law probably ought to contain some kind of back door-- like, something where a person at a state university can appeal this law and be given an exception based on usage of free software being unreasonable given a lack of free software alternatives to a closed source program they need to use-- but still there are all kinds of reasons why this is a good idea. I for one would be alarmed by the idea of the government gaining a dependence on a private software company; if you can't get out your welfare checks without this tracking software created by a company in another country, and that other country suddenly becomes diplomatically hostile to you, and you suddenly discover a horrible bug that absolutely has to be fixed that instant for the system to continue functioning, and you can't get the source.. well, that's bad. But if you have the source you (the government) can fix and continue to maintain things yourself.
I wish english had a pronoun for the abstract third person. Yes, i know i could use "one". That doesn't count.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
There's a matter of scale here, though. If a government thinks that some particular software should be written, should be available, it can afford to subsidize a project to create it. If the previously best product were sold at $x, then if the government buys y copies per year, a projection says that all cost of the project will be recovered in z years. Say it spends the same amount it would have spent on the software, instead on development. If it spends the cost of a Server with a T1 connection to the internet and a good administrator then the rest of the yearly expense can be used to support the project. If it takes 3 years to complete the project, the project will pay for itself in three years more. And three years is probably excessive. Most software is much simpler than that, and isn't starting from scratch.
For that matter, they could break it into small pieces, and subsidize university advanced degree programs to build the pieces (well, you would need a good project leader team). Just consider how fast Linux started moving in the last couple of years, largely because of a lot of prior work, but also because people were paid to work on it.
OTOH, a sharp cut-off may be unrealistic. But it may not! This would hardly be implemented before next year, and by then Linux systems should be useable for nearly any purpose. It's already pretty good. The main hang-up seems to be word processing, though I suppose if I used the fancier features of a spreadsheet I might notice some problems there...but it might just be difference. Guile and Python as scripting languages are DIFFERENT from basic, but I would hardly say they were inferior.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And most importantly: How can you convince some mid-level bureaucrat to pay for every copy of Microsoft Word that his or her department uses, when it's so much easier to run off another copy (or share the CD, or find some way to defeat Microsoft's copy protection) than to pay for the extra copy?
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The money would just be re-directed into a slush fund for the cia or to the DEA to fight the war.
Examining everything that the government does doesn't mean that you need the source code to all of the software that they use.
For example, examining all of the documents that the government produces, including internal ones, doesn't require that you also be able to examine the word processor that they used to produce it. Examining all of the audio that is produced by the government doesn't mean that you have to be able to take apart the microphone used to record it. The important part is the ability to examine all of the content.
Therefore, the desire for a free government does not lead to the conclusion that all software used by the government be free (speech).
-Sean
Interesting. I can buy that argument. In fact, my employer uses what it calls Stand-Alone, Single-User machines for times when it wants to make sure information doesn't get anwhere it's not supposed to. These machines are not hooked up to any network, do not have multiple users enabled, and can only be operated from console inside a locked vault-type room. The only way you can get data to it is to bring it in on things like CDROM. Yes, it's as extreme as it sounds.
nobody in aRgentina can prove there is not...an NSA backdoor
True. That goes back to my argument that everything that the government produces should be released in some kind of "open" fashion. If it's software, then it should be released as open source. However, I don't think that would stop the government from asking (or paying, or threatening, or whatever) Microsoft to put in this kind of back door. That's specifically going outside of what the government produces and pulling strings to get something put into a piece of commercial software.
Of course the government should be prevented from doing this sort of thing. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the governmental production of software, though.
-Sean
That's Security through Obscurity. However, the prevailing thought is that any system which depends on its workings being hidden is not necessarily a truly secure one, while a truly secure system can stand up to having its internals shown. (Note that I said its internals, obviously not the data it actually operates on.)
--
You're a suburbanite.
Read the article. This covers govermental use only.
All documents distributet from or to other government agencies should be in open formats. That will leave ASCII, HTML and PDF formats as the only viable options. As you know, making PDF from postscript is extremly simple.
Okay... now what if you want to be able to cut & paste that document, edit it, or something else?
Well, that means PDF/PostScript are out of the running.
So we're left with ASCII and HTML. Cool. Why don't you throw LaTex in there while you're at it, or SGML?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Total freedom means you don't _have to_ do anything, however the GPL inhibits freedom and unrestricted use by saying that users of the software _must_ make modifications they make available back to the "community".
This is, of course, untrue. The only requirement is that if you do decide to give your modified binaries to anyone then you must also provide them with a copy of the source code if they request it. You are not required to make your modifications available to others, just that if you do then source must be available as well as binaries.
What if some country passed a law that all government institutions must migrate to NON-FREE software?? You slashdot drones would be bitching for a week. But requiring a switch to free software is a good thing??
And if they pass a law saying that spam is illegal people will cheer whereas if they pass a law saying that spam is compulsory people will complain. It's terrible, people will change their response for no other reason than that you changed the stimulus. No consistency at all.
And nothing in this proposed legislation restricts trade. It sets a minimum standard, that software should be open sourced, but there is no reason to suppose that companies inside Argentina have a competitive advantage over companies outside Argentina in providing open sourced sofwtare. At present I would think the USA leads the field in this area.
The way I see it, there is nothing wrong with a company choosing to charge money for the software that they spend huge amounts of time and money creating.
Which is in no way inconsistent with the proposed legislation. If the government is arranging for software to be supplied to them then under this law they would have to require that the software be provided to them open source. That doesn't mean that the company providing it couldn't charge them.
In at least some cases I imagine suppliers would charge more to provide software on these terms. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise, imagine what you'd do if you were being asked to provide software to the Argentinian government in this situation; presumably you'd either charge the same as usual or else charge more than you otherwise would if you felt that by opening the source you were compromising potential sales to other customers.
