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Venezuela Goes Open Source
Odinson sent in this news blurb from LinuxToday, reporting that Venezuela has adopted a policy for the use of Open Source software in government wherever possible. Apparently they have practical rather than philosophical motivations: keeping cash in the country and promoting local software development.
Has that argument been tried in other states, like California?
"Why should we send our money to *gasp* Redmond when we can get an equally capable system for substantially less?"
Of course, you could make the same argument about whatever city Red Hat is in. Maybe it's something only people outside the US can make.
When there's an earthquake in the deep ocean it is seen as only a ripple on the surface.
But as it approaches shallower waters that little ripple can become hundreds of feet tall, decimating everything that stands against it in its path.
I do believe we have seen the first ripples of a slow moving wave....
*grin*
Hugo Chavez thought he had a tenacious enemy when he crossed Big Oil (tm) :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There are computers in Venezuela? J/K, but it is nice to see linux reaching futher into the MS Empire, though not a very big account for MS I bet, but still one that's news worth I guess.
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Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
Similar kind of opinions have been heard here in scandinavia, apparently atleast in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. If you understand finnish, here's the article.
4Literature - Read, write, and discuss your favor
I have installed Linux on 3 computers in my LAN.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Is there enough open source software development going on in Venezuela to keep the govt going? I would think they will have to look outside their borders for the majority of their needs.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
It is surprising that this decision seems to exclude other free licenses such as the BSD. Does this mean that they wont use things like Mozilla (isnt it the NPL?) and FreeBSD? What did they find objectionable about the other licenses?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
When you're rich, the time and sacrifices needed for philosophy are cheap. When you're poor, the practical rules the roost.
Pithy comments aside, this only reinforces what I have come to believe in recent months: that the eventual dominance of Linux/open source is an economic inevitability.
The reasoning behind this is very simple, and has nothing to do with blind zealotry. Capitalism does not tolerate inefficiency. If you can do something better than your competitors, or if you can do the same thing but cheaper, you will have an advantage and the natural selection of the free market will elevate you above the rest.
Linux is more efficient in economic terms. Right now of course, it's "efficiency" is being held back by the number of rough edges that need polishing, the huge resources needed to overcome Microsoft lockin and so on. However, these are becoming less and less all the time. Eventually (like within a few years) Linux will be as good as Windows, as well as compatible with it thanks to the efforts of the wine/samba/OpenOffice/NTFS crews. At that point, you can be better and cheaper at the same time by using it. The result? Market dominance.
It has another advantage as well - multiple vendors. History shows that economics favours systems with multiple vendors: witness Macs vs PCs, or VHS vs Betamax.
Could this be the beginning of the end (of domination) for microsoft? First Peru, then the UK looking at OS solutions, now Venezuala (Did I see something somewhere about an American state going the same way?). The largest avalanches start with but one snowflake...
These could be examples for others to look to when deciding policy. The more that say no to Microsoft, the more likely that others will also say no.
The only worry I have is what the response from Microsoft will be...how much money will they throw at Venezuala to persuade them to change their minds?
demon
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Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.
MSNBC is reporting that Venezuela's true motives are to save up their money to fund TERRORISM!!! Microsoft has urged the Depts. of Defense and Justice to have a word with the Venezuelan government to strongly suggest that they keep their tax dollars rolling into Redmond, where it will be safe from EVIL-DOERS.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"According to Pérez-Martí, the government and the people of Venezeula were increasingly concerned that over 75 percent of the funds for software licenses went to foreign nations, 20 percent to foreign support agencies, and only 5 percent to Venezuelan programmers. "
I hope other countries take note of this. While I'm a skittish about requiring GPL, GPL certainly seems like it would be perfect for not-so-wealthy nations. And isn't any other nation concerned that the vast majority of their IT infrastructure is controlled by a power hungry corporation in the United States? If I were in a country like say Germany, I'm not sure I'd be happy having my government using Microsoft products that report who knows what, and gives them total privileges to all the computers in the name of "fixing bugs".
A GNU GPL law may be interesting, but if introduced it should be a part of a much larger package, defining a new set of rules regulating the protection of computer programs, hence removing them from traditional copyright protection. See my article on lagom copyright, published by Newsforge.
Just changing the public procurement like this may prove to be fatal to cost and efficiency. I think proprietary code and open code should compete on the same terms. The license is not the only thing defining the efficiency of a certain solution. If openness is a valid demand from a democracy point of view, openness should be introduced in copyright law to make everyone on the market work on the same terms. I do not find it feasible from an efficiency point of view to mandate only one type of license in public procurement.
