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Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones
An anonymous reader points to a story at NewsForge, writing "EGOVOS analyzes the recently passed South African OSS plan and proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards. That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled. All the policy guidelines for governments are worth reading. This looks like a workable plan from a credible group." Reader johndiii clarifies: "From what I have been able to see, the strategy document is 'proposed,'
not 'recently passed,' and is not yet official policy of the South
African government."
Support them in some form? What if Microsoft supports a standard, and then adds on it, thus requiring others to use the "enhanced" standard? Is that still compliance? What if some other OSS group wants to extend a standard to meet their needs? Would they be limited?
But who's gonna get the money? There's hardly one big open-source organisation entitled to all the money.
Come on, just reading the blurb on Slashdot makes it blatently obvious that it'll never work for 1001 reasons.
I'm all for OSS, but this is just a too "pie in the sky" for my liking.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Good idea, but I don't think it's exactly legal to have a monetary penalty for companies who write proprietary/non-compliant software. You just don't buy their stuff, and if they want your business, they'll have to adapt or go out of business. So, switching to open-source might eventually force Microsoft to head that way, but charging them a fee for non-compliance with this policy is antithetical to an open market.
IAALS.
That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled.
That isn't leveling the field for open source, it's tilting the field unfairly in favor of open source. If the technology can't compete on its own merits, why throw good money after bad to support it? Of course, I think open source software can compete on its own merits, so this measure is redundant.
It's just a high-tech double standard, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
What an awful idea. Yeah, let's have the government decide what is better for the market, since the market obviously cannot decide for itself! *sigh* Having the mafia on your side does not make it a mafia any less...
1) Who defines which standards are open? (And will governments agree on what that means, or will a software company have to internationalize their interfaces to support one standard in one country and another standard in another?)
2) Isn't this already happening in a less official way? If you're a non-US government, just mention Linux and you too can get a huge price break from Microsoft (probably even bigger than the 5-10% proposed non-compliance fee).
It would be nice if governments that wrestle such price breaks from Microsoft turned around and used those funds to generate additional open source tools, but governments have a lot of competing needs to deal with, and the freed up funds are more likely to go to any underfunded services (and any government service is going to have defenders that say that their particular niche is underfunded).
While this plan is just good economic common sense (tax the rich to feed the poor), I have to question its applicability in South Africa. These people need medicine, clean drinking water, and a strong police force, not software, be it open source or otherwise.
Even if it passes, the government will probably be overthrown in another four months. A major victory this isn't.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Stealing 10% from Microsoft just because they're Microsoft isn't a good thing, even if it is to fund Open Source. How would that level the playing field, anyway? Microsoft would still have revenues measured in billions of dollars, so what if the open source guys get some of their chump change?
Microsft needs to fail as a business on it's own merits, not on the merits of extorting 10% of their money and using it to further the Open Source cause.
Well, it will be billions of dollars to somebody.
I understand the appeal of reaching into someone else's pocket for money, but there are people out there far better at getting their fingers into every pie than open source developers.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This article should be moderated -1 Flamebait. The idea of forcing MS into following standards is absurd, and if it wasn't for deep anti-MS sentiment in the community here, this would have never been posted!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
The idea of MS paying a 10% tax to fund OSS seems neat, but its really not good. Not good in principle, not good in practice, not good in theory.
Some things would happen:
1. MS would design and publish standards that are so nasty and obscure that even skilled coders would have a hard time making any sense of it. That would get them off the hook and still not achieve open standards.
2. The software industry as a whole would suffer. Open standards are nice for interoperability, but not so nice for new development. Most standards are not easily made extensible with any sense. If they are extensible that's a loop for MS to exploit. The bottom line would be that new development by MS or any other software maker would suffer. Additionally the OSS world will also suffer. Good things happen when new software is written to do new things. Using the blunt hammer of government to dictate how software works is not a good solution. As soon as government determines it can make MS conform to its technical "guidelines", how long will it be before individuals and not-for-profits are bound and regulated the same way?
