Slashdot Mirror
Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Carve a new face on the Mount Rushmore of Linux:
Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nuñez brilliantly vapourizes the Chicken Little division of the MS Fud Machine.
Long read but inspiring.
Add another name to the list of people who get
that 'All that is required for Evil to triumph
is that good men do nothing.'"
Update: 05/07 00:03 GMT by T : Antonio Ognio Cesti has an update: "We are some activists working
here in Peru to bring the documents
to more eyeballs with better bandwidth." They've done just that, writing, "Now we have much better hosting in the U.S. and the original FUD letter completely translated into English."
This was posted just a few days ago. Don't you editors ever check at all? /. It would benefit us all.
Sounds like there is some need for a better search engine at
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Not because OSS is best in *every* situation - but because in the 80% where it is the right decision, this article explains the needs to do it right (ie - have staff that is trained, pay for support), while dismissing the fears sent by proprietary companies.
The fact is, OSS is here to stay in the business, and only by really competing (ie - coming up with a better product for the price) can businesses hope to keep profitable. Of course, with more companies (Red Hat, Suse, IBM) making a profit from Open Source, the consumer will win every time.
Ah, competition. How I love thee.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
but then their governments aren't propped up by corporations, either...
That's right. The drug cartels have that area locked up.
Yes, this was just posted Saturday, but I'll bet a lot of people don't look back at stuff from the weekends. That being said ...
His letter is a long way of saying, "Please decide which side of your mouth to speak out of." By the third time he pointed out, "This contradicts what you said in the previous paragraph," I had tears streaming down my face.
This contradiction alone would invalidate your position.
...
This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs.
...
In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3.
...
On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately precding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.
Nope, no sig
Yes, the guy's a genius. Yes, it's a blow. But bear in mind, if you read the entire thing, it doesn't talk about putting Linux on every public sector PC.
;P
The gist that I get is that they're definitely moving to an open-source/free office suite.
They don't really say anything about changing the OS, although I think it would make plenty of sense if they're willing to put up with the costs of re-educating every govt. employee.
Hrm. Since Nunez mentions Theo and Darren Reed, I'm guessing that Peru is going to be installing OpenBSD with ipf, not Linux as some of you might have hoped...
Luckily the cartels don't really care how the country is run as long as they get to do what they want.
Which is a rather good state of affairs for the people of the country.
If MS is running a country they would try to force their software upon the people of the country. Which is not a good state of affairs.
The Cartels mostly wants to ship their stuff out of the place and into the US, which doesnt hurt the people in the country.
Since so many /. users notice so quickly that a story is a repost, why don't the editors do the same? Do they actually read what the others ran?
/. homepage...
It might be because of the duplicates the editors see all day in the submission bin. When you read so many stories, it might be difficult to judge if you already saw it in the submission bin (and rejected it) or if it made it through to
Would a "not a repost" committee, with some regular users as members, help? They could be chosen the same way as moderators (randomly, but still based on past level of activity). This would likely catch a lot of reposts, since usually, in the first ~30 comments, half of them are complaining about the repost. If a member flags a story as repost, the editor could then verify it, and refrain from actually putting it on the frontpage and look as somebody not doing a lot of backgroung checking.
Food for thought...
Everyone of the argument planks in the proposed bill is good, and not just for Peru. Every sovereign government based upon the ideas of representative democracy can expect similar gains if they were to follow the same principles. They are logical principles.
Free, unencumbered and open communication are the hallmarks of any society that hopes to better itself. Restricting communication to those who can afford to pay for a read/write access device, such as MS Word or Corel Wordperfect or whatever, is an inefficiency, pure and simple.
Enduring archival of public documents is, likewise, important for any society that wishes to learn from history instead of repeating the same mistakes. A written language used to be enough to guarantee such archival. Now, the essential medium is no longer paper, but the authoring and reading of documents is no longer just a matter of learning how to read and write, it's become of matter of having paid all of the taxes.
National security issues of knowing exactly what it is you are running. This is one issue that largely continues beneath the surface. It's very surprising to me that in the post 9/11 world that more hasn't been made of critical infrastructure running only programs you can see for yourself and compile for yourself.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You know whenever I read Tony Blair's speeches for instance or the writings of other foreign politicians such as this one, I get a little jealous. The holder of the highest political office in this country, in addition to constantly using phrases like "evil-doers" and "smoke 'em out of their holes", says things like:
"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."
- G.W. Bush as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002
See http://www.bushcartoon.com/bushisms.html for more examples.
If only people would argue in the logical and objective demonstrated by this letter, rather than flaming on about the evils of MSFT. Amazing what it does to your level of credibility. Platform-zealots take note!
This article is a follow-up of the story posted on Saturday. Geez people you people are like rabid dogs.
I've read a bit of the Federalist Papers (okay, it was just Alexander Hamilton's brilliant first paper... it goes downhill as soon as you get to John Jay's first writing) and of course we've all read the Declaration of Independence and other such great documents. And this reads like one of those documents. This guy could give lessons in what being a Democratic and Free state really means to the US Government. In fact, I think this letter should be required reading for all US Government officials.
I'd even go as far as to say we should begin a letter-writing campaign to mail copies of this to our congress-critters, to the White House, and to the national news media.
I'm going to put this on my TODO: list. I am going to draft a letter with these contents, and mail them to the people who represent me.
As the submitter said, "All that is required for Evil to triumph is that good men do nothing." I may not be a perfectly good man, but I'm going to do SOMETHING!
You have the name of the law correct. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that most kinds of information be available to the general public. There are exceptions for classified information, information that's protected by privacy (e.g. you shouldn't be able to get a copy of my tax return, etc).
I think the big jump you're making here is how the information is stored versus the information itself.
The Peruvian (and most free software people) want to say that the way the information is stored should be open and accessible to all. That is, whether the documents are kept in a locked filing cabinet, a computer, or posted to every chat room in the world, the way to access the information should be held hostage by a single vendor. The information must be accessible at all times.
That doesn't mean that the government should share all of the information all of the time with the people. While storing documents in an open format such as HTML would give them the opportunity to do so, it doesn't mean that they have to.
And now you get +4 Informative, when you should get -2 Karma Whore.
With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence
This statement alone should form the basis for many kinds of IT decisions, not just purchasing. Absolute brilliance.
where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
Hear, hear. Stating that a smarter, better informed "consumer" is a better served consumer is profound in its simplicity, and it neatly states an irrefutable argument that I think developers and admins have been trying to put into words for decades.
Fucking hell THANK YOU!
If I hear someone else spout off that we (at least in the US) live in a democracy one more time, I'm going postal.
IS this what government schools teach kids nowadays?
My all time favorite quote, which ties into your last sentance is by Thomas Jefferson. I swear to god if our current politicians would learn this (as well as some of the basic of the constitution) the US would "get it"
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Then again I'm also one of those guys who think the Federalist Papers should be required reading.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
But my main point is that the letter is just beautiful, even in translation; I really wish I read Spanish well enough to be able to read the original, because it must be wonderful. My favorite, by far:
Heehee.