People talk a lot about freedom on Slashdot. I'm surprised how positive a reaction this is getting on Slashdot, as something that takes freedom away from people and forces them to agree with the Open Source advocating majority on Slashdot.
This is one branch of government telling another branch of government what the policy should be on software purchases. Whether it's appropriate for them to do so is a matter for constitutional lawyers in Argentina, it's got nothing to do with limiting freedom.
There is no provision of what would happen if the law was broken
There must be a standard approach in Argentina to enforcing regulations on government officials. I would imagine that an interested party would obtain a court order requiring the government to comply in whatever area they were challenging. If the respponsible minister didn't then comply presumably they'd be held in contempt of court. It really depends on what your normal local practice is though. I imagine that political embarrassement at being caught breaking the law would discourage violation, plus pressure from the legislature. Both of those depend on the local political climate though.
There is no provision for exceptions, and that would be necessary (some things can't be done with propietary software)
It's probably easier to begin with to require that free software alternatives are included in the options being considered whenever a choice os software is being made. It weakens the provisions an awful lot and allows for departments to continue as they are if they really want to though. Maybe in addition it could be required that reasons have to be given for any decisions to use proprietary software rather than free software. It is weaker that way, and easier to subvert, but probably more practical.
This isn't forcing private citizens or corporations to use open-source software - just the government.
Read the law. It applies to the government only, and why shouldn't a free society be allowed to monitor each and everything that their government does? That's what this law is stating. The citizens have a right to see what their government is doing with software.
This is a *good* thing.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
This law is very well written - with good intent behind it.
This law basically states that if the government or government owned institutions are to use software, it must be examinable by the people of that country. What a wonderful idea - one that most Americans are familiar with.
We are allowed to observe almost all areas of government, comment upon it, and change it as needed. I'm glad that at least some governments realize that this should apply to software as well.
I wonder if there is a similar push here in the U.S., or should we start a grass roots campaign?
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I would argue that in order to have a free government, then one must be able to examine everything the government does. This includes software. Note that the law does not state the programs must be free beer, but only free speech.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
What an extremely naive view of things. The handling of data by the government is much much more complex than how a microphone works, and besides, if you purchase a microphone, it is legal to take the damn thing apart and figure out how it works. You analogy, though horrid, actually works against your case.
If a corporation/company/spy agency places a "bug"[1] in a microphone, the microphone is working beyond its described task - it's duplicating the information presented to the device in a subtle manner and transmitting it elsewhere. However, the owner of the microphone has the right to examine his microphone and remove any "bugs", if found. The same goes for software.
Making matters worse, the government's primary job is to manage information about identity and ownership. The government knows that you and you alone have claim to item X because it knows that you exist, you are whom you claim you are, and that you've legally obtained item X. This information exists to protect your rights when someone else lays a fraudulent claim on either your identity or your property.
Now, realizing that this is perhaps the ultimate function of government, do you want your identity and property information being sent to any corporation whose software is used to manage this data?
The only sensible answer is "No"
[1] Used here as an electronic transmission device
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Expect a US-backed coup any day now.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I agree, that this will be the consequence eventually.
The very important selling point in my opinion is document safety. If everything is in open formats you will be able to read and edit these documents in 20-40 years.
I think that long term document safety could be a very convincing argument for Open Source solutions. That will easily be accepted by most people and a good price makes it even better.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
This is a great step but I believe that it's even more important to 'outlaw' proprietary document formats.
All documents distributet from or to other government agencies should be in open formats. That will leave ASCII, HTML and PDF formats as the only viable options. As you know, making PDF from postscript is extremly simple.
No more distribution of Microsoft doc/ppt/xls/.. files will do the trick.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
Point taken, but there are still good reasons for governments not to take on proprietary software - in particular, issues of national security. It is in the interest of everyone that the government's systems be entirely secure. While open-source software is certainly not bulletproof, its operations are observable. It may seem paranoid to say so, but there's no reason Microsoft couldn't rig Windows NT to send information back to Redmond. Would it? Probably not, but the possibility exists. (Argentina may be more concerned about this than us, as Microsoft is a foreign company; thus being dependent on foreign software could be construed as a security risk.) I would thus argue that it is not necessarily in the best interests of the public for the "best" product, meaning the one of highest observable quality, to be used by the government, if it may compromise security. One might argue otherwise, but it seems like a solid rationale for this sort of legislation.
As states/governments/congresses around the world realize that they can do all their computing without paying Microsoft tax - money that flow out of the country.
/. articles about similar initiatives in France and Germany.
Think about it: most of the countries in the world produce their own weapons: they don't want to depend on others. The same starts to come true about software, as it's importance in running the government/military is understood.
See previous
I think the fewer exceptions, the better, in the long run.
------
Now we have the force of the state we no longer have to make strong opinions for Free Software! Yah! Now we can all just answer the question "Why should I use Free Software?" with "Because it's the law!" (well those of us in Argentina, anyway)
You either didn't read the law or you misunderstood it.
The law doesn't say ANYTHING about whether the citizens and/or non-government-owned corporations of Argentina will use closed or "free" software.
This is just how the government of Argentina decides that the government of Argentina will use free software.
The government and the corporations it controls WILL use free software, with details, timetables, and exceptions fleshed out by the exectutive branch.
The government RECOMMENDS to its semi-autonomous units (such as universities) that they use free software.
The government places no requirements on the rest of the country at all.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I totally agree. Run the government's IT operations on open and free software, recommend it to the autonomous government-related functions, and let the private sector - individual and corporate - make its own choices (and continue to abide by existing contracts).