3. MS's customers will simply suffer an additional 10% or more price raise which they are still mostly required to pay. On the other end, myraid of companies will spring up to do OSS work, crowding out a lot of the good community that has sprung up. These organizations will suck up funding. The projects will also essentially be the same as commerical software projects minus closed source, and as a result software will follow commerical software trends - feature bloat, buginess, and using gimmicks to gain market share (and justify their continued funding).
The problem comes in on what definition of compliance you use. It's as much a legal term as a technical one. A notorious rat hole. How often to people around here debate the various browsers' html compliance? I don't think this would work.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
I'm concerned about this idea on two fronts:
1) First, this seems to conflict with principles of a free market. Without a doubt, Microsoft clearly has engaged in anti-competitive practices. But, aren't open source solutions at the point where it really is a viable option, if organizations take the time to implement it carefully?
2) Second, wouldn't an organization like Microsoft merely jack up negotiated costs on software to accommodate for the "loss" of a percentage of sales for monies moved to fund open source development?
Hmm.
OK, after thinking about it, here's my take on the thing.
1. There is a part of me that likes the idea of "If you don't comply with the Open Standards, then part of your profit from your sale will go to finance a community that will." As it says, it levels the playing field. What would happen if the Open Office folks suddenly had $5 million to hire programmers and work on making Open Office better? How long until everybody supported XML based document formats that were all truly interchangable?
2. The big issue. Who the hell gets to decide on what the "Open Standard" we like is? Oh, sure, everybody's got documents/spreadsheets in XML - but suppose we decide that some display feature available in one Open Source Office system is the "standard Open Document" and the other isn't? I've seen companies all the time declare they follow "Open" standards - when they control it lock, stock and barrel. (It's Open because you can bitch about it in public.)
3. I don't mind seeing Government Money go into research grants that can then be used to finannce open source projects to fulfill XYZ needs, and the code/research being put under the GPL so everybody can use it (we're not going into a "Governments should GPL everything/no, they should BSD everything here - it's an example, thank you, move on").
4. If they truly want to penalize a business for using proprietary standards, stop buying their stuff. You'll be amazed how quickly a business goes from "Well, we need to do everything under Novell eDirectory because Government Office XYZ does it" to "Well, Government Office ABC says 'no more proprietary', and they've stated LDAP is the standard now - so code to that." Trickle down from there - the companies that support government follow it, so the companies that support those companies follow it, and on down the line.
So while the idea does make me go "Oh, yet - take money from the rich and give to the poor", I think there's better ways of going about it than "All your base [code] are belong to use!"
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
[some bozo] proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards.
Ooh, la de la, we all live in fairy-tale land.
I think I'm going to propose a system where all of the fruit loops working on Python and Java all decide to work on Perl 6 instead! La-de-la!
Oooooh, and I think that Dell should give 10% of their profits to Apple until they both have an equal share of the marketplace, la-de-la!
And I think all members of the Linux 'cult' should pay a tithe of their income to help support poor old SCO, la-de-la!
It's okay proposing nonsense, but it's whether it's actually legal and feasible that counts. This project is neither.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Microsoft wouldnt be the only one to be paying for this. There are a hundred other firms working on OS projects. I mean, come on guys, lets be realistic!
And what's wrong with the situation as is? I like Linux's "underground movement" apect, it gives it more legitimacy as a labor of love, not $$$. And Red Hat is just now starting to turn a profit, if that's what you are intersted in!
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
Now, let the unending flow of crappy half finished open source projects begin. So long as we get 1 good project out of every thousand or so we should be good. Now where can I sign up to get my fat money check?
I can see the comments already: unethical blah blah, free enterprise blah blah. Tell me this: what is a difference between the Gov bailing out businesses and industries (think Airlines in US, Banks in Japan) and this proposal?
