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Tim O'Reilly Bashes Open Source Efforts in Govt
There's a tremendous difference between what government should be allowed to do and what individuals should be allowed to do. O'Reilly is attempting to blur the distinction, a common rhetorical tactic but one which does not advance his argument. As far as I can tell, his only argument besides this is that if the citizenry pushes for the government to use Free software, companies will push back to use proprietary crud. This argument doesn't hold water - every company selling proprietary software is lobbying the government all the time, have been for years, and they aren't going to stop just because we do. CNet carries news today that Microsoft has pressured the NSA to drop development of Security-Enhanced Linux. I can only imagine what sort of pressures might have been brought to bear behind the scenes, perhaps Microsoft threatened to cancel the NSA's site licenses of Windows and Microsoft Office. But in any case, there's no such thing as "mutual disarmament" - if we back down we'll just get smashed by the continuing efforts of companies pushing proprietary software.
But back to the government/individual distinction. Individuals, for instance, shouldn't be required to disclose their private papers to anyone who asks. But government should: that's the foundation of our freedom of information laws, and they exist for a good reason - keeping an eye on government is a necessary thing. Saying "People should be free to keep their papers private" as an argument against government FOI laws is just a stupid strawman, unworthy of further debate. And that's what O'Reilly's argument against California's proposed law is as well.
Governments play by different rules. They need to be fiscally responsible, transparent to the public, and promote the public commonwealth whenever possible. Using Open Source or Free Software in government promotes all three of these goals, and if Microsoft or any other corporation doesn't make quite as much money when the government alters its standards for software procurement... so what? Companies who make shoddy products do lose business when the government ups its standards, and they have the same choice as any business does: either produce better products, or lose the government's business. In this case the shoddiness comes in some of the most important areas as far as software goes: open access to the code, to ensure the software that we the citizenry pay for is doing what it is supposed to be doing, but the rationale would be the same if the government mandated a certain level of bug-free-ness or a certain level of performance for software - you can shape up and continue selling to the government or you can ship out. Your choice.
O'Reilly seems to be promoting the agenda of Microsoft's Software Choice campaign. He's a business man; perhaps there's a reason we don't know about. But whatever his motives, his lame arguments are no reason to stop pushing for governments to use Free or Open Source software wherever possible.
I'm rather quite relieved to hear Tim O'Reilly of all people sharing the same opinion as me: that as good as open-source is, it should _NEVER_ be forced on people. That in essence destroys the 'freedom of choice' that is the driving force behind open-source. (hey, it rhymes...)
It is good that some of the "big players" are already thinking ahead about this, in case one day we actually do topple the big corporations (I'm not holding my breath). I wonder what RMS' and Torvalds' opinion of the matter is.
Imagine that - using the best tools for the job!
Beware the folks who capitalize the O and S in "open source" or the F and S in "free software." Reminds me of those who capitalize the H in "he" when referring to Jesus.
That's a foolish argument. Open Source _does_ put food on your table because it:
1) allows you to improve your skills
2) expands the audience of your work (which could lead to more sales of your _closed_ source work).
3) expands the software market for _everyone_
Think man, think!
no it does not.
its the same thing as if a large percentage of lawyers doing pro bono work. if they all i that lawyers fees would drop and they would all loose out in the long run.
same thing for doctors -- if they all started doing diagnosis for free they would be on the street instantly.
whats up with programmers ? why are they so stupid as not to see the obvious ?
Untrue. I make my money on Open Source easily. Just not by selling licenses. Planning, deployment, tech support, customizations, etc. etc. The code is just a side effect of countless billable hours of those activities. Open Source is a great way to make money if you are a consultant with programming skills.
To further elaborate:
The basic model of the web was to give away information, services, valuable goods, etc. for free, to anyone who cared to take them. The costs were covered by massive amounts of venture capital, money earned from previous successful IPOs of (worthless) internet companies, and banner advertising.
Initially, things went well because the web was new and people were willing to throw money at anything that had a remote chance of becoming an established player. However, we've all seen that it didn't last very long -- and now, even the banner ads aren't generating enough revenue to cover web site expenses.
The only profitable models on the web right now are subscription-based services and commission-based services (i.e. E-bay). The model of getting something for nothing simply does not work (unless propped up in the short term by someone else's money).
The same thing has happened with open source software: you give it away for free, then try to make money with consulting services, support, etc. -- which are nothing more than the "banner ads" of open source. Is there any company that uses Open Source as their business model that makes money? I seriously doubt there ever will be... Maybe IBM could be shoehorned into this category, but in reality, they are simply using open source as a way to sell more hardware and consulting services -- things they would have sold anyway if open source didn't exist.
If individual programmers want to release their source code to the world, that's their choice. But to actively lobby ALL developers to release their code under the socialistic GPL license is just morally and absolutely wrong.
I think it would be much more productive if the community were to place their efforts in getting DATA FORMATS to be standardized and interoperable. That way, products would have to compete on features, instead of allowing a proprietary data format to lock in the users.
Sorry if I don't go along with the mantra, but I think that O'Reilly has a valid point. Legislating open source in government is not the answer.
