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U.S. Asked to Put Purchasing Power to Good Use
James Love writes "Today Ralph Nader and I wrote U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch
Daniels to ask the federal government to use its power as a big consumer to
address competition issues in the market for PC client software. These are
some of the practices we want OMB to examine: OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture"
makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers, and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave; OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software; OMB is asked to consider if it should place a cap of the market share for any one vendor of PC client software, and have the size of the cap depend upon Microsoft's willingness to open up its interface information, or port its MS Office products to additional platforms; OMB is also asked to consider if it would be more efficient to buy code for office productivity products (and release into the public domain), rather than spend billions to lease software."
this kind of thing is what MS fears most: one of the world's largest "customers" jumping into the GPL'd software ring. that would not only give alternatives an enormous confidence boost in the eyes of other businesses, but it would start a massive trickle down effect, as all the companies that the government does business with now need to be "compliant" with something not of Redmond.
this is why MS seems to be fighting gpl anything in the US Government tooth and nail. with bsd-style lincenses microsoft could just take the code for little or no effort, and continue to ride on their reputation (nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft), but GPL locks them out nice and tight.
We've been seeing more stories about Governments either being petitioned to change their software buying policies, or mandate certain buying policies for their various departments.
The problem is that the mandates seem somewhat disconnected by technical reality and what software works best in a situation. My suggestion is that perhaps what should be mandated is a minimum standard of interoperability between systems, and a minimum level of openness about the mechanics through which the software achieves the interoperability.
So for example, the US gov't could specify that any productivity suite purchased by it's departments must support completely an open standard file format of their choosing or design. If MS Office chooses to support that file format properly, that there is no cap on how many units of MS Office could be purchased. If they choose not to, then it cannot be considered.
If that policy were applied to many different software application areas then it would quickly matter less where the software came from, and would start to matter more how good the software was.
What is the point here? I got koffice installed by default, and then I have star office somewhere, and then there is open office, and abiword, etc. There are plenty of office products, for free, that the government could use and not pay a dime for. I don't think I want to use my tax dollars for microsoft office, and I don't think anyone else does either.
If we have to though, because they don't want to spend millions of dollars on retraining a work force on how to use one version of office over another, I do believe that the government has the right to ask for the source code. HOw else would they know their vulnerabilities with e-mails like "I love you" and "Wanna see this horse go at it with a squirrel" causing billions of dollars in computer damage, not to hardware in general, but in software and peace of mind.
Which would you decide?
U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels opens the letter, replies with a very wordy letter whose 'jist' is "We'll look into it", and puts the file in the "review" basket (aka the trash can).
Welcome to America, where your letter is viewed, but dismissed unless you have a large audience of constituents backing you. This is how democracy works, for something to happen, a large group must support it.
Some good points are raised here. Documentation on file formats should be a required aspect of any product, simply because one of the challenges faced with computers is evolving your old data to new systems over time.
I don't agree that the government should be in the role of creating software. Government is not a good entity to choose technologies the free market should adopt. As far as software purchasing costs, you could make a strong argument for companies to provide reduced rates to government entities. But one should also appreciate that the tax dollars outlayed on software is more than made up by the tax revenues coming in as a result of the employment opportunties the software companies generate.
I think the true "key to the kingdom" is in the file formats. People are scared to break away from MS file formats more than anything, they are a powerful force in keeping MS in a dominate position.
If the formats where standardized (in lets say XML) it would greatly reduce EVERYONES dependacy on MS.
The government has an even greater reason to fear MS file formats. That reason is REALLY OLD DATA. The government needs to be able to work with extremely old file formats, and if that file format is not standard and has simply been "retired" by a company (MS) they are shit out of luck, and will end up making another company you rich for converting those "Word 2000" docs to "BobbySoft QuickEdit 2035".
"Today Ralph Nader and I wrote U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels to ask the federal government to use its power as a big consumer to address competition issues in the market for PC client software.
Um... okay, but is it really the perogative of the OMB to "use its power" that way? According to the OMB's own site, it "evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities." In other words, it's an executive agency designed to ensure that the US taxpayers get the most bang for their buck, efficiency-wise, not to make political statements about reforming corporate behavior. That said,
These are some of the practices we want OMB to examine: OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture" makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers,
... this is still a good idea. Seems like the OMB would be entirely interested in making sure that computers and software bought with fed dollars aren't going to be easily hacked.
and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave;
But this, no no no. This is still a judicial matter, and any penalty against MS is going to be determined in court. An executive agency would be way overstepping its bounds here.
OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software
Yargh! But THIS is another good idea. Again, it's in the financial interest of the country to make sure we're not "locked in" to certain contractors who could then baloon their prices. Not that that ever happens...
So basically, I think there are some good ideas here with regard to protecting the federal government's investment in software and making sure they're not going down any paths simply because MS wants them to, but trying to wreck the monopoly just isn't in the charter of the OMB. Sorry.
