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Japan Takes A Look At Open Source Software
irish_spic writes " Accorting to this AP story (in yahoo news), the public management ministry is setting up a panel of scholars and computer experts, including Microsoft officials in order to study the use of Open Source software in the government. The article cites concerns about costs and security as the reason for the study. Me wonders if they are serious or just trying to get discounts from MS."
The panel on Open Source is to include Microsoft representatives? How can that sentence even be written without laughing out loud... I'd have gotten first post if I could have held a straight face!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I have always heard that Japan discriminates against foreign products, like using a rating system in which foreign products cannot be rated higher than the equivalent of "B". Thus, those who want the best will buy only "A". If this was true, it would seem their culture would demand a home-grown operating system rather than accept MS as a standard.
I'm a major fan of open-source and all that, (using Gentoo as I type this) but there are still bad parts of OSS, like a lack of a really good Office clone, which is very important for businesses. It would be remiss for any organisation to choose OSS over MS based without looking at the (few) things they'll lose by chosing OSS.
Microsoft: expensive, slow development for fixes, laughed-at-by-main-stream-media security, closed source - which further stifles development, foreign, you support a monopoly
Linux: cheap or free, rapid and constant development and bug fixes, industry reknowned security, open source, it is "yours" once you embrace it, you support a grass roots movement of heart felt computer users and developers
It doesn't take a genius to figure this one out.
Did you notice the finish date for the study? March 2004, yes 2004 not 2003! It is not as if it is a big study - only $410,000.
Governments when faced with something that they don't like often make it go away by commissioning a study, by the time that it comes out the fuss has died down and everyone has forgotten about it. I hope that that is not what is happening here. If that is the case, this is one 'fuss' where events will overtake the report.
The problem being that MS has a financial motive behind their recommendations. OSS advocates only have a moral or utopian driving force behinf them. To equalize the situation, they would have to consult a company like redhat, promising that if they go the OSS route, that they will contract them.
This is a risk regardless (as opposed to irregardless, which is not a word) of the openness of the source. Which MS product shipped with the "Netscapeengineers are weenies" backdoor password?
I assume you mean "Regardless" (without regard or without regarding) instead of "Irregardless". (It's not a real word, but it would mean the opposotie of the sense youwere trying for if it was a real word.)
OpenSource will almost definately get you faster patches (at least compared to MicroSoft's security-though-denial strategy). Also, remember when MS shipped a CD with a virus-infected product? (Does someone want to find me the /. story or another link?) You can manuallycheck for all known types of flaws/malicious modifications with OpenSource. With closed source you can run virus checks, but it's usually infeasable to decompile and look for back doors.
Who do you give thr death penalty after a suicide attack? If you fall back on the legal system or the prison system, you've got problems. When was the last time a customer sucessfully sued MS for damages due to faulty products or neglegent design/coding practices? Spotty scurity is usually better than rock-steady-awful security. There's also a lot to be said for being about to do your own audts instead of having to trust the vendor.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Many proponents of Open Source are employed by companies who support their ideology. Examples of this were Bruce Perens (formerly at HP) and Linus (employed by transmeta, but most of his work is still focused on the kernel).
Yes, even OSS advocates can have economic factors driving their beliefs.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Microsoft has got the world to lose. If Free Software gets passed over this time, then it simply waits until the next round of upgrades. Three years from now when [insert country here] takes a look at upgrades GNU/Linux will still be there, and it will be better than ever (and still just as Free).
With all of the countries taking a serious look at Linux it is bound to make some progress. More importantly, Free Software keeps Microsoft honest. All of a sudden they aren't the only game in town. If they push their luck too hard then folks will switch. This gives people the leverage they need to actually negotiate with Microsoft.
...has the very name come to immediately spawn that much distrust in anyone who even hears them out?
Yes. Have you read any of their recent licenses? Have you noticed their "benevolent" contributions to governments, and people who work in them? I can think of no reason to not immediately distrust them, until AFTER they have proven that, in this instance, they were acting honorably. I've notice that perhaps twice in the past three decades. And I haven't been certain about those. (It's hard to be certain just who they are about to ask for what favor.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It would be kinda pathetic to see MS stoop as low as to discounting their product just to sell it. Hasn't it always been thought that one must use the best tool for the job?
If MS spent more time trying to make their operating system and other products the best "tool" in the world, then OSS would have no chance.
Than again, it just looks like the nations are playing Microsoft just to save a few bucks.
Exactly my point. They're not different "races," they're the same, just with a different culture. So saying Japanese look like Koreans (or vice versa) is absolutely true.
That their culture, but it certainly is not racism.
Calling something "culture" does not automatically make it okay. It used to be American "culture" that whites should not marry blacks. That was unbelievably racist. How is this different? In many ways, the Japanese still have an "ubermensch" mentality, because unlike the Nazis, they weren't made to feel ashamed for the atrocities they committed. Indeed, America takes more heat for having dropped the A-bombs than Japan takes for the rape and enslavement of large portions of Asia. Ever hear of the "Rape of Nanking?" A quote from that link:
Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.
For comparison purposes, only 150,000 people were killed outright in the dropping of the two atomic weapons. Perhaps that many again had their lives substantially shortened by radiation, still fewer than the number of Chinese killed in early 1938, to say nothing of the subsequent years, and the other invaded nations. Even if you still think America was somehow at fault for the war, I've never heard an American say that we shouldn't marry German people, because of WWII. And the Japanese don't just say "don't marry Americans," they say "don't marry non-Japanese." Again, it's like the Nazis wanting to keep the purity of the Aryan race. Simply disgusting.
Oh, by the way, it's spelled "emperor." Just a tip.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
OK...I swear that I am not BSing this...
My long time student, the Japanese technology advisor to the Thai government, just went back to Japan, where he holds a fairly high position in the ministry there. My interaction with him for many months (on his request) was to bring up timely and interesting technical stories for discussion to help him improve his (already wonderful) English. We did much talking about OSS vs. proprietary software, DRM, etc... He was enormously interested in the uses of OSS in the government. Anyone on the inside know of a Nobuaki involved in this?
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