Lobbyists Urge South Australia To Drop Open Source Bill

Red Wolf writes "The Age reports that South Australia has caused eyebrows at the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) to be raised in concern, with the organisation writing to Premier Mike Rann over a proposed Open Source software bill. The ISC, by its own definition, is a "global coalition of large and small companies committed to advancing the concept that multiple competing software markets should be allowed to develop and flourish unimpeded by government preference or mandate"."

Comments

The GPL: Intellectual Property or Intellectual The

[Michael's a Jerk!]

As a consultant for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.

Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.

So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.

I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.

Thank you for your time.

Re:The GPL: Intellectual Property or Intellectual

[Anonymous Coward]

Your a toon, you only have to provide the source to people you sold it to. And by lawyers you meant your mom right??? I like how to refer to the gpl like you've never heard of it before even though you say you worked with Linux. Maybe you should stick with Windows, its as closed as your mind is.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Being from europe I can relate to your sentiments....
To often stories related to something outside the US are bashed by idiot americans thinking their way of live is the one true way....

I hereby grant you a comment as you requested.

Re:The GPL: Intellectual Property or Intellectual

[Anonymous Coward]

You are dead right. Our busniess was foolish to skip on legal advice, and we has to release early versions of our software under the GPL.

To any business owners / managers reading this: Please, please don't listen to the Linux Maniacs. It's cheaper to avoid the GPL altogether.

Go Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the compliment.

If Australia goes the way of Amerika, then it is a choice of moving to Japan or Canada. If they are threatened by a large military force controlled by a power hungry dictator, then I'll move to New Zealand.

It's all about money, not choice.

[Space Coyote]

In business as in democracy in these times, money will buy you a louder voice. Bills like these simply give a voice to the notion that you can use some of this software for free, and a lot of it is actually pretty good. IBM won't help here, because they simply want to use Linux as a way to charge you an arm and a leg for all of their other services. The language of choice is being twisted to limit the real choices of consumers and governments.

Re:The GPL: Intellectual Property or Intellectual

[Disevidence]

Excellent Fp for the Clit!

I agree with this post.

Yes, the Clit still lives on....