See also my article on open code in public procurement published by Newsforge.
Regards,
Mikael
Pawlo.com
Yeah, tell that to Digital (DR-DOS) and dozens of others Microsoft has crushed over the years.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
It is surprising that this decision seems to exclude other free licenses such as the BSD. Does this mean that they wont use things like Mozilla (isnt it the NPL?) and FreeBSD? What did they find objectionable about the other licenses?
First, you are I think confusing two separate issues.
1) Open Source software will be used by government wherever possible. This definition includes a superset of free software, and especially includes FreeBSD, Mozilla, the NPL, and other licenses in addition to the GPL.
2) Software developed for the government must be GPLed. Their reasoning is probably something along the lines that public moneys, funding public projects (like government-written, or government funded software) shouldn't be appropriated for personal gain, especially by foreign monopolies that will embrace, extend, and ultimately seek to destroy a competing product.
Not an unreasonable stance for them to take, actually.
The article isn't entirely clear, but from my reading it appears that the government will use free software and open source software wherever possible (of whatever licenses they deem appropriate), proprietary software where they must, but any software developed for the government (presumably by contract, perhaps at times even by government personnel) will be GPLed, with its freedom and accessiblity to the public thereby protected for the duration of the copyright. A damn fine idea IMHO.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
...then we'll only need Argentina and Brazil, and
then we'll have a continent!
The title is misleading. Venezuela is going GPL, not open source. There are presumably a lot of open source apps that cannot be used in Venezuela because they are licenced under terms that are not GPL compatible. I'm assuming that GPL compatible is good enough (I hope).
I usually think in terms of "open source" meaning OSI approved licence. I wonder what the "gaps" are in terms of types of apps that aren't really ready using GPL only. Some of the things that come to mind are: enterprise grade RDBMS, java swing libraries, RDBMS report writer. For that matter, is Apache's licence GPL compatible !? If not, what will they use? Is there an AutoCAD solution? Is there a geocoding solution? What other GPL gaps are out there?
Reread the article:
...all software developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL.
...
Rey also outlined additional details of the plan. Besides the government's GPL requirement, the policy requires that the official accounting application for Venezeula must be a GPL'ed application.
I read it that any open-source software is fine for use (with the exception of accounting, which I'd agree is weird). GPL is just the development license. That's only a problem in that government programers won't be able to have their changes folded back into non-GPL software.
Good move, for a country with some economic (as well as political) issues. Possibly aside from pragmatic issues, there's a less willingness to go along with businesses from that giant to the north, after Bush's administration so heartily embraced the results of a coup d'etat against Chavez. Oh, how red our faces be, when he returned to office the next day. (Though it's anyone's guess how he'll fair in the next elections as economic and unemployement problems persist)
He now has a ready made excuse for any problems with the economy. Being at war or a state similar to war tends to help incumbent heads of state win elections.
Perhaps it's just an iconoclastic move, perhaps Microsoft will join american predecessors and back their own coup to get back in. Heck, fruit companies did it, right?
The first to do it were sugar companies, since Venezuela has oil, it might well be a candidate to become questionable state number 3 in the USA.
Microsoft cannot allow Venezuela to do this. If any country switches to Open Source, and it is a success, Microsoft is in deep shit. Other countries would follow the lead, and soon Microsoft would be forced to implement huge price cuts just to have any chance at all.
If this is a success in Venezuela, I believe that in the near future the US Govt will be one of the very few running any version of Windows. Billy and Steve will throw however much money it takes at Washington to keep things that way.
But can they buy off the whole world?
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
The point youre missing is that countries are more likely to pull themselves out of economic funks if they promote domestic development. When WIPO and WTO turn foreign countries' infrastructures over to american multinationals, the country ends up poorer, as it is americas economy that benifits from the profits of those infrastructures. Even the WTO admits their approach doesn't work very well, if you mine through their annual reports a few years back.
:)
Open Source, which promotes competition via innovation instead of competition via information hoarding as closed source does, is a good way to spurn and encourage domestic development, which in turn pumps their economy up.
