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SF Gate on Open Source Government

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tear-down-this-proprietary-wall dept.

Bruce Perens writes: "At the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, Hal Plotkin points to Sincere Choice as the right compromise for an IT renaissance in Government including both Open Source and proprietary software. The article is extremely flattering to yours truly, but a good push in the right direction from a well-respected commentator."

9 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:so as I understand it... by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would suggest two criteria for deciding whether a file format is really open:

    1) The file format should be completely documented

    2) There should be at least two different applications from two different suppliers that can both read and write the format.

    Criteria #2 would smoke out file formats that are badly documented, such as the MS Word file format, which vendors *still* have to reverse-engineer to get some semblance of real-life compatibility, even though a spec for the format exists.

  2. Re:Excellent strategy by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
    You must be aware that trying to lead this community is like herding cats. Do you really think that there would have been that much coordinated activity among so many people with differing goals and viewpoints, and in a Machevelian way? No, sorry. I actually could not get Red Hat to sign on to Sincere Choice, Tiemann had alread decided on his direction.

    And you credit me with more political sophistication than I have, so far.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  3. Re:Terrific by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful
    MS Word format would be fine if they specified it completely and didn't want any royalty for usin it.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Possibles issues...? by Raccroc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here is the problem I see with mandating file formats "open"...

    What stops MS from making the default (in Gov. Editions anyway) Save feature in Word to be .rtf? They can then say (even with "some" legitimacy perhaps) that Word supports open standards.

    I'm sure they'd figure out how to support open standards with most of thier suites, knowing full well not many would actually use them.

  5. Re:so as I understand it... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Patents embedded in the standard must be available royalty-free with no discrimination in the licensing.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Re:so as I understand it... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Also, consider whether or not government should be locking the people who have to deal with government into a particular software product, and what unfair preference this gives to the vendor of that product. I submit that open standards are always best for the job because they avoid that unfair bias - anyone can interoperate, anyone can compete.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  7. Open Formats by paladin_tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree with Perens' demand for open document formats. So long as the format is open, I have choice in what application I use. I can choose to read a PDF file, for example, with gv or Acrobat Reader. The competition comes from who can make the product more convenient to use.

    When formats are closed, then one product must dominate. This is what we've already seen happen with MS Office, and we're seeing again with Internet Explorer, since MS is leveraging its market dominance to saturate the market with non-standard HTML (ie the Microsoft Document Object Model), thereby locking everyone into using IE.

    --
    #define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
  8. Re:PDF"s by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
    If it is possible for the Free Software community to implement PDF forms without any legal problems, and if the format is fully documented, I would not object to PDF. There is some question regarding whether the documentation is sufficient. There is also the PDF encryption issue.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  9. Re:so as I understand it... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I doubt that the proprietary software houses would consent to open standards and documentation. It's not in their business models and egos to cooperate.

    Has everybody forgotten that there is such a thing as a customer, and that all of the money of the proprietary software houses comes from that customer? People seem to take a vendor-centric view of software by default. Why should we even care about the vendor's ego and business model? Our software budget does not exist to fund that vendor, it exists to procure the software we want, using our own criteria, not that of the vendor.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.