I think a better solution would be a competition, ala defense procurements. The government lists what it needs, and everyone shows up and demonstrates what they can do. If open source can do everything the government needs, at a fraction of the price, then you have you solution. You could even put in place a performance to cost ratio to determine value. (ie- This product can 90% of what this other product does, but costs $250,000 less. Is 10% worth $250,000?)
I'm not saying that the procurement process isn't flawed, just that legislative mandates have historically spawned unintended consequences at a prodigious rate.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Should the government stop buying commercial routers because they use a proprietary operating system?
Should the government ground the entire F-16 fleet until some open source programmer releases a GPL F-16 fire control system?
He's is right because the net is becomming subscription based and that's what it's coming down to... money, by going Open Source the developer looses, and even though todays non-open source software companies aren't the best way things could be, nor is Open Source. The Open Source will hurt the developers no matter if it will succeed or not, a lot of times it is an excuse to make bad code. I have worked on Open Source projects although I am against it being the way things are done with all or most developers
Tim sure is the man. Not The Man, the man.
I think it's funny as hell to see a two bit hack like michael take on someone who's been around longer, knows a whole hell of a lot more about the open source movement, and is an all around cooler guy than he could ever be.
no.
law makers == standards committees who define the law == ANSI C committee.
lawyers == developers of the law == C programmer.
defendants == users of the law == end users.
The analogy holds.
You can defend yourself without a law degree. But the opposing council will rip you apart. a doctorate is required for a reason.
The savings was from proprietary Unix hardware to Lintel boxes. Not from Windows to Linux.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
lawyers make the law by presenting arguments in court (and the judge decides to amend the law accordingly since he has the authority). lawyers can also win cases which results in precedents being set which are examples on how to apply the law. lawyers can alternatively sit for political office and make the laws directly by voting for ordinances in political action committees.
no. im saying the developers have an OBLIGATION to not screw over other developers in the same industry.
the same way doctors or lawyers dont screw over other doctors and lawyers by working for free all the time.
Yes it is going to increase innovation by making IT a stable industry in the long run.
I disagree with Mr. O'Reilly on this one for two reasons.
First, having worked for the government for three years before, the people in most government agencies who take bids and order items like computers and software don't know the difference between a 5 1/4" floppy disk and a 3 1/2" floppy disk, let alone know what Linux or BSD are. Where I worked, they consistantly ordered the 5 1/4" drives because, "they hold more data."
For this reason, I think OSS needs to be pushed in the government agencies. I'm not saying that they must be forced to use OSS, but rather OSS price gathering must be required during the bidding process.
It behooves the government to find the lowest cost on quality purchases, which is why they have the bidding processes in place. To deny a local vendor the chance to bid on a government contract is against the rules of the bidding process (at least in the departments where I worked it was). The agency must remain fair to all entities during the bidding process. Currently, operating systems like Linux and *BSD are overlooked in the bidding process. This should not be the case since there are many providers who probably would like to bid on such contracts. To my knowledge, they aren't even notified concerning upcoming bids. I think the bidding process should require the gathering and accepting of OSS bids along with Windows bids and the most cost effective solution should be the one that wins the bid.
My second reason is more a political one, and therefore perhaps not as important, but I believe if the government was not reliant on any particular vendor (Microsoft) for the majority of its operating system needs, then that particular vendor would not have as much power or influence in the government. I consider this a good thing.
Someone working for an employer is constrained to use whatever tools that employer wants them to use. If you are working for the government, then your employer is the public. The public gets to decide how the government works, because the government's entire reason for existing is to serve the public. People seem to lose sight of this a lot.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This is actually a problem for commercial, private sector entities as well. The "problem" is not software licensing, though the ever increasing cost of such licenses should be a factor. The long term problem is data file storage format.
/06 files though it wouldn't write them. We all had to upgrade when our annual 06 lease expired anyway. Not a big deal - Microsoft licence fees have been a separate corperate budget line item for a few years now.
Consider the current trend toward shorter, more restrictive, time-limited software licensing. also consider the deliberate limited backward compatibility designed to "encourage" upgrades. Consider the backup and archive files we all burn onto CDs every day.
In the not-too-distant future, we will need to access some old file from July of 2003 created with Microsoft Word XP/03. We will all be using Microsoft Word XP/07 by then. Microsoft WordXP/07 was able to read all of the
How do we access that old file from 2003? The curent version of Microsoft Word doesn't include backward compatibility from that long ago... The old XP/03 disks won't install anymore because the license to use it has expired... Attempting to circumvent the XP/03 DRM'ed DMCA'ed installer would be a crime... How do we access those old files? The secret proprietary file format includes DRM facilities to be sure that no one can copy my files. The DRM mechanism itself is secret and prorietary and any attempt to circumvent it would be DMCA violation. Attempting to decrypt the file itself would also violate the DMCA.
Without standard, documented, accessable data file storage formats, it will soon be illegal to access our own archived files. Another entire I.T. department will be required to migrate archives from "old" formats to "current" formats before the license to use the old software expires.
Open source software might not save the world, but the data files it generates will never ever be locked away in a secret proprietary encrypted, DRM'ed DMCA'ed file.