Its true that MS cant do much more than take your money, but how often do you think that money goes back into the country that spent it? Usually it just joins that 40 billion in the bank they have, which in no way helps those countries financially. And as we've all seen, simply owning the software itself does not allow you to generate wealth; software has become a neccessity in administrative tasks such as running countries, so why not shop for solutions in the homes & stores of your citizens and help them attain a higher standard of living.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Today, a PC that is decent for office work is, say $1000 - of which $400 is MS software. Make that almost zero with 90% of the functionality and 99% of the average office workers used functionality and you have an unbeatable deal.
Secondly DR-DOS presumably cost a considerable fraction of the cost of DOS. Linux / Open Office / Mozilla / Samba on a per seat basis costs say $20 as opposed to $400 - that is 5%. That sort of saving is too great too ignore.
Finally, Linux and open source tools have thousands of people working on them and despite disputes between KDE and Gnome and whatnot everyone contributes to the strength of Open source and Linux.
The only thing holding Linux back is network effects from the massive installed Windows base. But that will be overcome with time.
There have been half a dozen or more of these stories of government and large IT sections adopting Linux in areas with thousands of seats. The tide has turned.
TO: THE TROOPS
RE: GET MOVING ON VENEZUELA DONATIONS
Hey kids. Just got my desktop machine working again after that last service pack (what a bitch that was, huh?). And what did I see in my daily Linux Encroachment report? Apparently some piss-ant country that we could buy and sell like it was a stick of bubble gum is mandating open source software in government. How did we miss this one? Peru, Venezulela, I get them all mixed up anyway. But you know what this means! Pack your bags, it's time for a field trip!
I figure 10,000 brand new PCs for the schools, pre-loaded with Windows XP and Word, plus a nice plaque and a fruit basket, that should be enough to get them to drop this stupid idea.
And this time, let's be sure that the blue screens start coming up in about 8 months. I think Venezuala will be able to afford the Win2K upgrades we'll offer them to fix the problem.
Get moving! This one should be even easier than ol' Meheeko was.
xoxox,
BillG
The LinuxToday article originates in an interview in L@ Red (Spanish only). Nice read.
So many posters obviously haven't read the article. As the parent states, the government will use Open Source (be it BSD, GPL, etc license) but software developed by the government will be GPL (according to the article).
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
In Peru the policy for open source was dropped dued to failures in open source as MANDATORY and to microsoft's lobbies
When are they going to send the US Ambassador to have a little... armtwisting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussion (yeah, that's the ticket, discussion!) session with Venezuelan honchos?
And when will MS "donate" a few zillion dollars in licenses to Venezuela?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I suspect a big reason why Microsoft grew as fast as it did was folks ran software from work at home. It was easy to take a single copy of Office 6.0-97 and install it everywhere. Compliance happened, but it was because they were 'doing the right thing' rather than forced by the software. I've read speculation that ID's success was due to the enormous number of folks installing, generating a buzz that got the folks who were going to pay to go with the leader rather than those who tried to protect every sale with goofy copy protection that just does not work very well for those who paid.
Now that XP - Office and OS - make casual copying difficult, I wonder how fast folks will transition. Often stuff gets installed first, legal details second. That seems to be fading... I won't touch XP for my work or personal equipment, and I don't see very much in my dealings with corporate America either. 2K, lots... but little XP. Better chance of finding win95 on the box out there.
Anyhow, when you do it now, you pay. You have to think about what this thing is going to cost. Less hiding, playing OEM games, and avoiding the $300+/box/year they are going to sock you with. That adds up whether it's a small city department, school, whatever. Of course that one Linux CD will work at home and office. Not perfect, but getting there....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Exactly... remember the "NSA" key? Now, as a private citizen I'm honestly not that worried about things like that, but if were making IT decisions for a COUNTRY (other than the U.S., I guess) something like that would be factored in.
I find is curious that people keep making this distinction, as though the two have little relation to one another. Surely the one of the tenets of the philosophy of Free Software is to allow users to have control over the source so they aren't forced to accept the word of one or more unaccountable parties? Is that not practical? Yet it is a philosophy. The more commentators keep making this bizarre seperation, the more people will be led to believe that the GPL is some pipedream license, not applicable in the "real world". It's time to realise that the GPL "is" practical, and that the philosophy is Free Software puts the practicality of using software high in its list of concerns, being inherently linked to the freedom of users.
I use some time running the openchallenge. I would like to get city/government organisations utilize it as well - by posting requests for open source based support for some protocols/interfaces they use for example ofcourse at the same time they would publish the specifications of these protocols/interfaces. How should I approach them, any ideas?
