Slashdot Mirror
The Economist on Open Source in Government
locarecords.com writes "The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements. Particularly interesting are the issues relating to proprietary software and government and how other countries are mandating free software in government software projects."
Make sure your market is not undermined by the competition, free or otherwise.
I wish the zealots would at least concede that much before blasting the horrible , horrible, evil, closed, proprietary software.
Looks like the Department of Defense has actuallygiven the nodto open source - or at least recognized its existence.
Some foreign national cyber-terrorist could include malicious code in our govermental code. Think of the security implications. Plus, we'd be indirectly supporting the effort of another, possibly communist country. The majority of Microsoft's money comes from the US government, their biggest client. To paraphrase Harry S. Truman, "What's good for Microsoft is good for the United States."
I don't mind if govt uses open source or not. The best product for the situation should be used. What I do want do see is "open" document formats to allow them to switch software providers easily.
To have this analysis show up in The Economist rather than Slashdot or LWN, etc, is a bad omen for Microsoft.
It's just as easy to lie as to tell the truth. What's hard is keeping the lie standing long enough to fool your target. The truth takes less energy to maintain.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Oooh. You hurt me. You are just as intolerant as the KKK, asshole.
Microsoft is business; businesses must always compete hardball for government contracts, in any sector, be it software, hardware, equipment, construction. It's no surprise that it's offering special deals to preserve it's market share, that's what you'd expect any business to do.
There are many businesses behind the open source movement: Red Hat, IBM, Sun. Don't doubt that they aren't competing just as hard for the same contracts. And open source has a big advantage over Microsoft - the number of vocal advocates that are willing to promote it without payment. In fact, you'll find many of them here on Slashdot.
America, real America is a place of freedom, of dreams and hopes, of caring for each other, of support for the less fortunate. We encompass all cultures of the world, and thus have so much to offer.
Why do we let money and power rule us? Time to get back to the roots of our identity, pluralism and compassion.
Users love software that they don't have to pay for. But, some software professionals have to make a living creating and maintaining that software. Many companies today grapple with the question, "how to make money with Linux and Open Source?" Some software business leaders are worried about whether Linux and Open Source are impacting business viability of operating systems/environment business. Enterprise business and IT managers are quite happy to see the trend towards software they don't have to pay for. But, most often they do not understand what the implications are and what the fine prints way. Martin Fink has done an excellent job of compiling all the fundamental and essential information on the business aspects of Linux and Open Source software. He clarifies and removes many myths people carry in their minds. Probably this is a "one of its kind" book that brings together the various angles such as the overview of terms, understanding legal lingo, business model aspects, talent management aspects and so on. The book covers the essential technical aspects lucidly and adequately. If you are looking for a deep technical source for Linux and Open Source architectures, there are enough pointers in the book; but, this book is not meant for that purpose. I recommend this book for software engineers who have to understand the business aspects and Enterprise IT/Business Managers who are deploying/planning Linux and Open Source components in their business. The timing of the book is perfect. This book is a good candidate for bringing out update versions as the domain expands and matures. I don't know whether Martin Fink plans to upgrade the book year after year.
Quoted from Amazon
Never compete with a free product to begin with.
never had a single problem in openoffice either in linux or windows. Runs flawlessly all the time and is WAY more intuitive to me than MS Office.
Panels are just useless, time to get rid of em anyway. So..dump your panel (ie. icewm) and enjoy openoffice
=)
I'm torn on whether to be surprised by this--the Economist has run stories before (there was one last issue on the SCO deal) that seem to be subtly, quietly favoring GNU/Linux.
The part of me that says "I told you so" has been informed by recent experiences with managment/executives in our small business. They LOVE the fact that we run Linux on everything (well, there's a couple of BSD and Windows machines where we need them) and they never hesitate to brag about it to clients. They love feeling ahead of the curve.
The surprised part of me read the article in the WSJ last month (on the SCO thing) that warned the "Linux crunchies" to be wary of SCO's ability to win scummy IP lawsuits. The article betrayed a complete lack of understanding of what the "Open-Source community" is (to the extent that it's anything at all). And the same execs that love having Slackware stickers on everything need to be reminded during every internal licensing audit that GNU/Linux IS free as in beer, too.
