Debate On Public Procurement of Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "A debate over at TechCentralStation has Jim DeLong arguing against favoring open source in government procurement contracts, and Julian Sanchez arguing for it." Sanchez' piece is especially well argued; I especially like his phrasing here: "it's not clear precisely what a 'hands off' policy means in a context where government is necessarily acting as a player in the market."

Comments

James V. DeLong is, of course, uninformed.

[Alethes]

Under the GPL, the licensee agrees not to sell or otherwise limit the reproduction of the software (though one is allowed to charge for costs of distribution, warranties, and services, as noted above in the discussion of Red Hat).

If he had just bothered to read this,he might have had a little crediblity. Instead, he chose to believe Microsoft FUD.

Re:James V. DeLong is, of course, uninformed.

[MrResistor]

Exactly what I was going to say. He had a modicum of credibility until he made that blatantly ignorant statement. I was even willing to let his confusion about who coined the term "viral lecense" slide until I read that.

The comment on the quality of MS support was really interesting, though, and he started to make some other good points, but failed to follow through. To bad he had to go and destroy his credibility like that, it might have become an interesting debate.

Strawman

[Meat Blaster]

Like others, I was initially inclined to dismiss Jim DeLong's article on the basis that his research wasn't thorough enough to differentiate Craig Mundie's comments from Richard Stallman's. Upon further reading, I've decided instead to dismiss it because he's not factoring anything into his arguments besides the business perspective, and even that appears to be flawed when you consider the issue.

For example, if the government needs an inventory system built, pays a professional to do it, and turns the results back to the public, then how is the quality of the system affected by the fact that the end result is open source? After identifying the groups with an interest in open source, DeLong spends the rest of the article explaining how such a system can only pale in quality over the long run in comparison to a commercial system -- without ever noting that the difference between open source procurement vs. commercial procurement will in most cases only determine whether or not the public will have access to the results of software design done for the government.

On a related note, some background on the think-tank he works for. In some ways, this is like having Richard Stallman arguing the merits for copy-protection.

Why GPL?

[dirk]

I have to ask, why is the GPL the only option other than proprietary? Releasing it as public domain, or a BSD style license (which is the license closest to PD) seems a lot more fair than releasing it under the GPL. The GPL is a great license, but it's main purpose is keeping the GPL around. It is great for people who want their stuff never to be closed source, but that isn't what the government is about. If software is created by the government, it is paid for by taxes. That should mean that anyone can use the software (and source) any way they want. If you want to use it in a GPL program, that's great, go for it. But if I want to use it in a closed source program (or even a BSD licensed program), that should be great too. From this perspective, the GPL is less a "free" license, and more of a "political" license. It forces people to do something specific with the code if they choose to reuse it.