I personally would dot the i's and cross the t's a bit different, but a pragmatist view of the fight in California by Bruce Perens. A good, well thought out read.
Fine. A test to see what happens to a country that does this. Smart countries considering such a plan will hold off to "wait and see" what kind of impact this has. Unfortunately, the very nature of long term effects is that they will take... well... a long term to take effect. The short-term impacts (learning curve, etc.) are already well known. However, at least a few years from now we can say "let's look at V and see what people are saying".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
From the Associated Press wire:
August 29, 2002:
In a stunning move with far-reaching global implications, the Bush Administration added the South American nation of Venezuela to the Axis of Evil. When asked why the sudden change was made, Ari Fleischer responded "As President Bush said, "You're either with us, or you're against us.", and Venezuela has sided with the pirates and terrorists of the world by allowing Weapons of Mass IP Destruction into its governmental computing systems.
Reports from inside sources are confirming that the decision was made after careful consultation with key members of the IP industry who explained that Venezuela released an IP-destroying Pac-Man virus into its governmental IT infrastructure and now any IP that gets sent to Venezuela is being sucked into a giant vortex of piracy and thievery!
When asked whether or not the US would invade Venezuela, Fleischer responded "We _were_ concerned about Iraq, and we were going to invade, but Iraq has to be put on the back burner for a while. Iraq's physical weapons like nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are dangerous and a threat to world security, but they can ONLY destroy all life as we know it! An IP-destroying Pac-Man virus could destroy all of CAPITALISM as we know it! Now what's worse: being dead or having to be a long-haired hippy who has to WORK for a living doing something that's directly beneficial to society. So, to answer your question: Venezuela will be pockmarked with giant glowing craters within the next 72 hours."
Reports are coming in from Norfolk and Guantanamo Naval Air Station that the ships of the Atlantic fleet are preparing to leave, and three nuclear submarines have passed through the Panama Canal within the last 12 hours, leaving little doubt that a serious military buildup is occuring.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I am a network engineer who by way of circumstance am a Colombian citizen. Grandfather was from Spain and my father was born there. I was born in the US, but have both citizenships.
I lived in Colombia for the past two years before coming home. And Colombia and Venezuela are both full of computets. All kinds. Though SCO is a pretty popular OS over there. Many old school cobol accounting apps running on it.
ANYWAY. I do not think MS is too worried about losing Venezuela. When you go to a computer store in either country they give you windows free with the pc. Not a licnesed copy. They give you the cost of the liscense, you can get windows with a liscense or without. Who the fuck is gonna choose to pay more money? Not Latin Americans. They gotta pinch pennies. And if they got the money they will not do it anyway.
If you buy that liscsense, you better call MS from the store and verify it is valid, cause it is probably hoked up anyway.
I installed several large networks and ordered Dell PC's for the warranties and I could be sure I was getting the licenses legally. And I did. All windows and my big Red Hat Server.
You think Chavez would actually pay Gates? With latins get the money up front. You think if Chavez used pirate software, gates could do something about it? NO. Venezuela is an entity for itself.
This might look like a win for us but is just clever spin from our community.
Venezuela could care less about its systems. What you got is some good sysadmins whispering free in Politicians ears, makes the Politicians look good, like they were paying for software anyway.
In those countries software, music piracy is an accepted norm. You can buy burned cd's in shopping centers on the streets. They will chip your playstation while you wait. This announcement will not garner any interest there. People are too worried about food and shelter.
And yeah there are nice areas. For the privileged few. The top 5 percent. Yeah I two ISDN lines in my apartment. And the montly cost would have fed a family of five.
Show me where opensource benefits latin america. Medical records, state agencies, but until then this announcement has all the weight of Pam Anderson announcing her new fashion line.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I don't see why they can't live on as a hardware-vendor.
Two arguments against keep getting posted:
1) Venezuela doesn't matter. Only a few computers; the people know little about technology.
2) It's wrong for government to mandate software, it should be freedom of choice.
First, I have to say I'm stunned that anyone would post such nonsense.
One, Venezuela has some very, very intellectual and highly intelligent people. They are in no way "backwards" or "technically illiterate". Are theere peasants in Venezuela? Of course. There are also illiterates in the USA, get over it.