They love it, but they don't get it. Makes me a little worried, sometimes, where they'll want to take it.
It was interesting that the various governments are interested in alternatives, in large part, because of the storage of information in proprietory format. This would only be enhanced by the latest proposed MSOffice document format being incompatible with even previous versions. But the best bit, imho is that the article metnions three groups/professions to benefit most from the move to Open Source: " large consultancy firms and systems integrators, such as IBM, which will be called in to devise and install alternative products; firms such as Red Hat or SuSE, which sell Linux-based products and services; and numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for governmental users.numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for governmental users". Hmm, don't critics of Open Source always say no way to make money from such a 'socialist/communist/root of all evil/hippy' model? And gee, helping small businesses, especially IT based ones, expand, profit, and employ more people, is HIGH on all government wish lists. Great to see an intelligent analysis in a respected magazine, too.
Nothing - well thats something.
Governments want the freedom to set their own technology course, not be dependent upon a proprietary software company that is beholden first of all to its shareholders. Governments want the security of knowing precisely what their machines are running on, by checking the code themselves. Governments want the abililty to set their own upgrade schedule, not wait until a company tells them the new version is ready. Governments want the ability to squash bugs immediately, not just when a company decides that bug is worth fixing instead of just adding new features.
Microsoft is so focused on winning the bottom line that they don't seem to have caught on to the biggest appeal of FOSS: Not free as in cost, but free as in speech. It's a principle that individuals find appealing, and now governments are finding that this freedom works for them as well. So no matter what Microsoft does, they can never compete on those terms. It's a principle now. Game over.
An understanding of customer needs.
Exactly why governments are gravitating towards open-source, according to the article. They can tailour the code to suit their needs, instead of expressing thier needs to a company and then waiting for the product.
"Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons."
All you MS developers are safe now. There'll be no outsourcing there any more.
of a head's up to anyone who hasn't read the headlines on Slashdot, CNet, or google for the last 18 months or so.
I think what's more telling is that it is sitting there in the Economist. Now you just have to wait for it to show up in Business Week as an editorial piece, and then It Must Be True, at least to managerial types of various calibers.
The Economist has this characterization of being for people who have their finger on the pulse of things; who are levelheaded and are already in the know, so it may sort of be preaching to the choir. It's pretty spin free, so that awkward quote from the Microsoft rep "being customer-focused" sort of stands out, and I think that was intentional.
Microsoft doesn't customer-focus unless you're entering a partnership agreement with them. Otherwise your wants and needs are averaged out across the board and shipped in a Service Pack. Meanwhile the article puts that quote agaisnt the backdrop of how open-source is being chosen precisely because it's easy to tailor for what you need.
And you don't have to be a slashdotter to appreciate that irony. It's all right there.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
it's asswipe, your a commie.
The same will be true of Microsoft... the more they attack open source software, they will undermine their own monopoly. This could end up causing a huge draw towards open source. Just like the RIAA they could have chose to embrace new technology (and ways of thinking), Microsoft could have embraced open source. Given grants to developers and kept their own business alive by forever by making good interfaces to those programs (after all, it's what they're good at). But instead, like the RIAA, they chose to go on the offensive and in the end it will kill their business if they don't change.
So I say, bring it on Microsoft! You're only ensuring that in the future, with those tactics, Open Source will dominate the computer world, just like P2P is beginning to dominate the music distribution world.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Ah, I see you followed rule 3. Good job, asswipe.
It uses every font installed on my computer - whether I boot Linux or Windows. It does them in every size and the printed output looks the same as any other word processor.
.DOC .XLS or whatever format when bringing files to work, or emailing them to people.
Yes, there are deficiencies. It doesn't have a database or email/calendar programme. I'm not sure what I would use for the former but I know they are debating it in their mailing lists. For email/calendar there is Mozilla. That's not perfect either, but it's the only browser I use.
I recently gave a copy to a nurse at work who wanted MS office but was not going to pay that sort of price. I installed OOO on her laptop and she took it home. The only verbal assistance I gave was a reminder to save things to
I asked how it was going after a couple of weeks. The reply was "it just works".
