Governments, Beyond the Open Source Hype

An anonymous reader writes "ForeignPolicy.com takes a look at Open Source as it applies to governments and some of the reasons that a governing body may or may not like OSS. From the article: 'Governments around the world are enchanted by open-source software. Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...] Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric, and assertions about some of the technical benefits of open source fail to tell the whole story.'"

Comments

Its the money, first and foremost

[rob_squared]

Tell your citizens that its cheaper and they'll thank you for it. The details about where the saved monegy goes usually become obfuscated however.

Re:Its the money, first and foremost

[Bogtha]

More importantly, not only is it cheaper, but the money that is spent on it goes back into the local economy rather than straight into the pockets of a foreign company, because the government have the option of hiring any local firms willing to do the work instead of simply whoever holds the copyright.

Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee.

[jmorris42]

> Caroline Benner previously worked as policy researcher for Microsoft's Geopolitical
> Policy and Strategy Group

Ya know, I knew something like that was coming before I clicked into this article. The summary alone smelled of astroturf. But they do it because they realize while we will spot the paid 'independent scholarship' almost instantly the intended audience either won't.

If I were a foreign government

[MarkEst1973]

Why the hell would I want to entrust all my gov't operations, all my military, all my businesses' computing needs to a closed source, foreign (from my point of view) vendor... like, say, MS?

Ok, so your military doesn't run windows. Our military runs (or at least used to) Solaris and HP-UX... but those are closed source, too, and owned by a foreign entity.

In the end, open source provides me -- as a sovereign nation -- the ability to control the critical pieces of my own infrastructure.

That's how I (as a person) see it, anyway. Whether or not foreign governments agree, I don't know.

OSS isn't everything

[linvir]

In practical terms OSS is only relevant as a part of a wider policy. Brazil's Digital Inclusion (Google translation) is a good example. OSS barely even figures in the rhetoric for this. It's just one enabling factor.

This is how it's always going to be as well. Example: People don't move to Firefox because it's open source. They move to it because they're told it's better than IE, and they then stick with it because it's demonstrably better.

At the end of the day ideology is irrelevant to most people.

Re:Your average computer user

[AuMatar]

THen they should be coming to Linux in droves. My last Windows install took 4 hours and required me to hunt for drivers all over the web, and reboot a dozen times. My last Linux install worked smoothly with all hardware recognized.

The sweet smell of plastic grass

[Bimo_Dude]

FTA:

Software, with its millions of lines of code, is so complicated that experts don't know for sure that open source has fewer bugs, nor can they say with certainty that having fewer bugs makes open source more secure.

It seems to me that this may be all the evidence we need of astroturfing. While I don't really know for sure if this statement is true, there is a glaring omission in the article where the author neglected to compare the time-to-patch for bugs between FOSS and closed software.

Open Source is Really a Threat

[burningion]

Open Source is really a threat to most governments. Open source software gives everyone equal access to the same tools, regardless of social class. It threatens the entire model of top-down hiearchy, as open source is a means for equalizing all access to information and exchange of information. Anyone can put together an Apache webserver and begin experimenting with having their own website, for free. No need for expensive schooling, as information is freely available to teach yourself. This will become a "problem" for places like the US, where we utilize the leverage of patents and trade secrets to maintain our superiority in the global marketplace. As places like India and China quickly become more technologically saavy, our economic model becomes threatened. One of the biggest keys in the future will be the regulation of the internet, and the censoring of information. I believe the best thing for the global society is free and anonymous access to all (public) information on the net.

Make your own DemocraKey, and help spread the technology for free and anonymous access to all information.

Penny-wise and future foolish.

[jbn-o]

Proprietors agree with you, which is why they're interested in cutting their prices or giving away gratis copies of their software to large-seat clients in exchange for locking government users into something that will pay off (both monetarily and in terms of control) in the future. Money is not and should not be the chief rationale by which these decisions are made or else more valuable points that pay off now and in the future will be lost.

Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee.

[cp.tar]

Good one.

Governments could very well profit from Open source software, as well as the programmers hired to make it.

Just because it is Open Source, it doesn't mean that the work the programmers put in is free.

What it does mean is that:

1. Governments pay a single fee for a piece of software.
2. The source code of said software is also available, which makes the government vendor-independent.
3. The money goes to the local economy instead of a company which could buy the country I live in.
4. When you need something, you have someone do it. You don't wait for the next update & bugfix cycle.

But because of the omnipresent FUD, very few people in governments worldwide have any idea whatsoever about these things.

P.S.
5. ???
6. Profit!