Two, government mandating software is wrong? Are you peope living in the USA? Have you ever HEARD of the USA? The government and military of the USA mandate Microsoft products almost across the board. Nearly any company you could get a job at has strict policies to use Microsoft solutions only. The largest, most powerful government in the world is mandating Microsoft products nearly universally, in both the private and public sectors, and has dragged it's heels on solving the problem through legal means for God knows how many years. So, don't yap when a single country chooses freedom. As an American, it's sickening for me to hear that argument. It's nonsense.
STFU.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
In corporate / government environments average users don't configure their own machines. Your objection would apply much more to the home / small business situation.
In a few years Microsoft right or wrong, is set to drop all backwords compatibility. That means Office X Netscape X and all of your products will no longer work without new versions. Now those of us who have used NAV, Ghost, etc come to expect this from our System utilities. But for the first time MS is planning a complete break with all legacy products and code. Imagine the Mac OS X debute but without the Classic environment. Now imagine when MS takes is 90% desktop market share and does the same thing. Hopefully by then those fucktards in Washington won't have made Linux illegal and ISV's will actually be making software for it. Adobe and Intuit I'm looking at you.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Do you work for Microsoft?
Anyway, the backdoors need not be related to the Windows Update site-- there has been concern in the German government about the possibility of NSA-mandated backdoors via crypto-api etc. Do, I don't think you are up on this issue.
Look-- I have run business servers and workstations on Linux, NT4, Windows 2000, and XP. Sure in some environments, Windows offers some benefits, but in many circumstances Linux IS good enough.
In addition, look at the advantage if you are a poorer nation of *shock* paying developers INSIDE your country so that the money you pay actually continues to circulate *in* your local economy. So if you need something additional, you can still pay for it, and that money won't immediately leave the country.
Look, I see what you are saying, but quite frankly, I think you are wrong-- or maybe you are a troll-- or maybe your post is flamebait, but I felt that your points needed a response.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Come on. Forget it.
Software is ruled by backwards-compatibility. Once a company has the majority of a market, network effects will make it a de-facto monopoly (see Windows, Photoshop, Quicken, etc.)
There are only 2 ways to break that and both are not possible for Venezuela:
Bundle it with Windows (See Office and IE)
or
Give it away for free.
I dunno. So far, in the quest for "world domination", Open Source is behind but coming up fast.
Plus, MS and Open Source are both looking for certain threshhold percentage user levels taht they need to become extremely powerful. If MS has about 90% user base in a market, they can wield monopoly powers, which they've used with great success in the past. The GPL also needs a certain threshhold, to the point where it becomes a major drawback *not* to use the GPL. At that point, more people start joining, which furthers the effect, producing a landslide. And the GPL required threshhold is much, much lower -- I'd estimate that if 10% of the users out there are using GPL software that Microsoft doesn't really have a prayer.
May we never see th
This reminds me of the Domino Theory as the USA applied it to SE Asia in the 1960's, as the main excuse to go into Vietnam.
Speaking of The Domino Theory: Did you notice the list of related stories?
Linux Journal: Pakistan Government Looks to the Linux Users Group(Jul 15, 2002)
Update: Linux Bill Introduced in Finland(Jun 18, 2002)
Update: Ending Microsoft FUD: An Interview with Peruvian Congressman Villanueva(May 21, 2002)
GNU.org.pe: Peruvian Congressman's Open Letter to Microsoft(May 07, 2002)
Enterprise Linux Today: Venezuelan Bank Marks Major Financial Deployment of Linux for S/390(May 03, 2001)
Looks like a row of dominoes to me. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Can somebody point out the areas where Linux isn't yet as good as Windows? Granted, you can't run as many Windows Apps on Linux as you can on Windows, but then different versions of Windows have the same problem. IMHO, 2002 will go down in history as the year Linux ease of use surpassed that of Windows. What else do we still need to fix?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If they don't do that, companies and countries which switch to Open Source software will be able to say, "Huh? Run MS Office? You must be kidding! It can't read most of my documents, and I won't be able to send useful documents to any of my colleagues in other organizations because they can't read MS formats!"
The thing is, that outcome doesn't need Open Source to completely displace the MS Hegemony to be effective; it only needs enough market share to make the fact that Open Source is harming MS's sales obvious to the press, then the bad PR from MS's incompatibilities will basically force them to play ball.