And I consider the purchase of a buggy, insecure, bloated Operating System like Windows a waste of my money. When some Government clerk is just typing up documents on a PC, why do they need a copy of Windows (and presumably Office) when Linux and KOffice or OpenOffice, etc, will do the exact same thing at a fraction of the cost?
I'd much prefer if the government used free, open source operating systems as much as possible, saving taxpayer money and eventually getting me another tax cut (because 4 months is too long to work just to pay your taxes).
Cause it's our damn money, after all.
...so, in a nutshell, Nader is saying that the government should make an effort to influence the marketplace in a certain direction, rather than letting natural market forces dictate what heppens (questionable/illegal business practices being part of the market).
I'd love to see the rise of Open Source, the fall of Microsoft, etc, as much as the next guy. But I don't want the government using my tax dollars to achieve that (except in antitrust and other legal manners).
The government should research carefully and buy what makes sense. However, no matter how much we all like Microsoft alternatives, in things like office suites, it's disengenuous to argue that there's a viable non-microsoft solution for what amounts to a company of over a million employees. What kinds of deployment and management tools do open source software suites have? How many IT workers are trained to install/troubleshoot them?
Governments in general, and the US government in particular, can just *barely* do their job as is. Asking them to take a leadership role in IT purchasing is like asking Microsoft to take a leadership role in corporate ethics. It ain't going to happen, and the attempt would be an expensive, error-infested waste of time and money for everyone involved.
My opinion is that open source will prevail in the long run -- but I'd rather wait 10 years longer if it meant not setting the precedent of government setting this kind of precedent.
Cheers
-b
How would you actually enforce that? I can see a few potential problems:
1. Unless the specification for these standard file formats is very precise, there will always be interoperability problems.
2. Even if the office software "supports" a standard format, it obviously isn't going to default to that format, so you'll have to deal with the training issues (always use "save as...").
3. Microsoft (or any other commercial vendor) would claim that they need to be able to modify or extend the "standard" format in order to be able to innovate new features. This is actually a valid complaint, and difficult to work around. If you allow proprietary extensions to a standard format, it's no longer truly standard.
I still think this is a good idea, I just suspect that it'd be a whole lot of work to define these standard formats such that they meet the needs of the government and also those of the software vendors.
-Mark
Slashdot is at its best as an interactive forum, not a PR platform for politicians.
Perhaps if Mr. Love and Mr. Nader posted their ideas on Slashdot *before* they wrote to OMB, they and we would have benefitted from the discussion. Now it looks like fishing for compliments, or more likely, a good old fashioned Press Release (well targeted).
The GPL in no way locks Microsoft out. They could gather up the source code and ship MSLinux tomorrow if they were so inclined. They could even mix in some of their own software to preserve their Monopoly, similar to what Apple's OSX has done with Darwin and BSD.
Of course, don't expect to see it done any time soon. They have a lot of money invested in their current windows architecture. They also have a long history of forking or restarting projects and standards such that they don't have to be accountable or compatable with other people.
You are defending the monoculture of one company providing a single, one-size-fits-all product for everyone. A product that they change whenever they want to, by the way. A monoculture of supplier.
What's wrong with a monoculture of well-defined standards instead? You can use any word processor you want, as long as it saves documents in "THIS" well-defined file format. Ditto for spreadsheets, presentations, address books, web browsers, web servers, etc. It's still reliable, compatible, and interoperable -- perhaps more so than that which is proposed by the single supplier who occasionally decides to redefine what they provide. Call it a monoculture of data, if you will.
If Nader declares "Americans should never dress up like Carmen Miranda in public", you'd start seeing fruit salads over every Republican's head.
FWIW, in my job at a government science installation:
1. The Official Agency Word Processor is Word Perfect.
2. Much of my info is stored in Oracle Databases.
3. Everyone has Windows and Office, much of that is to read documents that others (the Public) send us. Yes, I know OpenOffice could do that. That's what I'm using.
4. For our computations, we take data from public formats (cdf), process it with legacy Fortran, and run computations on a variety of *nix, inluding Suns, and increasingly, *many* Linux boxen.
5. email is netscape.
The point being, these installations end up running, like many good companies, on a combination of legacies, IT whims, and user needs.
Execept, of course, when the next "trend from the top" comes down and, like such trends in private companies, set directives that trump the local users' needs and create another layer of mess. And this helps us, or open source, how?
This kind of stuff should be pursued the same way that the Linux "community" has pressed businesses--- with informed, local IT managers pushing open source solutions, not from the top.
Are you kidding me? You do understand that Ralph Nader is the man who brought Detroit to their knees at the height of their influence and power don't you?
I would venture to say that his influence is enough to cause serious change.
Stop being so damned cynical and participate in the process. If you feel disenfranchised in America, it is most likely because you spend more time on /. bitching than acutally doing the hard things it takes to make real change.
For text-based files, require them to be XML, and that the Schemas be published.
For binary files, specs already have to be precise (whether the spec is published or not) for reliable operation. And as far as extension goes, mandate that any extensions to the file format be made using specific extension semantics imposed by the format itself (i.e., reserved bits w/ a standards body allocating those bits to registered extensions, mandated publication of the semantics of the extensions, etc).