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
One of the items that often gets ignored in Microsoft's thinking is this: They were a small company with many competitors and Operating Systems were many and varied and had their niche; MS has changed the world by the proliferation of its operating system(s) and made it part of the INFRASTRUCTURE on which society relies. Once you control the infrastructure, you can't behave like MS currently is behaving - or the people and Governments will look for alternatives.
They changed the world, but unfortunately, they can't change themselves and herein lies the biggest of their problems.
The last statement in the article "But the signs are that many of them have already made up their minds." is very telling. Once you have known MS's past behavior, you know why they made up their minds.
Bitchslapped by Muenchen!
The original link in the /. story goes to a page with some ad(s), however, the ads never materialize from the 3rd party server, which blocks the story from being shown at all! Control that ad server and censor what The Economist publishes on the web ;-). Smart people use CSS instead, not HTML tables.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
when you don't have Microsoft ads plastered all over your page (like some people).
/. is a whore.
On the topic of MS ads on Slashdot:
i guess your a islam... so its obvious what this so-called criticism is worth...
"Obviously" he doesn't run a business... maybe. But you "obviously" don't run a government. I work for one. It's non-profit. So much for your "bottom line" theory.
Microsoft, and you, shall both adapt. Or become extinct. Just like Munich, we are going to pay more money to have interoperability. Because it's cheaper and has better ROI in the long run.
For organizations of any significant capitalization, IT is a strategic asset. Having control over that asset is pretty much the only sound strategy. Being told where you want to go today is not a good thing. Being locked into a predatory vendor is not a good thing. Especially when they can change the licensing at a whim to keep it just under the pain threshold to dump them.
Microsoft and its allies have sought to discredit open-source software, likening its challenge of proprietary ownership to communism and suggesting that its openness makes it insecure and therefore vulnerable to terrorism.
More strikingly, Microsoft has been imitating the ways of the open-source "community". Last year, the firm launched a "shared source" initiative that allows certain approved governments and large corporate clients to gain access to most of the Windows software code, though not to modify it. This is intended, in part, to assuage the fears of foreign governments that Windows might contain secret security backdoors.
So, they're saying that the openness of the code makes it less secure and vulnerable to terrorism, while at the same time opening their source to prove that it isn't secure... If they willingly admit that open code can be verified as more secure, how can they accuse Open Source software as being inherently less secure because it is open? And how come nobody calls them on that?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The Brazilian government plans to migrate from
Windows to Linux 80% of all computers in state institutions and state-owned
businesses, informed the daily newspaper "Valor". This will be a gradual
migration, that will begin with a pilot project in one ministry and which will
be completed over a period of three years, according to official sources cited
by the financial daily.
The goal of the migration is to save money by finding alternatives to
expensive proprietary licenses. Highlighting the gradual phase-in approach
that the Brazilian government has adopted, Sergio Amadeu de Silveira, the
president of the National Institute of Information Technology, stated that "We
are not just going to do a hasty migration". He proceeded to say that "our
main concern is the security and the trust of our citizens. The biggest
resistance to any change comes from the existing cultural inertia".
The government, De Silveira explained, created two weeks ago the "Chamber for
the Implementation of Software Libre" to pave the way for the upcoming
migration.
A small part of the 2,095 million reals (about USD $700 million) that the
Brazilian government budgeted for information technology spending goes to
Microsoft, owner of the Windows OS. The government's decision to adopt Linux,
according to De Silveira, will boost the popularity of the operating system
among businesses and consumers. Moreover, it will foster the production of
local software and "democratize access to knowledge", said De Silveira.
"What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country." -- Former GM President Charles Erwin Wilson, 1952.
Wilson later became Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense (1953-57). Sometimes a good quotation gets in the way of good history.
Microsoft thinks open source is anti-competitive? That's certainly not the case. There are multiple vendors of Linux, including big players like IBM, Novell, Redhat, SGI, Sun, and SuSE. And there are multitudes of small players. And if Linux isn't the best for you, there are other fully interoperable alternatives such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD that are open source, and still more like AIX and Solaris, that are proprietary. Looks like plenty of competition to me.
The problem is Microsoft doesn't want to be in a posititon of having to choose between losing sales or losing a lock on customers. Even if Microsoft were to have been an early adopter of Linux, they would never be able to gain a total market domination in it. And they know this. Microsoft's big fear is having to scale back to what a competitive market really means.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That said, open-source is no panacea, and there are many areas where proprietary products are still far superior.