Although I fully support Linux and the free software movement, I disagree with this law for one major reason: the best product cannot always be used. If a commercial product does the job better, it will end up costing more to use the "free" software.
But here I disagree strongly.
You're measuring only the immediate cost. There are additional long-term costs. Costs like:
lack of support,
future higher costs ("the first rev is free"),
lack of interoperability with other departments' or citizens' applicaions,
secondary monopolies (i.e. the citizens have to buy the expensive product or agree to a company's license to perform interactions, some mandatory, with their government's databases and functions),
use of such secondary monopolies to create further monopolies, expanding the lockin
I could go on.
The point is it might be a cheaper and more efficient solution to one immediate problem. But closing in the data with a proprietary application costs much more than any immediate monitary savings.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We ... are interested in interesting opinions about how the law might be improved, so [a local geek who will be testifying] can propose them.
This law as written is beautiful. It's a simple, to the point, expression of the will of the legislature that the government convert to open software wherever possible, as rapidly as is convenient.
In my opinion, any changes are more likely to break it than improve it. I'd be inclined to leave it just as it is for now.
================
A rule of thumb for any system design - government law or software - is to see what would happen if a deliberate attempt to misconstrue or circumvent its intent were made by the operator or outside parties. (The only operational difference between malice and mistake is that malice usually exercises the bugs and crashes the system a little sooner - so you look for system flaws as if you were looking for a way someone could deliberately break things, without implying that malice is actually present even if the system does crash later.)
The only potential hole I see is that the timetable is left open. So if both a division head and the chief executive were opposed, or if the chief executive didn't push subordinates who dragged their feet, the timetable could slip out indefinitely.
But it's appropriate to leave the timetable to the executive, rather than to try to micro-manage from the legislature. Execution is the executive's job. And I'd bet the chief executive is also in favor of this, or at least willing to go along with the will of the legislature. So I'd leave it as it is for now and revisit it in a few years to see how the conversion is coming.
If you're really concerned that something might fall through the cracks you might have the executive branch report every few years on the progress of the conversion, including a list of what hasn't been converted and why. After five or ten years if there's anything unconverted that the legislature hasn't been convinced SHOULDN'T be converted, then it might want to make changes to the law to give them a push.
(And I'd leave military systems up to the executive branch. Which I expect will insist on having source code for everything they commission, and on reverse-engineering any turnkey weapons systems they got from their allies. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
(hope my english won't give this a 0 score ;)
But I'm really confused:This is true. Since a couple of years Argentina and other latam countries (ie Bolivia) are being pressured to legalize all their software.
In the meantime, I can see 3 advantages: huge gov. savings and legalization, GNU everywhere and a lot of people will have to study GNU tools...
and 2 big troubles: this kind of imposition can generate huge resistances on people used to M$ tools and also big pressures from monopol... tut-tut-tut
The FTAA and NAFTA do not make it illegal to make laws that interfere with with the profits of corporations illegal.
The Free Trade agreements are just aimed at allowing trade, with fair government interference. Accounting for taxes, subsidies, loans, regulations in a fair and consistent way.
Specifically the UPS/Canada Post- Puralator is an arguement of illegal subsidies (from Canada Post to Puralator) not that UPS wants more money.
Ignoring the relative merits and demerits of this law...
180 days to completely switch systems?! Are they crazy? Large companies often have roll-out periods that long just moving to a different version of the same software! But for a national government to completely change the majority of software they use (unless the Argentine government is already very free software based, which I doubt - but someone correct me if I'm wrong!), including the OS, and all of the interoperations between all this software, and train all of the civil servants on the new systems in that length of time is wishful thinking.
[TMB]
Does this law require government agencies to release all software they use as free software to the general public, or does it only require that the government has the ability to distribute software it uses? Does it require the government to release all changes they make to existing free software programs?
The shareholder is always right.
Folks, I am posting on behalf of the ISTF Public Software Workgroup. Our project aims in part in a modest way to provide a space for access and free software activists from around the world to network so that knowledge and experience in influencing government policies are leveraged. Our site (under construction) is at:
http://www.gnacademy.org/psip/
We are looking to network with people from around the world who would provide us with information on free software adoption strategies. We are particularly interested in reports, paper and case studies documenting such efforts.
Your help will be appreciated
Regards
S. (Sam) Kritikos
...
Oops that last line should have read "which is as it should be". Sorry!
IamLarryboy,
Your post "Good Law But illegal under FTAA" is probably referring to Chapter 11 of the FTAA. I suggest you reread Chapter 11 and the details of the case you mention.
Chapter 11 allows companies to sue governments if governments enacts legislation that decrease corporate profits DUE TO TRADE BARRIERS. The last part is capitalized because I think that's the key point you're missing.
You can restrict commerce to all hell, but as long as foreign goods or services are restricted as much as local ones, Chapter 11 is useless.
I'm not as familiar with the Canada Post case as with another common complaint (the Ethyl Corp one - which most anti-free traders get wrong as well), but my understanding is that it didn't have as much to do with Canada Post being a Crown (ie, government owned) company as much as Canada Post owning and subsidizing Purilator Courrier, a large Fed-Ex-like company.
If the proposed legislation had a statue where an Argentine company could sell non-free software, but Microsoft couldn't, then FTAA would have something to say about it. As it is, Argentine companies are treated on the same grounds as foreign companies, so a company like Microsoft (or Corel in Canada or Connectiva in Brazil) have no recourse through FTAA (as they should).
The money "saved" by going open source would be lost in the subsequent economic slump.
Please try to think before you post. Even if the slump you posit happened, it would be temporary. The savings from license fees would continue every year forever.
And there is no reason why a slump has to occur. Just because the software is libre doesn't mean it must be gratis. Someone could still get paid to write the specialized stuff that isn't already out there.