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
How is this good for the country? It is Government's duty to keep public information public and freely accesible, ensure that it's always available, and be able to select service providers instead of "product" providers. Usage of open and free standards combined with open source applications guarantee this, which is a citizen's right. Notice that the Government is acting as a customer, setting the rules for the kind of products it wants to buy or fund; in this case, as a customer, it has a mandate to act in the best interest of the People.
By funding only GPL software it ensures that information systems are not only State's property, but also long lived and in a constant state of evolution and refinement, as a consequence of the nature of the free software development schema. This also ensures that Government money (that, in the end, comes from its citizens) goes back to the Citizens that are able to program, customize, install, configure, support and/or teach open source/free software.
Of course that training (for technical and non-technical targets), migration plans from propietary to free software and analysis of the many issues surrounding this decision have been taken into account. And members of academia are also involved as advisors. Many of Mr. Villanueva's ideas have been studied and changed accordingly, in this case it looks like is way past the "proposal" stage.
Hope I had shed a bit of light on the subject.
PS: roblimo, I'm the obnoxious venezuelan guy you met on Atlanta two years ago... these were the news I was talking about.
--
I'm neither pro-Chavez nor anti-Chavez.
I'm just pro freedom and anti stupidity, that's why I only use free software.
The GPL mostly prevents "free rider syndrome", where people use code in their own programs without contributing anything to the original authors. It only does this to a fairly limited extent, and the LGPL is even more limited (by design), but they both place more obligations on re-users of the code than the purely defensive licenses.
No truly "open source" license can defend against the tactic of "reimplement, embrace, and extend" though, which is what Microsoft did to Kerberos.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
The use of the GPL for all software developed by the Venezuelan government effectively precludes them from using Microsoft .NET.
At best, the GPL inconveniences "embrace and extend" tactics, since you can't re-use the source, but there's nothing whatsoever to prevent someone re-implementing the program and performing embrace and extend on that.
This is true in most of the world but in the US most government sponsored research is heavily patented. So in order to embrace and extend you without staying under GPL you have to relicence the patents. The article didn't mention patent policies, probably because they don't allow software patents, but I bet most universities will get US patents so they can get a little sponsorship for commercial applications. Not that it stops E&E, but they could create a policy that prevented any company from selling a non-GPL'd version of anything they invented in the US. Just because GPL gives you a non-exclusive patent license for the software and it's derivatives, which must be GPL...
Reasons why I'm unimpressed with your reasoning:
1) Implying a similarity between food production -- a necessity for a country's survival -- and proprietary software developed by another nation.
2) Calling it the "mercies of whatever GPL software is out there" when funding software development in their own country is in fact one of the purposes of this law.
3) Making an uninformed guess as to what the 'average user' is and needs, and whether KDE or MS Windows is better for them.
3) Claiming that using the license as merely "one of many factors" is what a reasnable person does, and nothing else is reasonable. For some reasonable persons; for others, deciding whether to be locked into a proprietary vendor on whose mercy the continued maintenance of your program and access to your data you depend isn't just one of many factors -- it is primary.
4) Assuming that because the nation of Venezuela decided differently than you, that their decision could not be based on research, informed decision making, and rationality.
5) Failing to acknowlege that the 'truly free computer environment' in question has requirements other than just what the user of a particular computer finds suits their needs. Not the least of which is spending the money of tax payers effectively.
6) Calling it an "enforced monopoly", when the very effect of using only GPL software is that this can never happen because you, and anyone else who wants to make a competing product, has the source code.
I also think people need to read more Ayn Rand -- but only to be more familiar with the ways in which she dresses up her various dogmas with a veneer of logic and more importantly the insistent claim of rationality and reasonableness in the hopes that the listener, even if a free-thinker who values reason themself, will be prejudiced toward agreeing to the argument because of the claim. After reading Rand and seeing such egregious examples of this type of behavior, it helps to recognize it when others attempt it.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yes, it appears to be true. Yahoo finance hasn't picked it up yet, but Etrade has him selling off 7 million shares. Just look up MSFT, and under news&analysis select 'insider trading'.
This isn't as big as when in June he sold off 20 million shares for procedes of about 1 billion, though.
The enemies of Democracy are
because they can use open source source code that doesn't have the requirements of MS code therefore they can use older hardware.
Have any sources, preferrably URLs, for that?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Some information for non-Latin Americans.