This is not the way to handle funding open source. As much as I would love to take Microsoft down a notch or two, robbing from software companies to pay for the development of competitor's products is the worst idea since communism. Oh, wait, it is pretty much communism, isn't it?
Let market forces decide who lives and who dies. If that is Microsoft, so be it. It is not government's place to support open source at the cost of other legitimate businesses.
In fact, this could be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the software industry. With this 10% tax on closed source software, there would be reduced incentive to produce software for profit. Without profit, developers would not get paid as well. Innovation would shrivel and eventually die, even among open source developers. Developer skills to atrophy and before long the only software produced would be paid for directly by government. We all know how efficient government is, donâ(TM)t we?
This might sound alarmist, but I am a big believer in the free market determining the survival of products and companies. That is the only surefire way to ensure quality products at a reasonable price (or free).
Phathead
While government procurement policy should be neutral to ensure that governments do not introduce market distortions into the world economy, there should be an appreciation of the social benefits of fostering Open Source software development in a proper Open Source Government Policy plan
Wonder what functions I will find in the "Social Benefit" API.
This is industrial policy writ large... If we want to see the software industry go down the same path as the steel industry, this is the map to use.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Stupid...dumb...idiotic...preposterous - those are just a few words that come to mind. The government should really leave businesses alone for the most part. Seriously...
I hope I don't get modded down for that. I use OpenSource software, but Gates was right when he wrote that paper of his years ago -- there is no "real" money with OpenSource. And no money leads to no jobs leads to bad economy leads to...(vicious cycle ensues).
This is too simplistic a view because it ignores patent and licensing issues. Is PDF open? Is Flash/SWF open? Is MP3 open? Is MPEG open? All those formats are "made known", and users can develop programs...of course they may have to pay a bit or submit to certain restrictions.
Now, ONE of the formats I listed there really is open. Do you know which one? I encourage you all to go to the Open Data Format Initiative site and join the mailing list, where we are hashing out just exactly what an open format should be for government use.
- adam
In fact, let's extend it some more! I've always wanted to open a fast food restaurant, Mcdonald's has such an unfair advantage due to their existing market share. Let's require Mcdonald's to pay 10% of their profits to people like me who haven't been as successful so far.
How is it that Open Source is so pitiful that we have to get M$ to support it? I thought we were unstoppable because OSS is a better idea, not because we could gouge some other company for money.
And if it is okay for a government to slam M$ for money, then it will only be a quick swing of the pendulum before the gov comes demanding unjust taxes from OSS.
It's a whitewashed sepulchre. Run away.
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
Ah, yes, lets take lessons about Equal Opportunity from South Africa... bwwwahhhhha ha ha!
Although Open Source has it's benefits, this new law is not the way to advocate it. The world doesn't revolve around Microsoft, many companies would be affected by this. The average computer user doesn't care whether the source code is available or not, they want the program just work. This type of bullying is what Microsoft pulled for many years and got caught.
If the author of the program doesn't want to show their code, they shouldn't be penalized for it. Furthurmore it will hurt the entire hobbyist/shareware movements which barely make any money to begin with. I hope this sort of communist approach isn't passed in North America, because both OSS/Closed-source programs have their benefits. The whole point of OSS was to have choice, not to have choice while penalizing the competition.
Doing that is very similar to a sin tax on cigarettes, say, which many governments do as well. It is a method of encouraging behavior that a government decides is desirable.
One can certainly argue whether or not doing such things is a desirable function of government, but it is not just about tilting playing fields towards open source. It is about applying a tax to closed formats if they want to be involved with government.
Also somewhat similar, say, to some fees charged by the US government when someone like Lockheed fails to produce documents by a certain date on a government contract.
I forget what 8 was for.
This reminds me of the problems surrounding SCO: they can't stand on their own two feet, so they sue every major company to acquire *their* feet.
I think this is an unfair move as I see others have already posted. Everyone knows that it's hard to make money off OSS (some of the questions to Hans Reiser asked about that) but there is no reason to penalize companies who can make money so that OSS can stands on *its* own two feet.