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Imagine the horror with which Microsoft would react to something like this...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't this just forcing people to use a particular kind of software? Like Microsoft did (only with "free software" replacing the word "Windows")?
They're not saying they don't want Windows. If MS opens the source to windows, there's no problem anymore...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
What the summary of the law does say is that there should be no restrictions on the use of the software, and no cost should be borne by the user for uses of the software for which normally a software company would charge money.
As for the respondents who say the law is legislating a specific software, since when is all Open Source software the same? The beauty of Open Source is the ability to change it to meet your needs.
That said, I have to say that I don't agree with a law legislating Open Source software. We should not be forcing people to disclose their sources, they should willingly give it up. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know.
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Software that functions to their needs
The lowest bidder
... and, from experience, if you create software that the government needs and no one else has, you charge any price you want, and they will pay it- no questions asked, thanks to the "system". So, to make a long story short, what logic is there in NOT charging the government for software?
.sig
==========
Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
==========
Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
==========
who?
Please, comments wanted.
What will happend when there is no free solution, and there is no budget to develope one; on a small agency with low budget for ex. (of course there is also the problem with the big companyes paying money to the politicians to say 'there is no free solution')
What about the BSD and LGPL-like licences? They can be free and non-free at the same time. Will *BSD be discarded? Mozilla?
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
The country was so broke the fmi had to give it billions of $ in order to stay afloat.
At the same moment m$ asked the government to pay for all its licenses and proposed a "deal".
perfect timing.
But this law may be a consequence of this m$ strategic move. People over there are very sensitive about freedom.
They know its value.
They are not forcing a specific product, but some specific rules in the marketplace. The US (or US companies) did this with processors a few years ago, i.e. they forced their suppliers to license the technology to competitors, to prevent having a single source (that's why AMD had access to Intel technology). This is a similar action, only they take it a bit further.
I don't see the problem some people are having with regulations in the marketplace. If a market economy can be compared with evolution, then regulation is just adding some conditions which prevents locally optimal, but globally catastrophic species from taking over. You have to remember that the marketplace selects for companies which are short-term beneficial to the investors, and this is rarely the long-term optimum for consumers or society.
So under the GPL I'd be able to hide my changes only if I never distributed the software. Doesn't sound very "free" to me.
if the United States government were to switch totally to open source software under the GPL. How many billions of dollars would be saved annually?
... instead of asking to increase taxes!
I wish the US Govt would jump on board and create a law like this. Just imagine, they would actually give tax cuts
Ever need an online dictionary?
In order to maintain an open and free government, the people must be able to understand all governmental processes (including limitations with their computers). It is not safe for any government to run software which it does not know how it operates... being able to review the source code and compile it yourself ensures security.
Also, since the government pays for all software with tax money, why shouldn't the people have access to that software? If I pay for the government to use software on its computers... I want access to that software I paid for.
Society has it embedded into its mind that "Corporations are always good, they always have the best interests of the market in mind" when that is not true. They instead have the best interests of their wallet in mind. Software companies do take bribes to modify software to suit certain people's needs... I would not doubt that the NSA has never paid MS for certain code changes to Windows that make spying easier.
Ever need an online dictionary?
Choose the best software for the task, and may the best software win in the marketplace.
Seems the reverse would be obviously bad, requiring microsoft software... I'd be scared of hypocracy if I thought laws like this were good, even if they seem in favor of something I support.
I've always thought free software would win in the end because it was superior, not because people were forced to use it... the other guy is the one who needs that tactic.
________
Executives of Microsoft, IBM and Unisys are protesting a recent Argentine Supreme Court decision ruling that antiquated copyright laws don't cover computer software. Software makers point out that royalties aren't paid on about 70% of the software sold in Argentina, resulting in roughly $165 million in revenue losses annually. A recent study by Price Waterhouse & Co. indicates the biggest abusers are Argentine federal and local government agencies and small private businesses. "There's no culture in Argentina of assigning value to software," says a Unisys unit president. (Wall Street Journal 6 Feb 98).
"Featherbeds were long ago outlawed in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Why? Because such an indulgence induces and encourages lascivious feelings."
"Public servants in Argentina had better be on the ball and smile - It's illegal to be surly."
"An Argentina ordinance demands that disk jockeys play as many tango records as all other types of music combined."
"Teachers, especially those with large bustlines, face a serious peoblem in Cordoba, Argentina. A woman simply cannot be hired to teach if her chest is big. Why? Because lawmakers in Cordoba finally came to realize that a large, shapely chest is just "too much of a distraction for teenage boys in a classroom."
Somewhat. But there is good logic behind it.
/Brian
It seems to me that if you're FORCED to use free software, it would somehow feel a little less free. Isn't freedom of choice important as well?
--
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
The FTAA stands for Free Trade Area of the Americas. It will be in effect by 2005. Under that law, like the NAFTA, Any law that interfears with the profits of a corperation is deamed illegal. An example of this is: Here in Canada all mail is handled by a government agency. That agency is being sued under NAFTA by UPS because it interfears with their profits. This agreement(FTAA) is an attack on the sovernty of every country (except Cuba) in N & S America. This free software law would be illegal under the terms of FTAA because it would interfear with the profits of corperations like Microsoft. This is only one reason there was such a large protest against the FTAA in Quebec at the summit of the Americas.
Free trade is good.
Giving the US absolute control over the entire Hemisphere is very very bad.
