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UK Govt Warned: Don't Buy GPL
JPMH writes "ZDNet is reporting that a UK IT industry body backed by Microsoft, IBM, Intel, BAE Systems and other high-tech heavyweights has urged the UK government not to commission open-source software, and particularly not software covered by the General Public License. According to Intellect, which lobbies for about 1,000 UK IT companies, the requirement of open-source licences for software funded by the government could have a negative impact on competition for contracts, the quality of the resulting software and even the confidentiality of government departments. In particular, Intellect recommends that the government drop the GNU General Public License (GPL), the licence upon which the GNU/Linux operating system is based, from its list of acceptable default licences for government-funded software, and steer clear of the GPL generally."
This is BULLSHIT! This is just going to make me more determined to make my GPL application better than commercial and stuff it in thier face and and say, in a Nelson mocking attitued, "HA ha!".
Considering all the SCO IBM news and IP claims I wouldn't be overly interested in tying my gov. software to GPL either.
The GPL license COULD potential open a business up for a lawsuit, and anyone who reads Slashdot knows that GPL-lovers are very quick to cry for censure of any company suspected of violating the license.
The safest, and most appropriate license for government-funded and government-created software is the BSD license.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Wanna know why network fingerprinting tools have such a hard time differentiating BSD and Windows? Becuase their TCP stack is the same code! Same with Wind River... the BSD license is corporate welfare with a bow on it.
Just because you are a member of a group does not mean you always have to agree with the majority.
Unless of course the group is the United Nations, and the majority is the United States.
I'm glad that someone's finally stepping in to warn the government about the perils of Free software in the context of government comissioned works. I personally love and support free software, and use it every chance I get, but using free software in a business and personal context is vastly different from using it in a governmental context. I, for one, don't want other countries benefitting off of what my tax dollars go to fund. You also have issues such as exposure of internal workings of government systems that should be kept private, not to mention issues of security, as chances are in most cases the government agencies that use the software will not update their binaries if the source gets patched. I am sure other fellow /.ers can list more reasons below.. but I for one am perfectly fine with governments keeping their internal software solutions a secret.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Great! There is nothing more confusing than when you bash Microsoft and get modded down.
Just when you have it all figured out, you forget that this week we want to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
http://use.perl.org
*tries it out*
I hate microsoft!!!
*waits to get modded up*
The whole reason M$ is whining is because the world is moving onto GPL'd software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.