First, Venezuela is currently in political and institutional turmoil. The current president, Hugo Chavez, is a caudillo: this is the Spanish word for a paternalistic dictator or local boss, in effect a feudal lord. Even if he came to power by elections, it was an anger vote against corrupt politicians. Hugo Chavez is a Colonel who previously had attempted a military coup d'etat, so he's no leftist or democratist, only a populist with muddled ideas.
This move, and other similar ones, come from the traditional latin institution of the canetada: this is the Portuguese word for a law that tries to change reality with little practical consequence, sometimes even making situation worse. Other examples are strict labour laws that drives workers into illegal semi-employment, minimum wages that serve only to cause inflation that makes workers lives' even worse than before, and so on.
Since the Roman-type "objective" law is encroaching into the anglo-saxon consuetudinary Common Law, this has been known to happen in the US too, like the POSIX and FIPS SQL standards validating systems from Microsoft and Oracle that were rigged to pass the tests, but are nowhere near open.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
In the Venezula case at least only the goverment would be forced to select free software over proprietary.
/., though. And anti-MS doesn't mean I'm universally anti-proprietary. I believe the reasons for the Venezuela decision hold even if MS never entered the picture.
This is nonsensecal. It's like saying I am forced to buy only organic vegetables when I decide to buy only organic vegetables, or that my company is forced to buy only X brand office chairs when it decides to buy all its office chairs from brand X. Only if the decision was made by an outside party could it possibly be called "force".
Again, this is the goverment we are talking about. It is always easier to spend someone elses money on your pet project. How many insanely expensive and wasteful programs will be started to create a "free" alternative.
First, that assumes that there is a proprietary software package that already does exactly what they want; otherwise the whole argument doesn't apply. I can't say how often it happens, but based on our own government, I'd say it happens enough to be a major factor.
Second, the result of the project is a piece of GPL software everyone can use for free -- including the IT departments and businesses of Venezuela. "Waste" thus has a negative offset that a paid-for proprietary work would not.
Third, the money they "waste" on developing said application would go to Venezualan programmers, putting that money into the local economy, and partially returning to the government in the form of taxes. How much more money would you have to spend over and above what a proprietary solution would cost before this isn't still a net gain?
In this case I am not uninformed. In my job one of my many tasks is to evalute the desktop needs of our employees and guide it forward. That is why I have played with the Linux desktop.
I didn't mean you were uninformed about the Linux desktop (though saying copy/paste doesn't work made me suspect); I meant you were uninformed about the Average User. You don't know what the Average User would or would not prefer, and neither do I. My experience tells me that anyone who either hasn't used much software at all, or who has used at least one or two other types of software, can adapt easily enough and would find the Linux desktop unsuitable. But I can't show that this is the "average person".
Requiring that the software used to generate it be free or developed internally when much better proprietary software exists is again placing political reasoning before sound reasoning.
I'm not sure how you are seeing that the decision is political at all. What political motivation are you implying? Hoping MS will give them lots of money to abandon their silly rule? Large block of Free Software Hippie voters in Venzuela? Or is it just that it doesn't seem rational, and thus must be political?
Anyway, an open standard only does you so much good if the source is proprietary. No matter what the standards document says, the only standard is that defined by the source code (that you can't see). We've already seen how supposed "standards" like HTML can be made non-standard by various proprietary solutions (i.e. IE and Netscape). And what happens when the closed program you payed for becomes no longer supported? You end up just paying again. And why does it only make sense for public websites and documents? The government has a duty to make sure that information remains available, but doesn't isn't it also rational to want internal, non-public information to have the same future-proofing?
I think the problem you are having is that you either aren't seeing or aren't considering the benefits of using and developing free software in general and for the Venezualan government, and focusing solely on function. Presuming a situation where a proprietary package functions better than any available free software, how is it rational to pick the free software? Because there is much more to software than whether or not it merely functions. These other factors are important not because of politics, but because the directly impact the functionality of the software beyond the current moment in time.
My basic premise is that by legeslating that only free software can be used they are taking the decision away from the local person and replacing it with a broad on high statement.
Yes. This is what normally happens, and not just because management likes to wield its power. The "Standardization" that is the bane of those in the small unix-using minority of a large company (the opposite of mine, but hey) does in fact have benefits. And even those who have standardized on MS products don't let their employees just go buy whatever software they want willy-nilly. But this turns out to be much -less- of a restriction than most standardization protocols. Rather standardizing on "X software provided by company Y", they are standardizing on "software which has these features". If for some reason the local person -really- needs to use some non-free program, I'm sure that there will be a process in place for exersizing the "proprietary only when necessary" clause.