But that's still a debatable argument. If open source necessarily precipitates total security. As far as I know, no one has (or even can) prove this.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Why should IT people fight hard to install rogue software on their systems?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Well, as is, one could theoretically argue that the law would prohibit the use of hardware the contains proprietary microcode (since it is a form of software). An enterprising IT manager might be able to get copies of the Linux BIOS installed as a replacement for the regular PC BIOSes. However, such changes would take a lot of time and effort, wouldn't provide a substanial benefit, and still wouldn't address the issue of other installed microcode.
The easiest solution, in my mind, would be to include an exception clause (as others have pointed out). This would be especially important for cases where an open-sourced alternative does not exist (for example, try finding open-sourced firmware replacements for most hospital equipment).
the need for smaller government
yes - smaller government, but bigger business to replace the services. Great idea, sell your ownership for an opportunity at being a customer. Privatization. Great idea. Sheesh.
One of the major reasons you may be seeing this legislation is to save $$$. When presented with the options of health care versus supporting multinationals like M$ and Oracle. The IMF is demanding certain 'savings' and some wise member of the Argentinian Government has probably seen the light through the proprietary software vendors lies.
The Argentinian people are currently battling proposed 'solutions' to the Argentinian economic 'troubles'. There have been massive protests in Argentina to protect their civil services.
Have a look here for a brief about what is going on in Argentina.
This legislation has little to do with Free Software and alot more to do with the priorities of a soverign nation.
Here is another interesting article
Troll, but I'll bite. If this law was about consumers, then you'd have a point. It isn't, it's about government institutions and public (state-owned or controlled) enterprises. So it's more about openness and accountability in government. I don't know about you, but I'd like to be able to fully audit the systems that calculate my taxes, store my records, etc.
Do you really want the situation where the make-up of a large proportion of the machinery of state is known only to the private parties that created them? Perhaps more importantly, do you want those systems to be under the control of restrictive license agreements that allow software companies to basically do what they please with the computers that run our public institutions?
I don't. I shudder to think of what the future will be like if that continues to be the case.
Please, engage brain before putting keyboard in gear. The obvious answer is that government would let contracts for technical support just as they do now. In other words, the revenue stream would shift from software sales to software support.
The really good part about such a shift would be that multiple companies -- including small companies -- would be able to provide support. Small companies are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to software contracts because the barrier to entry is quite high. Support, on the other hand, can be awarded to many, many companies without harming the Government's ability to use them. Cf the translation contracts let by the USPTO.
Indeed, I see the creation of speciality companies that are formed just to meet the needs of the General Accounting Office, the legislative offices, the independent agencies, and even the entitlement agencies.
Because one requirement would be that workers be US Citizens, the H-1B problem is diminished because now there would be a place for all us older technical people who are US citizens to find worthwhile work. No more bashing companies like "a certain chipmaker" for passing over us older techie types.
It also provides a better channel for grant money to create software with specific function. If the US Government needed a Word clone, it could provide the money to fund the development -- no more waiting for Sun or Corel or anyone else to pony up the money with little hope of any return.
Gee, the more I think about the idea the more I like it. Too bad the SIIA and other software lobbies have a lock on our Congresscritters...
> The law probably ought to contain some kind of
> back door-- like, something where a person at a
> state university can appeal this law and be
> given an exception based on usage of free
> software being unreasonable given a lack of
> free software alternatives to a closed source
> program they need to use--
That's true. We're discussing alternatives for setting a method of providing exceptions and proposing it for the law. We have a couple of suits and lawyers assisting us; but it's a complex matter (how to ensure that there won't be a lot of exceptions request annd the law will finish ignored). I'm interested in feedback about this...
Daniel - TrixX
The law says that the license must allow the user to be able to redistribute the software under the sme license [but not necessarily force it]. i.e., BSD license is allowed by the law
- There is no provision of what would happen if the law was broken
- There is no provision for exceptions, and that would be necessary (some things can't be done with propietary software)
Among others5+5 years seem proper to me... I prefer it being done well, than hurried.
Federico Heinz, founder of the "Fundacion Via libre", and member of the local LUG (GrULiC)
What will happend when there is no free solution, and there is no budget to develope one; on a small agency with low budget for ex. (of course there is also the problem with the big companyes paying money to the politicians to say 'there is no free solution')
There is a proposal of creating and organization that would grant special permissions to use propietary software when there are no other choices
What about the BSD and LGPL-like licences? They can be free and non-free at the same time. Will *BSD be discarded? Mozilla?
The law includes a definition of "free", so it's quite clear what is free and what is not. The definition is quite lax, so BSD, Mozilla, and the like are allowed.
I don't know about. If you know, please, inform me (use my email adress in the TrixX link)
Yes it is. it is libre (free speech). Several times is not gratis (free beer). But that's not a news flash, RMS, keeps saying that since '83.
Read the article, you're ignoring one extra layer of indirection.
The law gives 180 days to decide how long the transition will take (and that decision could be "a century", for example). That period is also to decide how it will be done (the plan).
The open formats is a point. We agree on that.
But besides that, the state handles citizen records, and that records are not public information. But when the state uses propietary software, it cannot guarantee that the aplication "leaks" the data somewhere else. So, it's a matter of National Security also, not only of publicly available data.
There are still rumors that Windows NT has an NSA backdoor. How can a non-US state trust in that (it doesn't matter if the backdoor isn't there. The point is, nobody in aRgentina can prove there is not)
There seems to be a confusion about this.
The law states that software used by the state must be Free Software
That means, it doesn't disallow a propietary, profit-based software industry. It just limits the range of applications that the National Administrartion can use. This would benefit the state (perhaps a reduction of software costs, but more probably, improve quality and security, and avoid technological dependence)
Artículo 1: La Administración Pública Nacional, los Organismos Descentralizados y las Empresas donde el Estado Nacional posea mayoría accionaria emplearán en sus sistemas y equipamientos de informática, exclusivamente programas (software) libres.