Whatever your stance is (for or against OSS or Microsoft - and, hey, there are many others to be fair), it's hard to deny that this is a foul play in the world of free markets.
This is moronic. There is no way we should make someone pay for to help their competitor. Imagine being told that you have to give up 10% of your salary and give it to the intern, because he can't find a way to be profitable.
Red Hat found a way to make money off of open source and everyone is mad at them for being the M$ of Linux. This is simply a case of goverment trying to control the free market, not the free market controling itself.
1. MS would design and publish standards that are so nasty and obscure that even skilled coders would have a hard time making any sense of it. That would get them off the hook and still not achieve open standards.
If that's what they want to do, fine because MS would then have to use those same horrible standards. This would have the affect of making their software too difficult for themselves to maintain and/or making people not want to use it if there is another commercial or OSS solution that uses better standards.
2. The software industry as a whole would suffer. Open standards are nice for interoperability, but not so nice for new development. Most standards are not easily made extensible with any sense. If they are extensible that's a loop for MS to exploit. The bottom line would be that new development by MS or any other software maker would suffer. Additionally the OSS world will also suffer. Good things happen when new software is written to do new things. Using the blunt hammer of government to dictate how software works is not a good solution. As soon as government determines it can make MS conform to its technical "guidelines", how long will it be before individuals and not-for-profits are bound and regulated the same way?
I don't think this is the way it would [should] work. It would force MS to use Open standards. Open standards CAN be made extensible. But once MS [or any other company] makes extensions to the standard, one of two things will happen. Either A) Said company will keep those extensions private thereby making their version NOT an open standard so they'll have to pay the 10% premium. Or B) MS will then make those extensions available to everyone else, thereby leveling the playing field which is the result we're going for in the first place.
3. MS's customers will simply suffer an additional 10% or more price raise which they are still mostly required to pay. On the other end, myraid of companies will spring up to do OSS work, crowding out a lot of the good community that has sprung up. These organizations will suck up funding. The projects will also essentially be the same as commerical software projects minus closed source, and as a result software will follow commerical software trends - feature bloat, buginess, and using gimmicks to gain market share (and justify their continued funding).
If MS raises their prices, then people will be even more likely to at least look at OSS for their solutions. And if more companies start going towards OSS then that's not a bad thing either, even if they do start introducing feature bloat etc. It'll be bloated/buggy OSS which someone else can then trim and debug it and sell it themselves.
In the end I think this is a great idea that will benefit everyone, including proprietary software, as long as they at least use open standards.
Ender
Nothing to see here
The software industry as a whole would suffer. Open standards are nice for interoperability, but not so nice for new development. Most standards are not easily made extensible with any sense.
Huh? please tell me how simply publishing your file format for your new word processor would hurt you and make it difficult for you...
Open standards... I.E. Tell me the frick how your files are saved from your program! It doesn't hurt, hell it don't even tickle. and it does nothing but help everyone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When the typical person sees a problem they instinctively say "we need a law!" If this person is slightly more sophisticated they might say "we need a regulation, tax, fee, oversight committee, etc". But no matter what words they use, the typical response to a problem is an increase in government power.
Is there a problem with the balance of FS and PS in the marketplace? Of course! But why must we instinctively rush to the government to solve the problem? We do we treat government as a god that we pray to for health, wealth and bountiful harvests?
If there is a bad law then by all means it is proper to eliminate it via a good law. If the FS/PS disparity is due to bad law, then let's eliminate that bad law. If it's due to obsolete bidding rules then let's change the bidding rules.
But this proposal doesn't do that. It's a prayer to the god'vernment to save the petitioner from the heathen proprietary hordes.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
OSS is free, MS products are expensive. In principle at least, that is a tremendous obstacle for MS. The main problems for OSS today are 1) making an OS product that is easier to install, use, and maintain than Windows XP, and 2) make OpenOffice easier to use than MS Office, and able to easily share files with it. This has to be true for the most naive and computer-phobic users.