Please notice the word "still"...
It's obviously a good thing that governments are mandating the use of OSS. Thus, OSS must be superior. Consider, for example, some technologies that the US government has mandated:
- Ada over all other programming languages
- ISO OSI protocols over the TCP/IP suite
- Interlaced HDTV
An official government stamp of approval on Linux can only be viewed as evidence that it's the best technical solution available.
What they didnt really point out is the fact that Microsoft is the top soft money contributor for their sector. Plus countless more to state government campaigns.
Microsoft will advance these views next week in Rome, where it is hosting the latest in a series of conferences for government leaders.
Wait you mean that microsoft is comping politicians to a free vacation in Rome.
Generally when the government talks about open source systems, they talk about a vendor, capable of doing installation, maintenance, deployment and support of the systems. The government assigns a certain budget to such activities and generally announces a tender on who can do the job the cheapest way.
Guess what - Microsoft is just another vendor, capable of bringing its own technologies, servers, operating systems, database systems and end-user desktops. For a price. RedHat is just another vendor, and so is Novell, Sun, and, yeah, SCO:-) In Asia and Europe there's frequently a variety of other vendors, doing localizations of Linux and offering their own products.
If Microsoft can provide the cheapest solution, why not? The goal of the government is to save money. If RedHat/SuSe/SCO/Novell/IBM can provide a cheaper solution, then so be it, and they will probably win the tender.
I suppose the headline RedHat tries to undermine proprietary software would just not be that sexy on Slashdot.
Microsoft would not exist in the way that it does without a particular type of government granted monopoly called - copyright. It is not like other property rights which have natural limits in supply and demand, it is an atrificial one where Microsoft controlls all the supply. It is not true to free market philosophy any more than slavery was in the 1850's. Yeah they bought and sold those slaves like commodities, yeah the economic strength of the plantation system rested on slavery, yeah the business men who ran it were universally considered educated and ethical - and just doing normal honest business - but it was all bullshit. Slavery had to go, it had always been a burden and was always far more about controll rather than property - but as society entered the industrial age our society could no longer bear the social restrictions allowed by slavery.
Well now we are entering into the information age, and copyrights are looking far more like an untenable and eternally unenforcable restriction every day and less like a property right every day. They are not about property, commerce, freedom, or markets - but controll, and so is Microsoft and the other's like them such as the RIAA who have held themselves accountable to the same forces.
It's out in the general public. That's what gets me about calling CSS a trade secret.
A government that uses proprietary software is not an independent government.
Who do you think was using the many, many security vulnerabilities in Microsoft software before they were made public?
Not if he's dressed like this
As much as an advocate as I am for open source software, and a supporter of free software though not an outright fanatic about it, I have mixed feelings about the mandating of open source in government or any other area.
The problem with mandates like this is that it, in a way, sanctions monopoly. Monopoly by open source/free software may not sound like such a bad thing, but I personally have a bad reaction to anything that presents a choice as my only choice.
Example: There are forms of pornography that I find particularly repulsive (not talking obviously illegal stuff like pedophilia, but just things between consenting adults that would make my hair curl looking at it). However, that doesn't give me the right to mandate that YOU can't look at it. Moreover, if someone on high decreed "you can no longer look at this", I would fight it. Even though I have no intention of looking at this stuff, I made that choice, not someone else, and I would fight for the continued right to make that choice.
I use open source software almost exclusively. My desktop runs Linux. My wife made the choice to try Linux and now runs it exclusively on her laptop. But that's our choice, not someone else's mandate. Yes, I would love to see the whole world go open source. But it has to happen by choice, not by mandate.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
No, but I think you might be quacking up!
i guess your a islam...
Nice job following rule 3.
Although governments will mention many reasons for using Linux or *BSD, I think one of the primary drivers will be security. I'm not talking about security in terms of viruses or trojans, but about national security.
