Slashdot Mirror
Perens Pushes "Sincere Choice" for Software
jalefkowit writes "Looks like Bruce Perens has found something to keep him occupied, now that he's parted ways with HP: the Register is covering his launch of a new political platform, "Sincere Choice", which he wrote to clarify the distinctions between the values of the open-source community and the Microsoft-funded Institute for Software Choice. Sincere Choice addresses several issues in critical to open software, including interoperability, competition by merit, open standards, and copyright."
Isn't it funny how the call for "open standards" always translates into "our version doesn't have half the features, so let's compete on what we have in common"?
"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." "
...but never will. I'm no Microsoft fan, but there are a few things they've done right (!) - Office and DirectX come to mind. I like Office. Sure, it's bloated, but it works pretty damn well for most people. I like DirectX because I like games, and they all seem to be coded around it. So while I may never use a Microsoft OS, I'd love to see some real software choice. I'd love to be able to run a native install of Office on Mandrake. I'd love to be able to play linux versions of more games. If MS would realize that they can sell software without selling you the whole OS I'm sure they could sell some apps for other OS's and still sell Windows. That's all I want.
do not read this line twice.
They claimed that they would respond to my request shortly, and I'll be sure to post an update if one should arrive.
MORTAR COMBAT!
> ... and government should all be free to set their own policies regarding what sorts of software they will acquire and use.
I'd object to this. Governments should be required to use only software that is amenable to public examination. Otherwise the citizens will have no control over or access to their government's data.
We can see this clearly in the new voting equipment that's being installed in parts of Florida. They've bought equipment that contains closed, proprietary software. Citizens can't validate the outcome of elections using this software. Attempting to do so may even be illegal, under the DMCA. So anyone who can bribe the software vendors can control the election.
In general, people should be free but governments shouldn't. Governments should be accountable to their citizens. Proprietary software would be a major barrier to such accountability.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
this irony will be lost on the 90% of the world that has Word installed and can read .doc documents
.txt ones.
.txt document.
.doc (we have a bit more leeway with MS Office products in my department than most do).
.doc format attachment do not even warrant a reply, other than a form letter requesting that they present the information in another format, if they want me to read it.
.doc format. You're missing out on the input of hundreds of very, very talented SUN and other UNIX software engineers.
not even 90% of the world even own computers, let alone computers powerful enough to run the latest versions of Word (which are incompatible with earlier versions).
as easily as
If I walked down the halls of the building I work in, I would pass the offices of over 500 software developers, and less than 10% would be able to read Word documents. 100% of them could read a
If I went to the next building at my complex, and did the same thing, there would be even fewer who could read
If I walked through my neighborhood, less than 10% of the people even own a computer.
Most people who send me a
Shrug, keep sending your
MORTAR COMBAT!
It boggles the mind why OSS/FS word processors keep developing new formats. Who cares if the format is "open" if no one uses it? MS Word .Doc files are insufficent as a standard because they're undocumented, which is why converters are still flakey in many cases.
RTF, on the other hand, does almost everything you need. It's missing OLE (99.999% of don't people need that), and it's missing VB Macros (100% of people don't need that), but it covers everything that most people are going to do. It's fully and completely documented. It's Word-compatible. It's WordPerfect-compatible. It's compatible with most OSS word processors. Heck, with the right software it's Palm OS compatible!
Yet some OSS word processors (read: KWord) still don't support it. And they all invent their own formats. How does that encourage progression away from Ubiquitous MS Word?
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Microsoft has been convicted of abusing monopoly power under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Of course they are playing by different rules.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
No. More likely, you see a week of "We haven't heard about that declaration, so we can't comment..." followed by a couple weeks of "we're discussing our options..." followed by a "Of course, we'll publish our specs as soon as we have them ready..." followed by several months of "they're not ready yet, but you can be sure we will meet the deadline..." right up to the deadline. At that point, M$ will refuse to publish the spec and see who blinks.
So let me ask you this: Pretend you are the CTO of a sizable organization. You've been given the authority to issue such an untimatium to M$: publish your specs or we will refuse to use your software, any you have the authority to back up that threat. Up until the point of the deadline, you were assured that M$ would be publishing their spec. But now the deadline is here and you have to either blink (and continue to use M$ products even though you said you wouldn't) or call their bluff and declare that their products cannot be used within the organization you lead; all employees must find some other way to get their jobs done without creating any new documents in M$-proprietary format, without accessing any documents previously stored in a M$ proprietary format, without using any M$ tools, without communicating with any customer except through open protocols (if they send you a .doc document, you have to send it back and ask them to comvert it), without bidding on any job which ways "submit bids in M$Word
format...", etc.
Who do you think would blink?
Large organizations are more addicted to Microsoft than they care to admit to themselves. CTO's have spent half a decade getting high on Microsoft at the company's expense. I have yet to hear any kind of viable corporate-level Microsoft exit strategy which did not involve a half-decade of planning and lead time. Fact it, most large organizations will never break their Microsoft dependence. Instead, they'll continue paying the Microsoft tax and doing things the Microsoft way (as if no other way exists) until they are bankrupt, or swallowed-up by a leaner and more flexible organization which has no tolerance for their Microsoft addiction.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Since this entire argument is about computer stored files, anyone without a computer is pretty damn SOL. Maybe we should store all the data on paper. In Esperanto. After all, that's the official universal language, right?
.doc, and I guarantee further than not even 90% of Californians, by a great, great margin have that capability.
That is exactly one of the points of the Peruvian and Argentinian arguments against proprietary software. If they are going to be running their government on-line, then every citizen must have access. Thus, every citizen must have access to a computer capable of communicating with the government software. Thus, if the government wants to run itself on-line, it has to provide these computers.
It is much, much cheaper for the Peruvian government to set out terminals running free software than running Office XP.
The point is, the Peruvian government isn't going to make 90% of its people buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, and neither should the United States government. As more and more government services are offered on-line, is it fair to continue distributing those services in Microsoft Word format? Or is it more fair to ensure that the format is open, so that free software can be used?
Wow, way to take things out of context!
That is the context we are talking about. Specifically, the ISC's challenge to the governments of Peru, Columbia, Italy, and others, and the State of California requiring the use of open standards in all government computing services, and Bruce Parens' rebuke of that challenge. I guaranteee you that 90% of the people of Peru do not own computers capable of viewing
Thus, as I said, the state then has to provide the means to access, and it can either buy 1 million PCs running Windows XP, and Office XP, and "hope" that there are no surprses in licensing down the line, or it can run software built on open standards.
Of the personal computers in the US, the vast majority (90% or more I'd be willing to bet) are capable of reading a Word document.
Yes, technically my computer is "capable" of reading a Microsoft Word Document. I could go out and buy a copy of Office XP for $400 dollars, or whatever it costs nowadays. I could take the hours to download OpenOffice. But neither is a good solution to the problem, which is the closed format itself.
Shrug, keep your holier-than-thou attitude
Sorry if I came off that way, I am quite aware that I am a loser.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Why should MS have to change?
Because they are a convicted monopolist that uses their technology to illegally crush their competition.
even with shitty proprietary standards, they can still dominate the market
You seem to be implying that their proprietary file formats are a hindrance to their continued domination of the market..
In fact, it's because of their "shitty proprietary standards" that they still dominate the market. Think about it: If someone wants to compete with them, they change the format, which prevents their competition from interoperating with their new software.