Slashdot Mirror
Who Opposes Open Source Software In Government?
Skapare writes "Linux Journal is doing a story with a roundup of who the players are that are opposing open source in governments. The one I find interesting is the Gates connection to BSA. But I think we all need to become familiar with this round-up of special interest groups not operating in our interests (as taxpayers)."
It's why open source is a grass roots movement. We aim to capture hearts and minds on a fundamental and righteous level. We target the wallet second.
Open source saves the government money. Open source would create more governemnt jobs, by not only keeping existing support personnel, but also by creating openings for developers that would tailor systems to the ever-evolving government technology base and needs. It makes complete sense to switch to open source. Why we don't switch is easy to see: Microsoft gives military politicians plenty of incentive not too.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
It doesn't seem like anyone (who isn't affiliated with a proprietary software company) is necessarily against open source as they are against the idea of the change itself. Changes in government are mostly reactionary. You need a large number of voters interested in the issue, otherwise its hardly worth the time. I believe the opponents to the open-source bills were mostly afraid to favor open-source; they weren't against it.
They testify that releasing the code to their competitors would constitute a clear and present danger to national security then give the source 3 months later to a communist country. Excuse the hell out of me, either MS doesn't care or they are too daft to read the obvious writings on the wall. Anyone who has read anything on how the Chinese view us militarily knows that the PLA's documents call for "alternative means" to take out the US's critical infrastructure and military forces. I'm sorry, but given their history with our legal system, I think they are some of the most disgusting treasonous scum in corporate America.
The only thing worse was IIRC Boeing it was that moved Loral rocket technology to China to launch satellites knowing damn well that much of that technology was dual purpose. Now the PRC has missile technology that is approaching ours. Thank you corporate America, may so many of you be among the first up against the wall.
Your right to try to turn a profit ends where our national security is concerned. I don't give a flying fuck why Microsoft released Windows' source code to them, but that alone is grounds to punish them by shit-canning their products in the federal government. Every desktop should be switched to MacOS X and/or Linux and MS Office replaced with OpenOffice. We have to draw a line in the sand and scream at them YOUR BEHAVIOR IS NOT ACCEPTABLE YOU UNPATRIOTIC FUCKERS!
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
its funny nobody seems to realize that the current state of most software is open source. all the assembly instructions you need to fix/modify a windows program are right there in the .exe file. thats why people are able to crack shareware, make keygens etc.
the people arguing that opensource is a security risk seem to be under the impression that compiled source is secure. its not. this is ALL about the $$$$$
bite my glorious golden ass.
... is open standard "document" formats. I don't care if Uncle Sam or anyone else chooses to use Microsoft (or any other) software. However, anything and everything that The People have access to must be stored in an open format that The People can read with the software of my choice. PDF, XML, plain text, latex, postscript/ghostscript, PNG images out of a scanner, dead trees, who cares.
And what part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
It needs to be based on free, open and documented standards.
Seems reasonable yes? Anything that does the job should be allowed to compete. Certainly. But in the case of government the question is "what exactly is 'the job'?". The government (ostensibly) exists to service the public interest. The public interest demands that our government be independant from corporate influence. Commitment of government to a closed source solution provided by a single vendor gives this vendor undue influence over governmental process. The public interest also demands that our data be accessible now and into the future. Clearly closed data formats cannot provide this. Finally, the public interest demands that government computers be secure. Without access to the source code it cannot be proven that there are not back doors providing access to sensitive government data.
So the question when evaluating a piece of software, say, a database, for governmental use is not just "Is this the best database" but "Is this the best database that ensures data accessability and security without tying us to a single corporation." Only open source software can provide these important considerations.
Note that this is not "discrimination" against closed source vendors. Any company can provide software to the government, as long as it satisfys these requirements.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
word.
I think the answer is to provide a dummy option on all ballots designed such that people that don't know better would be more likely to pick it.
take the slashdot polls for example:
"Whats your favorite breakfeast?"
a) cold pizza
b) cold cereal
c) cowboy neil's underpants
lots of people dont understand what cold pizza or cold cereal even are and would rather vote cowboy neil's underpants as their favorite breakfeast because they think its funny.
when using the results to determine which infact is the most popular breakfeast cowboy neil's underpants is discarded and the stupid-vote eliminated.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Each opponent asserted the playing field was level and open-source legislation would introduce unfairness into the procurement process.
Why should free software and commercial software be treated equally? What does this have to do with "fairness"?
I give my government lots of money. I have a right to expect that they don't buy commerical stuff if there are reasonable free alternatives. If they do go out and buy something commercial, they should be required to document carefully the reasons for their choices.
Even if the free software were to require larger IT staffs (which it doesn't), I'd much rather see my tax dollars go into salaries for local government employees than disappear somewhere in Microsoft's bank account up in Washington state soemwhere.
We can praise the nations that throw caution to the wind and roll out Linux rapidly.
Funny thing: For the past year, I've been working for a little consulting company whose main contract is a big European conglomerate that's doing just that. Their management was getting more and more paranoid about the implications that their corporate data was under the control of a big American corporation. We're extracting all their data (with precious little help from that big American corporation, who know that they've lost the contract) and putting it into a flock of networked linux systems. And to do the the job, they hired an American company! But it makes sense, because our chief's main sales pitch has been to point out that we're building a system that they will control from the top to the bottom.
Linux is NOT a perfect beast, and it should surprise no rational person that it is, at this time, treated as "the devil you don't know".
One of the stories was of a big meeting at the big conglomerate's site. One of their managers brought up the subject of linux support. Our guy asked for a show of hands: How many ran linux at home. About 1/3 of the hands went up. He observed that they didn't need to hire any more linux expertise.
Linux is hardly an unknown. Anyone who says they'll have trouble finding linux expertise is simply shovelling a pile of BS. For that matter, finding BSD expertise is nearly as easy, especially now that OSX is getting rave reviews.
It makes sense to transition gradually. But it need not take many years. Especially when the inevitable happens and MS forces you to upgrade. Transitioning to linux then will be cheaper, and it won't take much more retraining. So you might as well do it, and get out from under the thumb of the American beast.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.