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Requiring Software Freedom
An Anonymous Coward writes: "CNET is carrying a story about the increasing momentum that Open Source software and 'Software Libre' are gaining in Latin and South America and Europe. A certain company from Redmond WA USA is mentioned several times in the article as the impetus to free foreign governments from certain onerous licensing agreements (not to mention the cost savings involved). It is interesting that some of these governmental entities are actually requiring the use of Software Libre, not just encouraging it. Maybe it's time to visit Rio?"
If there is something that both the FSF and I agree upon, it is that the production of software needs to be justified in terms of benefit to society. This presents a certain amount of difficulty. Benefit to society is a slippery concept and not an easily measurable quantity -- unlike tractor production. In addition, since Adam Smith, the best means of deriving that benefit are not necessarily direct. Which brings me to the subject of economics.
Before starting any discussion of economics, I need to pin down what I mean by ``benefit to society''. Underlying the attitude of this essay is the belief that a computer is just a machine, and the benefit of a machine is derived from its use to do things. From this point of view, the main benefit to society that software brings is that it allows users to run programs to do things that they regard as useful or entertaining. There is a clear economic component to this attitude: benefit to society can be regarded as the production of programs that users want to use. This benefit is hedged about usual common-sense provisions, of course; it's hard to argue that virus production is of benefit to anyone other than security experts.
An alternate view regards computers as ends in themselves. I'm someone who enjoys theoretical computer science and also enjoys tinkering with my systems for the pure love of it. So this view is something that I espouse in deed, if not in word. This point of view is of benefit to society in the same way that science, art or literature is; it expands our horizons and makes us mentally richer and more cultured human beings. This view is perfectly reasonable -- I also think that it is a view underlying many of the attitudes of the FSF. However, in terms of wider benefit to society, it is likely to be eclipsed by the purely utilitarian considerations of the economic viewpoint.
What I find most interesting about this Software Libre idea as proposed by some of the legaslative bodies involved is their definition of it. They seem to want to avoid the "Open Source vs. Free Software" rhetoric that we've been seeing recently--but even more interestingly, it seems that they're combining the two key factors the Free Software and Open Source communities expouse:
Firstly, the freedom to do what you will with the software. Who wants their government's (and by extension their) rights to use software restricted by a multi-national headquartered in another country?
And Secondly, the price is right. I'd rather see my tax dollars go towards quality software and support, -and- other services, than into MS's pocket for proprietary software that doesn't work (anyone remember Russia's lost nuclear materials? thanks MS SQLServer.)
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
I wonder what true effects this will have on the quality and quantity of free software.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I'm not looking to troll or start a flamewar here (I use Free software every day), but if one is required by law to use Free software, doesn't that represent a loss of freedom? Isn't freedom of choice important as well?
Remember, part of the open source definition is that software must be for anyone, whether it's a pro-freedom organisation or a bunch of international terrorists.
If you were to start saying that "It's free, but only to people we like", you're becoming worse than that certain company. AFAIK, they'll sell to pretty much anyone...
Hmm...I've never thought of it like this before. Micros~2's relationship with many governments is a lot like OPEC is to the US. The US is heavily dependant on OPEC for petrolium, and OPEC could wreak havoc on our economy and our ability to defend ourselves. Micros~3 could essentially do the same things to a foreign power, and it would take weeks for a nation to recover if Micros~4 decided to cancel services to a nation. The upcoming technologies Micros~5 wants to deploy would make this even easier. Think about it...
-- Grow up and use mutt.
Can't afford it? Don't worry, the first one's on me...
After all, that's the business model for software, isn't it? (shareware, etc) I am not saying Microsoft is evil -- they are doing what is good business for them, and to someone who does not have money, that may *seem* evil. But... it's not. It's just the capitalist economy at work, folks...
So... I think these countries are smart... They see the large hook in the eventual future... IT doesn't have to be just Microsoft -- it can be any first-rate, high-priced software company. If you bite now, you will be hooked in and be forced to pay high license costs forever... It's a good business decision -- if you don't have money, it's much better to use free software. If you really want to make it a point, you make it a law.
Honestly speaking, Linux and other free software works just fine. Give 3 complete newbies 3 different boxes (Mac, Win, Linux)... I've found that they adapt just as quickly/slowly, and the bundled software on each platform works quite well for all of them. (the only time you get messed up is in opening Win stuff on other platforms, but that's really not anyone's fault but M$) Forcing free software on a country is a rather interesting tactic, but it sure seems a lot better than being locked down to an expensive license contract -- especially if I don't have money to begin with...