Hello everybody! Those two conditions have not been met!
The idea of giving OSS a multi-billion dollar enema is absolutely terrible. It will guarantee corruption, bureaucracy, and irrelevance. OSS will become the IT equivalent of a corrupt Third-World dictatorship. When that happens, MS wins again.
Open standards... I.E. Tell me the frick how your files are saved from your program! It doesn't hurt, hell it don't even tickle. and it does nothing but help everyone.
My first reaction to your comment was:
"Maybe I don't want the files saved by my program to be opened by any other program. Don't like that? Then don't fricking use my program."
Of course, it's not black and white (is it ever?) In a well regulated market there's usually a provision for the regulatory organism to keep tabs on the "dominant provider" to make sure it doesn't throws everything off balance.
Still, I'm all about choice. Open standards are well and good (and should be embraced), but the way to enforce them should not be thru goverment mandated fines.
No sig
You now think that this is an appaling idea.
A totally free market doesn't really work, you'd only have one giant company running everything (MicroAOLTimeWarnerSoft) so you do need some limited government interference, but this proposal is just fscked.
Heck, why don't we charge a fee on every copy of RedHat sold to give to Slackware, because they don't sell as many copies and we need to level the field. Or we could do like Canada* and tack a charge on CD-Rs, to be 'fair' to the RIAA, and then tax the RIAA on sales and give to to smaller indy lables.
From each propritary company with the means, to each opensource with the need? That seems to ring a bell.
Stoopid stoopid idea.
*(I think it was Canada, but if I'm wrong, please don't send drunken attack beavers with hockey sticks to kill me.)
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
Your third point is the most immediately compelling to me.
Dealing with the government imarketplace" is a specialized skill that extremely few Open Source developers have. For example, Oracle was able to overcharge California millions because MySQL didn't even have the contacts to know that a bid was available. The people who know how to work the system are going to be the ones getting pieces of this new tax pie. And those people won't be Open Source developers.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I didn't read the article very thoroughly, so take this comment with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that Open Source has little to do with Open Standards, except coincidentally. I could very easily write a closed-source application that implements an open standard, or I could write an open-source application that uses a proprietary data format.
To me, these are apples and oranges and the article refers to the terms ambiguously. I'm all for government supporting open standards, but I'm leery of supporting a particular development methodology such as open source. Security though, IMHO, is a valid basis for supporting open source (due to increased peer review).
One other question: who gets to determine whether a given software package "supports" a given open standard? I'm sure Microsoft would say that IE supports CSS 2, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Likewise, there's probably always going to be something that somebody could use to say that it's not 100% supported. Seems to me there's a continuum here, and more definition is needed.
Read my keyboard review.
But at least you have the source in the OSS ones, so you can fix them/have-them fixed, and made standards compliant.
I never said they were the same....
So is your beef with Microsoft only, or the entire commercial software industry?
Ironically, Microsoft is probably the only company that would be able to afford to pay the 10%. A goodly portion of the already-fragile software industry would go belly-up if Uncle Sam were to take 10% off of their bottom line.
And especially in this economy/job market, that would be a really bad thing. Please think through the consequences of the greed and malice that are the basic motivation behind ideas like this.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
In any case, my tried-and-true simplistic worldview is shattered. And I haven't had my mid-afternoon coffee yet...
The government HAS to get the source code, while the source code can be kept from prying eyes and its just an insurance against the supplier going bankrupt and vanishing (think it can't happen, think what if Enron sold energy management software as well,) taking its software with it.
The vendor can enter into non-compete agreements with the government and the code never gets out unless the vendor goes tits-up.
The government HAS to get the file formats and they HAVE to be entered into the public domain. Otherwise interoperability is impossible.
No compliance, no sale.
Simple, clean and fair. No preferential treatments for anybody and no more shifting software base costing billions every year.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.