Let's face it. Most governments don't trust each other as far as they can throw the Statue of Liberty. Even allied countries spy upon each other. So, you know it must scare the hell out of most countries to get a large part of their critical computer infrastructure from a company in foreign country. Especially when they can't even see the source code. I know that if Microsoft was located in Europe that the US government would worry about this. I have no idea whether anyone has ever tampered with Windows code for spying. But you know the paranoid security agencies in most countries will worry about this. And nothing that Microsoft can say will stop them from worrying about this. Even if Microsoft gave them the source code and they built their own Windows code, the compiler could be altered to secretly add malicious code. One of the Turing award lectures (I think it was Ken Thompson) talked about such bugging of compilers.
Of course, using a free operation system will bring other benefits. And from a public relations standpoint, those are the reasons they will admit publically. But let's face it. A lot of this comes down to national security concerns. Even if the various governments don't admit it.
According to the article, IDC said total government software expenditure worldwide was $17b, but Microsoft's share was only 2.8b. What other software are they buying?
My Blog
Plus, we'd be indirectly supporting the effort of another, possibly communist country.
Shit, so much for using Linux. Damned scandanavian socialist pinko bastards are just taking over the world. First they gave us reliable celluar phones, then reliable OS kernels. If we don't stop them, they might bring us other scourges like affordable healthcare and pensions. They must be stopped.
Next thing you know will be trading with China. Oh, wait... In other news, the Senate just voted to allow Americans to travel to Cuba. The red hordes are coming. Trust no one.
Don't break the law unless you have $ to pay off the neccesary people.
I think of them pretty highly when they're talking about the economy and politics. In fact it's hard to find a publication that's better. But when it comes to software and the computer biz they need an education. I'm glad to see they've started to understand.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I mean really. Every time a large corporation tries to do something like this, it eventually backfires on them.
I wonder if Microsoft's big "win" in the antitrust case isn't backfiring? Sure, Microsoft got off practically scott-free, but this showed the world that the U.S. government won't control it's unruly child. I think other countries now realize that they have to pay more attention to protecting their own interests because the U.S. goverment sure isn't going to.
Try building it yourself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
then reliable OS kernels
I thought OpenBSD was from Canada?
If you use special formatting that doesn't display well in OpenOffice, chances are, it won't display well on other people's copy of MS Office -- unless they have the same OS and same Office versions and patches as you do.
If you're using MS Office XP, imagine what the guy with Office 97 sees, or even Office 2000. Not pretty, too much of the time! Same is true going the other direction, version-wise.
The same may become true of OpenOffice's legacy file formats, as well, some day. Who knows. The point is, that's really a piss poor argument (and is getting really old) for not converting to an open-standards-based office suite. (Although I can't really tell what your point was -- I'm just tired of hearing that same lame argument).
The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements.
And by "excellent" you mean pro-open source.
As long as they aren't allowed back...
These are principles:
Every citizen has a right to utilize and benefit from electronic government services from the privacy of their own homes, without having to agree to an invasive and limiting EULA to acquire a "license", which can be revoked at the whim of a private corporation. The software tools which realize this right must be understandable, reliable, secure, auditable, and accessible.
Every citizen has a legitimate expectation to access to the wealth of enabling information available electronically, for education, for health, for justice, to better themselves and help to provide a better future for their children and their children's children, in the privacy of their own homes. This access must not be only on the whim of a private corporation on the string of an invasive and limiting EULA. The software tools which realize this access must be understandable, reliable, secure, auditable, and accessible.
The list goes on...
We, through our government, have an obligation to, as we are able, fund the realization of these rights and legitimate expectations of our fellow citizens through the development, distribution, and deployment of Free Open Source Software.
No longer must private entities be permitted to benefit from holding back -- monopolizing -- that right and legitimate expectation possessed by every modern person to better himself or herself, and his or her children through the increase and greater securing of knowledge, education, privacy, skill, and generally acecess to those services and goods each funds with his or her hard earned tax dollars, in this age of great information.
There is no longer any excuse.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
This reasoning is fatally flawed.
Since the shared source system does not allow any organization which is given access to the source to see the *ENTIRE* codebase, nor does it grant priviledge to modify the codebase (which implies, in turn, that one cannot recompile it for their own system), how can any person outside MS realistically even tell that the source code that Microsoft has provided actually directly corresponds to the operating system running on that particular personal computer?
The answer is that they can't. And frankly, if a company was going to be deceptive enough to put back doors into their software in the first place, you can bet your privates they'd be deceptive enough to lie about what their source code was.