LA countries are moving quickly into the double whammy of currency crises and recession. Argentina and Brazil represent huge ecnomic problems. What better reason to not export cash out of the country on increasingly poor terms, eg. dollars when local currency is dropping like a stone. So the natural consequence is to look for ways to keep the money in-country and if possible, not spend it at all. This way LA countries can not only save cash but can help prop up local employment by breeding a cadre of support personnel.
A lot of it depends on what people are doing, too. It isn't really any harder to compute stuff in Gnumeric than Excel; it probably doesn't even require a significant amount of training to get people to switch. Then in addition to not paying licensing fees, they're not having to pay consultants like you to come over and fix things every time a macro virus does something unpleasant. Not cost effective?
Another thing to think about, though, is that training still happens somewhere, and the labor force will eventually adapt to whatever they need to. (Hell, they adapted to Windows! And it really wasn't all that long ago that people didn't need to know Windows. They had to know WordPerfect instead.) When the world is beginning to switch from horses to cars, the labor available 5 years later is all going to know how to drive. Likewise, if one of the conditions for getting a government job is that you have to know how to use Gnumeric, then within a couple of years, all the applicants are going to know how to use Gnumeric. It doesn't cost any more to train people for one product than the other, so whatever training costs there are, are a one-shot thing for the switchover. When you look at some of the horrible costs associated with not switching, that one time expense gets recouped pretty fast.
In Europe, where numerous bills and resolutions have been introduced, local, state and federal governments spent $7.8 billion on software in 2000. In Brazil, governments spent a mere $200 million the same year, an indication of how little the country has to spend on software and why free or low-priced software holds such powerful appeal.
This may look impressive, but one should also consider exactly what goes into the estimated costs on software purchases. If these estimates include the cost of man-hours for producing custom software, this is not going to be a fair comparison because it will have more to do with how much money European countries are putting into, say, development of custom military software than it will have to do with what OS the foreign ministry is using for their desktops. I browsed the net a bit but was unable to find out what the size of the budgets of all of the European countries was in comparison with the size of Brazil's budget. It would be much more compelling to see what percent of Brazil's budget was spent on software in comparison with the percent of the countries in Europe.
As a side note, I know for a fact that the US military uses free operating systems and free build tools for some of their software, but they are still pouring a ton of money into the man-hours to create that custom software.
While I advocate the use of free software, and agree that it will help save some money, the comparison between Brazil and Europe in this article is fairly ridiculous because of the likely nature of their software expenditures. This may be a little off the subject, but a pet peeve of mine is when articles throw out fairly meaningless numbers to attempt to support their point.
True, but in this particular instance, monopolies are bad. Relying on one and only one vendor means the government is handcuffed to their business model, bug fix decisions and schedule, and feature enhancements. They can't look to another company to add an enhancement to the OS if it's closed, much less by a monopoly.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yes, I agree more is coming, and the Brazil patent announcement was an exciting move. I think it's likely that the various competing forces in modern intellectual property rights will be forced to work out their differences in this context, rather than in the music context where it's currently the hot topic. Face it, no government on earth, no matter how democratic, really cares whether its citizens have the right to share music or movies, copy them from one device to another, etc. It sounds too much like "free as in beer" to them. But governments do have an interest in ensuring that they, and their citizens, are not unduly beholden to a foreign power, including MS or an AIDS drug maker, and they have no trouble understanding that this equates with "free as in speech."
I think we're seeing the leading edge of an international movement to reject the USA copyright-patent paradigm wherever important national interests are at stake. It's mostly coming on to the global policy makers' radar screens now through China's attempt to join the WTO, because US interests are pressing China to crack down on mass-market software copying and fall in step with the US copyright paradigm. But the China stuff is like the MP3 stuff - Chinese computer makers are copying en masse because it's free beer and helps their profit margins, not for some national interest. Heck, they don't even HAVE free speech in China, so they're in a poor position to couch this as a human rights issue for global concerns to rally around.
But once you get a critical mass of Brazils publicly and officially declaring that US patents are fine for the US, but not fine where they hurt our citizens, you gotta believe some serious powwows among the diplomats and international-law-and-treaty types are going to occur. I think it's especially likely given that the current US administration's profligate rejection of international agreements has weakened its ties with allies. Same influence is created by the open-source policies which are the main topic here - they pressure the US on copyright the way Brazil's pharmaceutical decision pressures it on patent. And the bargaining positions of the world's Brazils is going to be this: "USA, either you overhaul your intellectual property rules so that they cut us more slack, and let your corporate citizens settle for a smaller share, or we will not enforce those rules in our country, and your corporate citizens will not get any share at all." Those modifications will bleed over into domestic law, and that, my friends, is the beginning of the end for the DMCA and like schemes. Overreaching leaves even a great power vulnerable - this is in Sun Tzu's Art of War, I think.
(yes, I'm from the USA, but I voted for the other guys.)
No, no, no. This is not a sig.