Artículo 2: Entiéndese por programa (software) libre aquel cuya licencia de uso garantice al usuario, sin costo adicional, las siguientes facultades:
Artículo 3.- El programa fuente de cualquier programa libre debe constituir el recurso primario empleado por el programador para modificar e inspeccionar el mismo. Por lo tanto ningún programa que se categorice como libre puede contener cualquier restricción que dificulte su acceso, como tampoco debe poseer etapas intermedias tales como salidas de un pre-procesador o traductor propietario o no libre.
Artículo 4.- Las licencias de los programas libres que sean utilizados por la Administración Pública Nacional, los Organismos Descentralizados y las Empresas donde el Estado Nacional posea mayoría accionaria deberán, en todos los casos, permitir en forma expresa, modificaciones y trabajos aplicados, así como la distribución irrestricta de estas aplicaciones en los mismos términos que la licencia del programa original.
Artículo 5.- El Poder Ejecutivo reglamentará en un plazo de ciento ochenta días, las condiciones, tiempos y formas en que se efectuará la transición de los actuales sistemas instalados hacia los programas libres que se caracterizan en los artículos 1 a 4, y orientará en tal sentido las licitaciones y contrataciones futuras de programas de computación (software) realizadas a cualquier título.
Artículo 6.- A partir de la fecha límite del plazo de transición que establezca el Poder Ejecutivo, los Organismos Públicos Nacionales indicados en el artículo 1 de esta ley, no podrán emplear programas que almacenen sus datos en formatos no públicos, o cuyas licencias:
Artículo 7.- Una vez finalizada la fase de transición, cuya duración será reglamentada por el Poder Ejecutivo Nacional, de acuerdo a lo previsto en el artículo 5 precedente, solamente podrá ser efectuada la contratación y utilización de programas de computación libres.
Artículo 8.- Invítase a las Universidades Públicas Nacionales, a los Gobiernos Provinciales, y Municipales y al Gobierno Autónomo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires a adherir a esta iniciativa .
Artículo 9.- Comuníquese al Poder Ejecutivo Nacional.
The translation is accurate. It doesn't conflict with the BSD definition, please, read well.
The article says that the license must grant the right (not obligation) to redistribute modifications under the same license of the original program.
So, a BSD license grants me the right (i.e if I want; that's a right for) to redistribute modifications under a BSD license. Therefore, is allowed by the law.
There's a meeting next week with the congress commission discussing this law and a a local geek was invited to give advice. We (we=people that has promoted this law and is trying to move it forward) are interested in interesting opinions about how the law might be improved, so he can propose them.
Please, comments wanted. Let's hack a bug-free law together!
Thanks,
Daniel (TrixX)
The reason countries such as Argentina and India love free software is because it's cheap. Compared to many western countries, items in general are cheap. In many countries, one can either pay $500 for a copy of MS Office or hire someone at a decent salary for a year.
I knew someone from India who made more as an intern in the US than his father did as an Engineer in his native country. His father could take his family eating out every night if desired, yet his son lived in a [legitamite] shared home with eight others, barely making it along.
On one hand, you have companies that love foreign countries such as China for their labor. Remember the stories about a certain famous shoe manufactuer that makes their shoes abroad for $20 but sells them in the United States for $150? Companies love those types of deals. But other companies then try to sell their products in the local markets at US rates. For some reason, people making the equivalent of US $20 per month are not happy paying $500 for a computer, $500 for each program needed, etc. You've got to wonder why there are problems...
Use of the internal working, and of arbitrary segments of the program, to adaptate them to user needs
Looks like President Bush was involved in the process.include $sig;
1;
Where would the tech support come from? The goverment would have to figure out a way to hire knowledgeable people to deal with this free software in a secure, dependable manner. The government can't do this BECAUSE of tax cuts. I think the need for smaller government outweighs the need to play around with free software.
Would you rather have IBM technical support and hardware behind your data, or a person who was hired as a park ranger but got pushed into a computer job because of budget cuts? A person who thinks that running a standard RedHat install as high-priority high-security server is OK? Heh.
You said it...
It is not safe for any government to run software which it does not know how it operates
That's why they let big iron companies like IBM help them do it.
It's a joke to think that a park ranger or a 10 pt. veteran that was pushed into a computer management job because of government budget slashing is going to look at the source code. We'd have RedHat base installs running on crucial servers, without patching, leaking sensitve data to the world.
As for people having access to the software, what do you expect? That they let you stop by the office to use Word? You payed for governmental vehicles too, do you expect you should be able to drive them?
Corporations may not always be good, but they get the job done better than a stripped to the bone government who can't pay IT people a decent wage can!
No, no, no. It should not in any way be OK for federal, state, local governments to use computer software which, at the very least, produces documents that are only viewable or usable by those who have, let's say, Windoze on them.
Anything that any public service entity produces, from informational documents to forms, which is presented in an "e-format" should be in a format that ANYONE can view and use regardless of OS or CPU. The government's job is NOT to serve the best interests of M$, but to serve the best interest of the citizens to which they are beholden. Open standards (REAL, not "de facto" standards) that ANYONE with a standards-compliant browser, wordprocessor, or what-have-you, should be able to painlessly view or use these documents.
The best way to ensure this IS to use opensource at best, or, if you MUST use closed source sh*t like windoze, then anything presented to for public consumption should be REQUIRED to be in open format. HTML(true, HTML, not HTML with M$-specific extensions), XML (TRUE XML), java (TRUE java, not C# or M$Java).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Why should my government use my tax dollars to buy software when there are viable open-source alternatives? Seems like the Argentine government has a great policy in the making. And it will encourage technology growth in IT that is not dependent on foreign corporations. (Seems like a good plan for any non-US government for that reason alone.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
The way this article is described by the submitter and poster, the law appears to force all software to be Free Software, which I totally disagree with.
As a law that would force only the government to use Free Software, which would give the government and the people full knowledge of the workings of important government software, I think it is very reasonable.
As opposed to consultants getting paid to provide software, and they then refuse to debug without extensive further payments, or even go out of business, leaving the govt with a horribly expensive piece of junk that is impossible to fix or upgrade.
Happens all to often *sigh*
But I guess that would be too much work for a government. That would put too much responsibility in the hands of people with a chance of knowing what they are doing. Better to adopt a policy of all free software, or all Microsoft, or all Ada, and remove all freedom of choice. That way no one is able to make a good decision, err, I meant, no one is able to screw up.
I do have a question, though. Suppose (say for interoperability, because of evil closed document formats) the only possible word processor is MS Word. Now, Linux is a viable alternative to MS Windows, and hence mandated. Does the choice of MS Word mean they have to run MS Windows (pretend that there is no way to run Word from Linux), or will they run Linux and give up Word?
I've seen this situation before. A company standardizes on WordPerfect, but the secretaries have Word as well so they can deal with outside documents. They just change word processors based on what they're working on (actually, they only use Word, because they like it better, but don't tell anyone, that's their secret). I'm not sure how it would work if they had to reboot to switch word processors. Anyway, for a company this works great. They might lose business if they couldn't send or receive Word documents. For governments this isn't a concern; they can just serve their citizens less efficiently. It's not like the citizens have another choice.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
...the previous laws. Get rid of the bad IP laws and the problem will disappear.
When I first saw the title I thought that the law may have covered all software used in a country, not just for the government. Luckily, it was just the government changing, leaving the consumer the right to choose. Although I fully support Linux and the free software movement, I disagree with this law for one major reason: the best product cannot always be used. If a commercial product does the job better, it will end up costing more to use the "free" software. In the end I believe that free software will be used by a majority of people, but not because of some law, but because free software will be a better product. Capitalism will sort out the winners from the losers.
While I like the idea of free software and open source, I think this argument is heading off at a tangent. Its not the client that matters, Its the file format. If you have an open file format that can be read by any client, and can be supported by future versions, open or closed, then you have a lot more value. You are not dependant on any one company. You have no problems with version inconsistancy, and any time you dont like the current client, you can make or acuire another. Without haveing to convert your records and archives. The second point about open file formats is in archiving. The whole digital darkage argument is based on closed file formats that go out of fashion and thus doom the data held in them to death. If the whole of argentinias data is in open formats that stand the needs of time, they will have a much more reliable historical record than contries that depend on data in closed formats. So my argument is that argentinas govenment should standardise and open the file formats first and worry about the software to handle it second. Everyone knows how fast software changes... open software has alot of benefits. But open storage formats and especialy open exchange formats will be the most valuable gifts that anyone can give to future generations. Think XML, or any of the other open exchange formats. If they are not good enough then make them so... Delor
"... every time I open my mouth some of my stupid escapes!"
One of the biggest ideals of free software is CHOICE. This whole law or passage would be a contradiction to what free software is actually about.
This certainly shouldn't be considered a win for free software because it doesn't respect the values thereof. All it is is force-feeding.
Merit of software may be heightened by it being fiscally burden free. Yeah, and so what? Is that the only thing that matters? (That question doesn't even deserve an answer these days -- ever gone a few minutes without thinking about money?) This whole thing seems silly to me.
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
..software with a license of use that guarantees the user, without an extra fee, the following rights: ...
5. Modification of the program, and free distribution of the modifications and the resulting new program, under these same conditions.
That's a sticky phrasing; perhaps it's partly the translation. Does this mean that the user has the right to free redistribution, or that the license must guarantee free redistribution?
It it's the latter, this law would seem to prohibit BSD-style licenses, which allow users to redistribute the software with proprietary modifications. I'd say that would cross the line into ideological crusading inappropriate for a government...though I doubt that's what they intended.
Is the original Spanish available, and can somebody understand it well enough to clarify?
IT works in argentina are almost at slave level.
All state dependencies have 4 licenses of each software and 100+ working boxes.
the end user in all those dependencies have too little experience with software so the new training is no cost at all, ( I certainly can imagine all the dark business politicians could do with this).
forget all about corporate licenses, end user agreements, official technical support. all is done internally by some guy called "el Técnico", a high qualified (self trained), big-ego, linux-lover+win-user, 21-30 years old employee.
you don't get a job into the goverment or any state dependencies by your profesional skills, you must have a friend or a relative in a high position; and IT workers have 3 months contracts, any suggestion about legalize software or innovate means you are looking for another job, unless it comes from upstairs, or by a federal law.
I think this law is intended to be aware of "Software Legal" a witch-hunting enterprise backed by Mocosoft, SirMantec, AutoDisk and other major software companies (local and foreign); who is making a big cleaning in the middle and small enterprise.
but who knows... this country is bizarre 24/7
I feel compelled to enter this fray.
I think the prospect of the US ever using free software is slim to none, however it is do-able.
To answer where technical support would come from, the free software vendors and others who integrate solutions. We do not have to use Linux either, there is plenty of free industrial strength BSD flavors around.
Scalability is often a problem when it comes to free software, so the paradigm 'use free software wherever ~possible~ would prevent total free software dominance.
I think the revenue created by software sales is ludicrous because the vendor can leverage their proprietary knowledge to extort money from people. However, if the software is free or more preferably open source, the can charge what the market is willing to bear.
Speaking of IBM, they have several initiatives that are based on free/open software, and I'm looking forward to seeing the integrated solutions they provide.
