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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?
I'm conflicted. The open source advocate in my LOVES the idea of 10% of Microsoft sales to a government going to fund Open Source. The libertarian in me says this smells like governments interfering in with free market principles. HELP! I need a bunch of Slashdot users to tell me what to think! ;)
My journal has hot
But who's gonna get the money? There's hardly one big open-source organisation entitled to all the money.
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.
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).
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...
Is that they don't have to give a crap about your desire for Open Standards. They want to force Microsoft to give them a 10% discount, or they'll refuse to buy the product. Well, too bad. Because of the monopoly, they probably already own some of the product, they probably have a requirement to work with other Windows systems, and all Microsoft has to say is "neener neener". They'll buy anyway, because the reason for buying Microsoft products is very simple: they have a monopoly.
It's a nice thought, but I don't think you can just give someone a level playing field, all anti-trust laws to the contrary. Ultimately, OSS has to stand on its own merits, or it's not a competitor, it's just an also-ran.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
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.
From Hans Reiserâ(TM)s last answer:
... but there isn't enough money floating around to attract any genuinely bad folks into our industry.
;-)
âWe should all keep in mind though that there aren't any hard core greedy evil people in our industry. They are all basically good hearted people who chose trying to create a better society as their life's work at a substantial cost in personal income.
Not yet....;-)
With change accelerating we canâ(TM)t even have a âoenot yetâ last through the day. I dunno, that wink at the end seems a little more evil than I recall two hours ago...
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
It is a bit like forcing Ford or Chevy to pay 10% of what they make to set up a fund for "independent" custom-car builders. Ask yourself, would that fly either?
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
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
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?
I think that the way that Transgaming and Codeweavers (Winex and Crossover respectively) manage revenue collection / open source application source generation is very intelligent. For a small fee, you get their 'enhanced' version of an open source program (wine), for which they get paid. In return, both companies contribute to the source of the main project with well bug-tested code. It may be a rev or two behind their 'pay' applications, but it allows the project to make great leaps and bounds being funded totally by commercial use.
Personally - I have purchaced both and use them extensively to get to everything from Office 2000 to Diablo II working on my Linux boxes at home and work. I like that with Winex, I purchace a 'subscription' for $5 a month, which I can discontinue at any time, which only cuts me off from updating my binary.
If Microsoft was willing to publish 'old' API suites for free (even ones for Windows 9x), it would be a step in the right direction. It would give the communities of Windows Application Developers a stand on the playing field for begining to develop stable applications in the new (XP / Windows 2003 Server) environment.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
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
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.
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.
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.
The correct solution is to write the procurement to require that any and all software provide a complete specification of the data formats and the rules for display of data. Such a requirement seems reasonable in a governmental context where documents frequently have a lifetime longer than Word processing software. With the specs, future programmers would be able to decipher the important hieroglyphics even if the latest word processor won't.
If Microsoft software doesn't comply with the degree of openness you require, then simply don't buy Microsoft software.
That's all.
Buying Microsoft software and then assessing penalties against MS would be blatantly unfair.
"Provided by the management for your protection."