I'm not saying that Microsoft has actually done this, but they are pretending that this "shared source" system makes them look accountable, and it really doesn't.
At least their reasoning for making the CE source available is more plausable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
admit it, you smelly turd. you lost the argument, and your stupidity is now exposed like goatse's protruding ass.
hawhawhahwwhwhwhwahhwhwhhwhw
Here are a couple other, older Economist citations:
Those two are interesting, among other reasons, for the technical precision in percentages (I said it was precise; I didn't say it was accurate :-), the awareness of non-Linux open-source
operating systems, and, well, that little jab about JavaScript's (re)naming being a
"clever marketing ploy"--in other words, a deceit, by any other name.
If you read over the various articles the searches pull up, it sure seems that the Economist is a lot more on the ball than say, Time or Newsweek.
--tom
(PS: You might take quick exception to their characterizations of Perl and Python, but a reread will show that those were just example application areas cited.)
Quote from the article: Jason Matusow, Microsoft's shared-source manager, says that developing software requires leadership and an understanding of customer needs?both areas where proprietary-software companies excel.
This is one of the factors that ensure that Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle against open source: in many cases, the developer is the customer, and in every case the customer can become the developer. No proprietary-software company can win against this. Why is it that otherwise very smart people can spout nonsense like this as soon as they work for Microsoft. To a lesser extent it happens with Oracle, Sun or IBM, but it seems to me that critical faculties disappear very quickly once somebody is in the belly of the Beast of Redmond.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
It's interesting to see the US being backed into positions by the rest of the world. Like foreign governments latching on to open source. Makes it glaringly obvious that our recalcitrance is a thinly veiled concession to corporate interests. That would make open source software doubly inviting overseas. In one move they can hit back at the US and Microsoft. Pretty tempting just for the value of the political statement, technology justifications aside.
We really are our own worst enemy sometimes. I really hope we can heal the rift some day. We'll get a chance at a good start in Nov. '04, but it's going to be a long road.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I've been thinking. And found a way that MicroSoft can get rid of linux users. All they have to do is switch to Linux. This would kill half linux users from shock and the other half will die laughing.
CHEERS
--RoadkillBunny
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
Governments often have to mandate. For example in both Australia and Britain (home of the British Imperial measuring system still staunchly supported by the US) laws had to be passed to enforce the introduction of the Metric System. Such enforcement is unlikely in the US where arguements citing either the value of market forces or the importance of freedom of speech can be cynically invoked. Basic software will become a commodity because Goverments will see it as being in their countries best interest. And like introducing the Metric System it will just take a little longer in the US.
Capatilism is about advantage. If you are an advantage to someone, you will survive. If you compete with someone and win you still still get nothing if you have no advantage to a customer.
Open source is an advantage to customers because its free. Its also an advantage to hardware companies who get more dosh since less is spent on software. 2 points for open source.
On the other hand where is commercial softwares advantage?
Competition is the red-herring and always will be and has destroyed many companies as they waiste their time with it instead of finding someone who they are an advantage too.
Microsoft is biting many hands and soon will run out of feeding hands.
QED
I think this guy has a very bad case of penis envy.
military simulation software. I don't think guys at Lawerence Livermore Labs work for free, do you?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I saw this article over an hour ago, not through slashdot, and i thought i had a story to submit due to misreading the sentence, though i guess the sentence itself was easy to misread.
If you click on Linux in Backgrounds it takes you to a page in the Economist's Research Tools section, there i read "In May 2003 Microsoft attacked on another front, signing a licensing agreement with SCO, which produces a proprietary brand of Unix and has launched a far-reaching copyright-infringment lawsuit against IBM."
On my first and second, and perhaps third, reading of the sentence i somehow thought that "and" belonged to Microsoft, meaning that microsoft launched a lawsuit against IBM. And i sorta wondered why they said that until i realized the "and" actually belonged to SCO. Try it, it still feels easy to misread.
I disagree, at least for small databases that are OLTP in nature. Postgress and MySQL both have duplicated all the relevant featurs of Sybase/Oracle/DB2, and at a fraction of the cost in systems - let along license fees.
I am guessing that just as Linux has eaten the low end sales of HP-UX, Solaris, Irix, classic AIX, and Digital UNIX systems - MySQL and Postgress will much on the soft underbelly of database software (OLTP servers with 4 database engines or fewer that have database footprints of less than 100GB).
Scaleability, and a few decision support features are all that are left and this "battle" will have been won, and the only Oracle can do is a holding action much like IBM Mainframes have done against desktop computers.
So actually, governments, like universities, can provide funding and research for new areas other profit minded, money at all costs, corporations wouldn't.
Read the article. There are very good reasons for supporting Linux, namely open standards. It's more than whether it's the best technical solution. (Even on that point Linux is superior to Microsoft, which like SCO, is more about Marketing, Lobbying, and Legal Maneuvering than anything technical).
Capitalism leads to imperialism due to it's inner dynamic which is it's tendency toward stagnation.
Capitalism as a World Economy
Wow, that's some wrong stuff. A mandate which requires software to have it's souce code available is simply a specification. That no more leads to a monopoly than requiring nuts and bolts to conform to ASME standards. Anyone can open their source. Those that don't simply want to screw you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is nothing dumb at all about claiming the state causes the MS monopoly, because it's true. If you take away state-enforced copyright laws then the Microsoft monopoly would disappear in a heartbeat.
I am not suggesting to repeal copyright laws. I am merely pointing out that they enable the MS monopoly, and that they pretty clearly deviate from laissez faire capitalism.
Yes, and there are (were) many very useful and, yes, superior proprietary products that are no longer available because the distributor decided to take them off the market. They have been replaced by newer "improved" versions that are not what the customer wants, or are pushed out of the market by a larger competitor (e.g. DR-DOS). Open-source products protect my investment in hardware, software and data. If the developer loses interest in it, I can support it myself, rely on other open-source folks to do it, or even pay to have somebody do it for me. For an out-of-support proprietary product, such as Office 95, I don't have the legal option to do so, nor the necessary materials (source code) that would be required. So all the data has to be converted to the "new" format (even if the auto-converter works, that's non-value-added staff time), the new software versions have to be paid for, and perfectly good hardware must be replaced to handle the load imposed by an "upgrade" that I wouldn't need but for incompatibility with those who do have newer stuff. For these same reasons, I prefer my tax money be spent on long-lived open source solutions, not a biennial tribute payments to the pirates of Redmond.
I thought the US military bought all its simulation software from ID these days.
Surely not!
Concerns that US or MS on their own could be bugging software seems fairly reasonable considering that less than a year ago China caught US bugging a plane they had just bought from Boeing. They didn't want to use the plane after that either. Can't see them wanting to use MS after that either.
I think it depends on what people mean by unrefined.
A lot of people use the word as a shorthand for "it doesn't look/handle the same as the Microsoft equivalent." Unfortunately, sometimes when people are working on improving something, that is the refinement they are doing.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
now tell me whiz kid, how can you as a citizen audit a closed source program to ensure that it offers the correct results?
Inquiring minds etc...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wintel do not scale. Period.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You mistake "study economics" with "studying right wing dogma". The free market can only exist when there is a strong state, and historically the marked economy developed in parallel with the centralization of power with the king, and removal of power from the church and feudal lords.
There are two ways you can win in the marked, by making yourself better than the competition, or by making the competition worse than you. There is very little lasting profit in the first, the competion will always try to do the same to you, keeping profit margins at a minimum (and prices low, which is why a working market is such a good thing). However, if you can prevent your competition from entering the market, huge profit is possible. So this is what any executive who cares about shareholder value will attempt. Whenever you see large profits, you see a dysfunctional market.
As any economist worth his pay will know, the main function of the state is to make sure the market is run by good competion, improving yourself, not bad competition, damaging your competion. Intelligent right-wingers, and they are not as rare as you would think, especially among economists, believe this should be the only role of the state. Protecting the market. This is why we have anti-trust laws, because sometime economic theory wins over lobbyism.
Unfortunately, there are many other kind of right-wingers out there. One, currently in government, believe it is the job of the state to protect the rich, and help them become richer. They obviously dislike anti-trust laws. Another kind is the Libertarians, who has as an article of faith that government is the root of all evil, and derive their other values from that. They believe, contrary to economic theory, history, and common sense, that the market can exist by itself, and that all signs of dysfunction are results of government intervention.