And the use of RedHat on a large scale is clearly not an option, and associating RedHat with free/open software isn't fair to the 'movement'. RedHat has done a number of things, especially with regard to scene they created with gcc 2.96.
As far as the economy goes, more people with better software is preferred. I think vendors have to be more interested in the supportability and usability of free software, the ones that cost a lot tend to care only about getting that next version out the door and 'service packing' it.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
System migration is not a step to be taken lightly, and it's hard to get it right. Although abundantly aware of its problems, FAA is still running code that may be older than you are, and they've already aborted deployment of two modernized air traffic control systems.
Like many corporations, government agencies are addicted to software custom-built in-house. In some cases they already own the source code. If they need something changed, they just give their IT contractors a task order.
Even compared to most corporations, government agencies seem to have a lot of inertia. Even if such a law could get through Congress despite M$ lobbying, many agencies would apply for exemptions, adding a paperwork burden to the technical burden.
I used to work as a contractor at a government agency. Our government boss was pretty enlightened and let us use Linux on our desktop machines. However, we didn't even use Apache for the public web server because of various migration difficulties.
Yeah, right... the US government REALLY wants to do business with Cuba. The whole 40-year-embargo thing is just a front.
"This is the situation. The investor rights provisions in the FTAA grant corporate interests broad-based rights to sue over government regulation and government delivery of services."
Only if the government unfairly favors a local corporation over an international one. The Argentine law doesn't say "no American software," it just says "no closed-source software." If the former were the case, they'd be up a creek without Mozilla (for example).
"If regulations relating to occupational and health standards can be struck down by lawsuits from these legal fictions,"
From what I've heard, the laws you mentioned were struck down because the governmental arms weren't able to produce reliable evidence that such laws were really nessecary.
"then how do we believe that such a law by the Argentinian government will stand?"
Because the law is about how the software is written, not who wrote it.
"In Canada, UPS is suing our government over the services provided by our national postal agency."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, UPS is suing because Canada Post appears to be giving preferential treatment and pricing to Canadian corporations (like Purolator). If UPS really wanted to go after a government postal service, they'd try to sue the USPS, to which pales Canada Post by comparison. But they're not suing the USPS because they have yet to quote different postages to FedEx (or anybody else, for that matter) than they have to UPS.
"We have no control over the outcome of this, because we surrendered much of our sovereignty by signing NAFTA."
I fail to see what corporations have to do with national soverignty, unless you're talking about a socialistic system.
"And for what? Trade with American nations other than the current signatories to NAFTA amounts to less than one percent of our trade. We gain nothing and lose much from this deal. "
That's because the FTAA isn't operational yet. If you want to make comparisons, you'll have to stick with the mostly-operational NAFTA. After NAFTA, Mexico supplanted Japan as our #2 source of imports (Canada' still #1). Anybody who remembers anything about the 80's and early 90's should realize just how big a drop that is for Japan, while I don't think I've even seen the phrase "Hecho en Mexico" until recent years.
The idea of FTAA is to increase the trade with the rest of the hemisphere, just like we have with Mexico.
"The FTAA is about unrestrained corporatism."
You must be seeing something I'm not, because from where I'm sitting, the SEC doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
What happens when the law is broken?
Just my $0.04 (adjusted for inflation)
Remember, the software industry in the US has enough clout to get laws passed in its favour - and to block laws it doesn't like. And in such a case it'd be certain to use it.
"In order to maintain an open and free government, the people must be able to understand all governmental processes" Like the way the people of the US understand the 2,000 pages of the IRS code plus the 12,000 pages of regulations? Or, like the way the people of the US understand the 110,000+ pages of Medicare regulations? Just wondering ...
hi, I'm from argentina, some things to say: - this seems like a dream come true, but I will not hold my breath (more below) - this country is economically so f* broked, that we had to ask the FMI money every week, and more money we ask, the double more money we debt, the triple we had to pay taxes (the geometrical increment is due to corruptions in gov). - in a country so broked economically, I always wondered why the governament spend millions of dollars in microsoft software (specially in the server arena), AND i know they spend millions dollars, because I worked in gov.ar for two years. - you simply cannot believe how so low is the IT knowledge in gov.ar, in my work I had to demostrate how linux can work flawlessly meanwhile they have tryed *for one year* to make NT work without hitchs. - most IT gov.ar staff are just politicians friends, they are choosen for friendlyness not by talent. - I sincerely hope this law passed his way, but I fear ms will play "tentation island" with a lot of people that this law may never see the ligth. - I'm currently unemployed (well, I'm not alone, 20% people here are unemployed), so if the governament want to train some monkey staff, "billy, don't loose my number" :-) /sergio
hi, I'm from argentina, some things:
:-)
- this seems like a dream come true, but I will not hold my breath (more below)
- in a country so broked economically, I always wondered why the governament spend millions of dollars in microsoft software (specially in the server arena), and *I know* they spend millions dollars, because I worked in gov.ar for two years.
- this country is economically so f* broked, that we had to ask the FMI money every week, and more money we ask, the double more money we debt, the triple we had to pay taxes (the geometrical increment is due to corruptions in gov).
- you simply cannot believe how low is the IT knowledge in gov.ar, in my work I had to demostrate how linux can work flawlessly meanwhile they have tryed *for one year* to make NT work without hitchs, and they still use DOS clipper for their enterprise datawarehouse, togheter with win95 file sharing so the data is "at your fingertips", enabling a new era in the network productivity environment.
- I sincerely hope this law passed his way, but I fear ms will play "tentation island" with a lot of people that this law may never see the ligth.
- I'm currently unemployed (well, I'm not alone, 20% people here are unemployed), so if the governament want to train some monkey staff, "billy, don't loose my number"
/sergio