It is an enforced monopoly becouse the software that the goverment supports will have such an incredible amount of financial and resource backing it that the average perons or business will have no hope to compete and offer their wares, even if they offer a better product. Sound familer?
*supresses sarcastic response* Ahem. Clearly I am capable of seeing the situation you are referring to. Unfortunately to frame the scenario such that it sounds like Microsoft, you had to leave out what makes this situation unique. The software is to be released under the GPL. The barrier to entry for competing is zero. Why do you think that despite Red Hat's dominance in the Linux distribution market that there can still be others, despite each being based on an entirely free product? If the government's software suits your needs, it's free. If it doesn't, you have the source -- you can change it. There is no similarity between this and MS at all. If Microsoft had been releasing windows under the GPL from the beginning we wouldn't even have brought up the word "monopoly" because there wouldn't be one.
Ironically she fell victim to her own enemy, replacing reason with dogmatic preaching.
That you see that reassures me a great deal. Mentioning Ayn Rand's name tends to make me want to group someone with the "followers" who believe that Rand, and by (some strange) extension themselves, are the sole bearers of reason. It's very irritating. I mean, I will often make it clear that I think the person disagreeing with me is wrong, but I don't think I imply that to disagree with me is to lack reason. Anyway, my bad, and good show. If you find her non-dogmatic non-insane philosophies useful, then that's good.
and have a pathalogical hatred of all things Microsoft.
Maybe. But lets get one thing clear -- I do hate Microsoft, but not blindly. I hate them with eyes wide open. I didn't start hating them because you have to do that if you use Linux -- I did it because I looked at what they had done over the last fifteen years and realized that it will take the rest of the industry at least half of that to recover from the damage they have done. I hate them as a capitalist for breaking capitalism; I hate them as a user for denying the benefits that functioning capitalism brings. It's not blind. It's a decision, based on reason. If they stopped giving me reason to hate them, I would. Until then, yes, I am anti-MS.
I can't speak for anyone else on
BTW, how did the O'Reilly rebuttle discard journalistic integrity? It was an editorial.
The enemies of Democracy are
There's quite a gap between `the US needs' and `this will occur'. Some would say that it takes balls to make a statement like that and I have to wonder: are they crystal? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...acceptable. <Crunch>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The meeting started with señor minister asking `So what's my share?' and then going on to say that he saw said uncle's expression of amazement, but that was how things worked here, and had been working here `for over 400 years', and after Australia had been doing business for 400 years it might be in a position to comment on Mexico's methods (of course, by then Mexico would have been at it for 600 years).
Red Escolar consisted of a mailout of CDs. No support. Knowing that about Mexico, it was basically an invitation for Microsoft to give the appropriate minister(s) a wad of cash, make a nice-sounding offer, and charge in qith all guns blazing.
Surprise, they did. The technology was totally irrelevant.
The same thing is possible in Venezuela. Mind you, they've done exceptionally well at a lot of other political things, maybe they'll buck the trend again.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
China has made its position reasonably clear. Since the head honcho's son is running Red Flag Linux, I don't think Microsoft has a prayer there.
China already had a `one-disk country' reputation.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
One of my clients has a dedicated NT4 box which does just that. It's the acme of reliability. Not.
They'd be much better off with a headless variant of OpenOffice.org, and I'm sure there are even more streamlined solutions available.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Sometimes the dialog is blue and occupies the entire screen.
Also, as an administrator, I don't necessarily want my users bugg^H^H^H^Hsetting up their own network parameters. If it's broken, I want them to be bringing it to my attention.
Microsoft had a chance to do something truly new and good with XP. They blew it.
They will blow it again with LongHorn.
They also blew a chance to move towards real security. XP is still design insecure.
<deadpan>Ah, well, at least you didn't have to edit the registry (note their typoe near the end) to get it all working.</deadpan> It's all point-and-click on my Mandrake 8.2. In fact, with a sniffer I can make it pretty much automatic. What did you do wrong?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...and then order them to reverse their policy. Of course, the Brazilians might object to calling their city `Jenifa'.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The world inside your head seems like a nice, logical place. Unfortunately it isn't well connected to the world around us. Microsoft will simply continue to pressure/bribe media sources into proclaiming that the problem lies with their competitor's software. Having a competitor who is a country, standards committee or random bunch of worldwide collaborators won't change that process much at all.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing