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When Think Tanks Attack
x1048576 writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is only one of a dozen different think tanks that have attacked Open Source. Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft."
Wasting money on Open Source? Evidently they haven't looked at the Wired article. The one that says that an average Malaysian worker has to work 1,100 (yes, eleven hundred) hours to buy a licensed copy of Windows XP.
Then again, think who these people are funded by.
as opposed to what? Smartly shifting the taxpayer's money to the bank account of the world's richest man?
...is some Free Software using Institutes to come out against Windows and proprietary software.
I'm sure funding for this could be had from IBM, HP, Red Hat, etc...
Join the Free Software Foundation
That if Microsoft has that much money to spend on think tanks and spin doctors, if they spent that much money on improving their products instead of spreading FUD where would they be today!
Microsoft are by many considered the driving force behind the BSA, who seems to have co-authored the software patents directive of the European Commission.
...levels that one of MS's approaches to fighting open source would be to bring up the spectre of lawsuits. Considering the last few years, one would think that Redmond would have a healthy aversion to courtrooms and wouldn't wish that on anyone.
But then, I guess I'm not being a realist. What disappoints me, regardless of history, is that MS is not willing to compete against open source in the marketplace without trying to stack the deck. Have they no confidence in their product? If not, why not? And if not, then why aren't they working to make it better? And if they are, then where are the results?
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
I am wondering here, is there no point where all this FUD turns illegal?
Can a company sponsor a dozen institutions to spread lies without running any risk of prosecution?
Is a misleading name... they're just lobby groups that are trying to give themselves some credibility.
I can't think of anything witty right now
The more of this they do the more they look like morons. The sad thing is not so much that there actually are people out there who believe this dribble. It is that some of them get elected to high political positions. I wonder how long it is before some bunch of corporate arse-kissing politicians and/or lobbyists decalare OSS to be the most evil thing since computer viruses and more likely to bring about the collapse of Western civilization and the American way of life than Al Quaeda?
Oops my bad! they already have...
I wonder is somebody is developing special medication for this crowd? It is a growing market...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Don't worry about them as it only gives them credibility.
Open discussion of both sides of a story promotes greater understanding, so people can make up their own minds. You should only feel threatened by this if you think Open Source has something to hide...
Yes, criticism can help us find flaws, but this isn't criticism. It's just FUD. It's designed to generate gnawing worry in the minds of people who might consider using open-source software, and, given the invective I've read so far, they're doing a pretty good job.
Give the devil his due, this is a well-coordinated attack.
If they want to talk about the real issues facing open-source, fine. I'd love to hear what they have to say. If, OTOH, they just want to attack open-source, they can plant their lips firmly on my pasty, pale, programmer's backside.
Love your country always, but respect your government only when it deserves it. -- Mark Twain
...but remember, companies are companies. IBM isn't in business to fund HP or Red Hat, they will each want to push their own products. Ultimately, I think numbers will work better than trying to beat Microsoft at their own game.
If anything, one should try to expose it as a coordinated smear campaign. Try to argue that what is really is speaking is but one hydra with many heads. It's very hard to argue that hundreds if not thousands of OSS companies are cooperating to do the same.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That would be a very serious concern, but for that "viable free as in beer OS solution" bit. Generally speaking, the OSS projects that have succeeded are those that bring in the mass support necessary for OSS's advantages in rapid development and maintenance to shine through: Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Internet tools, CD rippers, etc. In those mass-market application areas, there are viable OSS alternatives.
However, for the smaller, niche vendors that you mention, I'm not sure I see the opposition. I can't think of a single OSS product that successfully dominates a small-scale niche. By definition, that market is unlikely to attract a wide base of volunteer support, and without that, OSS has no selling points.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Of course. Giving the wealthy even more wealth is the epitome of fiscal common sense these days, and in fact it has always been the undercurrent assumption of economic health. Look at GWB's recent tax cuts; they were gift-wrapped in the usual trickle-down rhetoric.
Monopolies and ultra-wealthy are returning to favor; the legions of stockholders are stamping their feet for those things, due to the stock bribes they've taken in the last 12 years. I don't expect much from elitist think tanks therefore. The only bright ray in this is that Linux isn't free, it's free-as-in-no-license-cost, and that's very compelling in this new age of artificial scarcity.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
To me, no. However it angers me that FUD can be spread like this to a large degree, and people just soak it up.
Just reading through some of the 'comments' on OSS. Raymond Keating calls OSS 'the borg'! What the hell? Microsoft is more the borg than OSS. Since when did freedom become a restriction?
Sonia Arrison suggests that OSS is just full of a lot of pimply teenagers is so far from the truth, I just don't get it. Searching for the 'online' comment she mentions in google comes up with nothing, (that may mean nothing though).
Wayne T. Brough mentions that there are more incompatibilities with OSS than commercial software. When are these people going to get it, that most of the people who write OSS are the same people who write for commercial companies!
There are so many more statments like this. Grrrrrr. I don't think we should just ignore it like this. This is the problem. People actually listen to FUD. The more FUD people get, the more brainwashed they get. You'll be amazed at what people can believe once they are brainwashed.
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
>Due to the very nature of open source, eventually, the best (general) programs will be open source programs. Period. The "eventually" and "general" qualifications you make unfortunately make this statement useless - if you look at it the other way... "Now and for the foreseeable future, the best specialized programs are NOT open source. Period." Is that really what you wanted to say?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
It is sooooo fashionable to believe that tax systems are weighted towards the wealthy, and benefits to the poor. In other words, the down-trodden middle classes are bearing the burden of the rich and the poor.
Unfortunately, it is almost completely untrue. I am British, and most Americans would regard me as so kind of communist or socialist as I support some limited redistributive policies.
But I think you believe far more in rhetoric than facts if you believe that the rich and corporates are sucking up all your wealth.
Truth be told: the middle classes (who actually vote) and the elderly get almost all the tax breaks. There aren't enough of the rich to matter, and the poor don't vote. Result, budgets like the recent US one, which is so full of special interest and pork, that it's a disgrace. The real benificiaries, the middle classes who administer all this crap.
And another thing: all wealth ultimately goes to people. There is no such thing as a "rich company"; companies are owned by stock holders.
You know these poor middle classes; all these stock bribes and the like were perfectly well documented. And what did you do? You put more money in your Fidelity mutual fund, in the hope that some of the money would come your way too. Did you protest? No, you hoped to benefit too.
Sorry: I'm ranting. But I get so angry with perception when reality is so different.
The middle clases, who have borrowed on their credit cards to buy pets.com stock. Fuck 'em. They deserve to lose their money.
The middle classes, who think that adjustable rate mortgages, 7x income multiples, and $500k for a two bedroom apartment are sensible. Fuck 'em. Why should I pay for their financial naiviety? (Or more accurately, their unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions.)
The middle classes are the problem in the US. Give the money to the rich, at least they spend it on Space Ship One rather than over-priced real estate and ooooh oooh another SUV.
Sorry. Rant over.
--- My dad's political betting
Using think tanks is not something Microsoft, or the software industry has invented, in fact this strategy was used extensively by tobacco companies.
Look at some of the gems here. Specifically, The importance of young adults, Tobacco And Health Research Procedural Memo or this for a specific example.
Microsoft and big tobacco are'nt that different, really. We have significant evidence that the product is bad for us (causes security issues, promotes questionable technologies like DRM, etc.), the manufacturer is trying to deny this and publish evidence to the countrary to the masses (who haven't seen the ads on Slashdot comparing Linux vs. Microsoft as file server in term of costs).
It also, not surpsisingly lobbies think tanks in order to discredit any evidence to the contrary.
And lets of course not forget the emphasis on young adults for brand loyalty (Microsoft is pushing hard into colleges).
This has been all tried before, and in big tobacco's case, worked very well for quite an extended period of time, and remains a debated topic until today.
Have we gotten any smarter?
They , and all of these power elite shills,
should have their tax exempt status YANKED.
Make them pay taxes and see if they still crow
for the beast
This is a poorly framed question: using ``attack`` has overloaded connotations of negativity. Some of these think tanks and organisations are offering constructive criticism (not all of them, I give you) as they evaluation how open source works for their constituency.
For example, it is true that Linux is not entirely free. If you, as an organisation, use Linux, you still have to pay someone (whether your own staff, or external support) to help with problems and support: this costs time and money.
Now, as soon as a I make statement, I expect to attract lot of flame, and suggest that I'm ''attacking'' Linux: but I'm not, I'm just laying the reality out on the table.
Last thing you want as a techie is upper management thinking that Linux is free, because then they'll just ratchet your budget claiming that now that you're on a free OS, it shouldn't cost anything: yet as the techie, suddenly you have 2x as much work because you have to take care of things you could have previously lobbed back onto the vendor. The point is, that in this case, Linux is _low cost_, not _free_. Therefore, it's good that small business associations (and otherwise) raise these points, to make sure people have the right expectations.
Equally, now that we're talking about small business associations: it's true that when you buy PC hardware, it _always_ supports Windows by way of drivers, vendor support, etc; but it doesn't always support Linux/BSD/etc - now whether this is a poor reflection of vendors or whatever doesn't matter, because the commercial reality is that if you're a small business owner, you may find that if you go down the Linux route, that you lock yourself out of some hardware possibilities. And I tell you, small business owners don't care about Linux v Windows: they want a business that works, and they want _low risk_, therefore, as much as Windows may have some costs and suckiness about it, the reality is that it largely works with just about any hardware you can buy off the shelf.
These aren't ``attacks``, these are realities.
Get some facts before ranting to the extent you did.
... thanks for asking, Ace.
The pro-wealthy weighting of America's tax system isn't fashion, it's fact. The tax system in America is so Byzantine that the wealthy and corporate take monstrous advantage of it time and time again. This is opposed to the wage-earner who is assaulted by a mandatory system he can't afford to escape through the hiring of a tax accountant. For instance, can YOU (British even so) park your assets offshore while parking your expenses onshore, escaping taxation while also piling deductions under your tax system? Can YOU pay a relative 1% fee to a tax accountant to draft an opinion letter outlining how all that asset movement is legal? Can YOU move compensation from tax-deferred instrument to tax-free account, eventually escaping all taxation on it? Can YOU escape taxation by being so diversely embodied that you simply end up paying yourself?
Enron (an egregious example, certainly) managed to use the tax system so well -- creating almost 900 partnerships for tax-dodging purposes -- that for the last 5 years of its existence, it had no yearly tax liability for 4 of them.
Just because a middle-class person can rack up enormous debts and play a little with his income tax return, doesn't mean that the wealthy and corporate aren't escaping away with billions.
As a Brit, you may find the book dreadfully dull due to its American focus, but go out right now and obtain:
"Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else" by David Cay Johnston
As far as I'm concerned, exposees like Johnston's only illustrate that the American tax system is arranged for the collapse of the American Empire. The complexity, and lack of enforcement in fixing it, are fatal wounds. When tax frauds can happen much, much faster than they can be stopped, then tax frauds will become the usual. When tax dodges can happen for the wealthy equivalent of pocket change, and the very mentality of fraud settles in, then eventually the wealthy will pay no taxes.
P.S. I own no stock and voluntarily participate in no benefits program (a la 401(k)) of any kind
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
I wonder if we could pull a mega prank by creating one of these things. What would it take besides an official looking web site and a fax number? How far could we push our own FUD?
It would be nice to see the Wall Street Journal quote the "Institute for Proprietary Software" recognizing that Linux is cheaper /better /safer than Windows after all...
os trabalhos e os dias: http://zmoreira.net
Ernie Ball.
This sig no verb.
But the fact is that the "peer-review" nature of Open Source means that code from "hobby-projects" is considered good or bad very quickly - whereupon it is improved upon, accepted or just thrown away.
It might equally be argued that a paid programmer just doing it "for the money", with little or no say in the appearance of the finished product, might be less inclined to produce good code than an enthusiastic hobbyist with a great idea and the time and devotion to turn that idea into reality.
2. ... You have people talking about how more eyes find more bugs, when in reality hardly anyone really understands the source to something like gcc, and this only applies in a significant way to fundamental applications that many people use as a basis for further development. ...
Code is code whether it's Open Source or commercial. Programmers move in and out of commercial projects as much as in Open Source projects.
The understanding of any code comes from good formatting, commenting and version control - that's the same the world over.
3. "Making the source freely available" is turning out to be more valid than "open source development."
What's your point here?
I don't personally C program (particularly well) but I will take "freely available source" and try to compile it. If it doesn't compile, I'll do some trawling round the web/Usenet for an answer and if it's still a problem, let the source writers know - they, in turn, might develop the code further.
I don't see it matters where programmers are located, whether they are paid or not, etc. etc. It's simply a case of whether or not their output is open to or closed from public view.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Read David Stockman's Book: "The Triumph of Politics." He was Reagan's budget director. The deficits were *deliberate*. They saw it as the only way to force reductions in the size of government. He has plenty of ink against the Dems as well, but the notion of the Reagan Administration as sound fiscal stewards isn't supported by former members of the Administration.
Revisionism has everything to do with it because the fact is that Reagon pushed for those deficits, demanded those deficits, rallied support for those deficits and got those deficits. Fact: It took a Dem in the White House to do anything about those deficits.
Half the organizations or more listed are all tarred by one article I couldn't find, with no other references to check. The magazine apparently referenced also says the press favors the bush administration ( despite the fact that only 7% of press voted for Bush ) .
Clearly not the most objective journalistic source.
I'm certain that Microsoft does fund a considerable amount of FUD, but I don't think they're alone here. It makes me wonder who funded the research upon which the article was based. Transparency ought to go both ways, not none.
For example, the Citizens Against Government Waste says this about Massachusetts' Freeware Initiative:
As for the argument that open source is better and cheaper, such software has its advantages and should be considered an option. That being said, all but the most die hard Linux fans will admit that some functions are better performed with proprietary software. There is simply no reason to slam the door on proprietary vendors at any level of government. If Massachusetts chose one proprietary vendor as the state's only software provider and excluded open source, CAGW would also object to that.
As one example cited by the author, it turns out that it doesn't look like any kind of passionate pro-M$ screed. If that's what M$ got for their money, M$ would be better off using that money to fix IE.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
How does that differ from the "slashvertisements" we get every so often here about "new piece of hardware/software from company ________"?
I went through the linked article and I couldn't find much hard evidence of how much these think tanks get from MS, and what percentage of their total income MS donations make. There are few dollar figures to verify independently; the only one I noticed was about $10k MS sent to the Pacific Research Institute. Of course, if one follows the link, one sees that the total contributions from ALL corporations makes up only 10% of their revenue; I wish there were more data elsewhere.
This piece seems to be a classic conspiracy theorist bash that takes a few sparse facts and uses them to paint a complete picture that coincides with the author's ethical/political alignment. It doesn't logically follow that a think tank received a payment from such companies is "in their pocket" or propagandizing as a quid pro quo. Nevertheless, the author uses it as evidence that big, nasty companies are trying to influence your view through thoughtful argumentation, a fact, while true, is morally neutral. Would we as thoughtful people prefer a reasoned argument, though wrong, or plain and simple advertising?
The author certainly doesn't care; anything done by companies he dislikes is automagically "evil" and ignorant of the facts stated above. The whole "funded by big tobacco" slant is ignorant of the fact that tobacco companies and their subservient foundations, like many companies, spread their wealth around to many different sources.
Should we complain that our schools are funded by the sweatshop-using Nike Corp. when they are donating money for new playgrounds in inner city schools, and creating new fields, parks and open spaces there?
I haven't read the articles written against Open Source that this author cites, but it strikes me that attacking a group's financial backing is a a red herring, a disingenuous tactic that plainly ignores the content of the articles. Who cares who funds them if the ideas therein are sound? Should we reject the teaching of evolution as opposed to creationism, simply because some think tanks which promote it are funded by companies we dislike?
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
"Linux apps are inconsistent as hell! "
I guess that's what makes those vertical apps wierd.
"If I'm going to expect a dept. to make the switch I have to at least be able to give them a consistent environment and that requires spending many hours on a "model" machine changing about a zillion attributes scattered all over the place."
Used KDE have you? That's one of the reasons GNOME will do so well in the business space.
"But as near as I can tell it's going to be a few more years before we really see wide-spread adoption simply because it takes too much time to configure a solid environment. Time which has to be amortised over the number of machines on the network. "
It's easy to push configurations out remotely. Amortization is easy with Linux.
"It's virtually impossible to get funds in the budget to hire an extra body just so you can try out something which might save the company a few bucks in the long term."
Tell them, Bill says it's OK.
"This is why you only see two classes of business switching these days:"
Three: Those that don't have a huge investment in MS and MS philosophy.
"Or maybe Microsoft is the premier platform to RUN APPLICATIONS"
Possibly in a broad sense. However, Linux is becoming the premier platform to BUILD AND DEPLOY APPLICATIONS. It is built for that. When you can deploy applications quickly and cheaply, and can build customized applications quickly and cheaply, you can move ahead of your competitors who are running on yesterday's overpriced applications quickly and cheaply, and afford to make your IT department a revenue generator rather than just a cost sink.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I don't think that anyone is missing the point of think tanks. The organizations themselves (think tanks and those they work with) attempt to portray an air of authority and an "outsiders" perspective on political, economic and social issues. Think tank employees are often quoted in the media, used as talk/debate show guests, etc. Quotes and statistics published by these think tanks are used to back arguments and support viewpoints - some of which influence public policy.
Interestingly, the ACLU runs Windows and *only* Windows. My boss (an executive director of one regional office) told me of another regional office that got a grant from national HQ to do some IT upgrades and experimentation. They planned to use a Linux server for their office, but national stipulated that they *must* run Windows on their server to get the grant.
Of course, the "agreed" to these terms and ran Linux anyway. The regional offices from what I hear aren't thrilled with national's IT policy. Apparently, MS gives the ACLU quite the deal on their products. My office, of course, runs Linux exclusively.
I'm not being paid money to write this. My payment is a freer, richer, more just society, built under the only system that can provide those ends: capitalism.
Two years ago, I bought a shirt from Microsoft (the "Freedom to Innovate" shirt), which I wear proudly on occasion.
I'm not a Microsoft employee, nor have I ever been one. The limit of my association with them is that I buy and use their software. Articles such as these attempt to minimize actual grassroots people like me. But I exist!
And what right do they have to attack people for this funding friendly groups, anyway? Other corporations are not attacked when they give money to the Sierra Club, SaveOurEnvironment.org, and "Rock The Vote", or to thousands of other politically-tainted groups. It's only "astroturfing" when the author of the article disagrees with the viewpoint being promoted.
Microsoft should fund the Ayn Rand Institute. They have the philosophy that could properly defend them, but I think Microsoft is afraid of appearing too radical or offensive to some people. And that, I think, is going to hurt them in the long run.
Look at it this way: This is just further proof that in a free and open capitalistic society, even "the truth" has economic value, and control over it can be purchased. Of course, that price can be prohibitively large, but once your economy starts going Pareto (and it inevitably will), you get things like this. The solution is either bloody revolution every 20 years, or fascism. At least in our current model, the upper and middle classes get to experience the metaphoric convenience of the trains arriving on time.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Use an integrated suite for a while, like KDE. It'll calm you down a lot. Meanwhile, I'll be enjoying my freedom of choice (e.g., I use Konq and KMail constantly, but OOo for the officey stuff). The usual "but you have the source, you can make them consistent if you care" disclaimer applies.
Meanwhile, WINE is able to run an increasing number of vertical apps, and Longhorn will break some of them on MS-Windows anyway. The death of TSG will break even more running on OpenServer and UnixWare. The future's so bright the penguin's gotta wear shades.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing