Letter to European Commission Warns Against Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "TechWorld is reporting that they have a leaked copy of a letter written to the European Commission detailing the extent of lobby pressure coming from proprietary software groups working against open source software. From the article: 'Lueders sent the letter [PDF] on 10 October to leaders of the Commission's Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, in response to an EC-commissioned study into the role of open source software in the European economy (referred to by Lueders as Free/Libre/Open Source, or FLOSS). In the letter, he criticised the study as biased and warns that its policy recommendations, if carried out, could derail the European software economy.'"

Comments

Not Personal

[AKAImBatman]

I wouldn't take it too personally. Anyone who's ever been in the consulting business can tell you that the government is the bread and butter of many-a-company. Anything - and I do mean *anything* - that threatens that revenue stream is considered bad. The companies that have managed to survive through government contracts become quite good at playing the political game. So you can be sure that they're the force behind the lobbying group.

The scary part is that a lot of these companies simply can't survive on the open market, so they turn to the government looking for a "me-too" handout. Unfortunately, they often get it. All they need to do is promise high and deliver low. For a humorous example of this, check out the Virtudyne sage over on The Daily WTF:

Virtudyne: The Founding
Virtudyne: The Gathering
Virtudyne: The Savior Cometh
Virtudyne: The Digital Donkey

BTW, I love this line: "The limited window with which we and others have had to comment clearly has hampered a more comprehensive reply."

Translation: "You didn't give us enough time to buy off the politicians."

Only the lonely...

[JTD121]

What the hell are they talking about? It's all just FUD, but still...One of these days the people that come up with the ideas for just this kind of tomfoolery will be fired, and then they will have to switch careers.

Look at the funding

[Karzz1]

"...Microsoft-funded pressure group, the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) warned of potentially dire effects if too much encouragement was given to open source software development."

Say no more.

Economy?

[gr8_phk]

In the letter, he criticised the study as biased and warns that its policy recommendations, if carried out, could derail the European software economy.

But what about the benefits to other parts of the economy?

Re:fp

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I very much doubt OSS will derail the EU software economy. It's barely made a dent in the US one so far...

Sources?...

There's more to software than Windows+Office vs. Linux+OpenOffice you know. The server market and the embedded devices make heavy use of open-source software, and I doubt its impact is insignificant.

At any rate, I'm sure the Windows operating system would be more expensive if Linux and OSX (yes, it's OSS) weren't the vaguely looming threat to Microsoft that they are. Microsoft might also be a lot more rabid against pirates and illegal users if they had a complete monopoly. If nothing else, I'm convinced the mere existence of OSS actually makes a huge difference in the economy, albeit its effect is indirect.

Dear EC

[Lord Bitman]

Our business model is dependent on the non-existence of this other business model. Please outlaw the other one.
Sincerely, Lawl Kathaxbie.

Re:fp

[nine-times]

At any rate, I'm sure the Windows operating system would be more expensive if Linux and OSX (yes, it's OSS)...

Well, Darwin is OSS, but OSX as a whole isn't. I mostly say this as a preemptive strike, because I know someone is going to say it, but it doesn't void what you're saying. OSX server and OSX desktop both rely on a lot of open source. It would have taken Apple far longer to bring it to market if they had started from scratch, and it's benefitting by updates to it's open source components all the time. Therefore, Apple would have a much harder time making their OS competitive if not for the effect of OSS.

I, too, am convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm convinced the mere existence of OSS actually makes a huge difference in the economy, albeit its effect is indirect.

Economically speaking, software is weird. It seems like it should fit well enough into the established concepts of wealth, but because of the near-zero cost of duplication and distribution, it just doesn't behave the way other forms of wealth behave.

How do you quantify something that can instantly be everywhere if simply left alone in the hands of the consumer?

Traditionally, taking goods without paying for them is harmful because it leaves the provider physically starved of raw materials. Not so with software. Traditionally, the fact that money saved on stolen goods would be spent on something else was NOT an actual benefit to the economy (because of the high cost to the producer). Not so with software (quite the opposite in fact..."stolen" software doesn't deprive the producer of resources at all, and still leaves the consumer with money to pump into the economy elsewise).

How many tech jobs are really grand demonstrations of the broken windows fallacy (no pun intended), and as such potentially economically harmful even though they seem to be boosting the GDP?

Does anyone REALLY believe that making software free (as is the case with open source) will suddenly leave our economy starved of new software? I really have yet to hear a sound argument as to why OSS is economically bad. The jobs it would eliminate are simply artificial "broken windows" type jobs that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Ok I'm done.

Re:I, too, am convinced

[nine-times]

Does anyone REALLY believe that making software free (as is the case with open source) will suddenly leave our economy starved of new software?

Doesn't it seem like obsoleting most successful software business models all at once, making it harder to make a living as a programmer, would lead to a net loss in software development? Obviously there would still be software, and there might be a long-term gain in pushing towards all software being open-sourced over time, but it's not a simple issue.

Re:I, too, am convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doesn't it seem like obsoleting most successful software business models all at once, making it harder to make a living as a programmer, would lead to a net loss in software development?"

Only if you assume there wouldn't be other successful software business models under the new game rules.

Also, a net loss in software development in a scenario where licensing limits distribution is of course hardly the same
as an equal loss in a scenario where distribution is, say, completely unlimited.

Re:I, too, am convinced

[Bert64]

It would cut down on the type of programmers who only ever think of the money. People who learn a language as quickly and hap-hazardly as they can, just because of the money, and then go on to do as little work as possible while maximising income.
You'd still have the kind of programmers who enjoy programming, and write software for personal achievement.
You'd also still have service or hardware driven companies employing programmers to write support software for their hardware (drivers etc, which are usually given away for free) and support customers of outsourced services. companies like Sun, Intel and IBM.
The business model of selling software will be rendered invalid, as it should be, any industry where you can produce infinite product for little or no cost is utterly ridiculous.

In fact, any industry where production costs are disproportionately small relative to the sale cost is ridiculous... And requires anti-capitalist enforcement to maintain, otherwise the natural progression of capitalism will result in third parties providing the goods at a far more reasonable cost (such behaviour is unnaturally branded as "piracy" or "counterfeiting" by those anti-capitalists)

Re:Not only that, but you can't print the letter

[whoever57]

Larry Lessig notes that you can't print the letter, thanks to the wonders of the rights management in Acrobat.

Xpdf doesn't seem to have any problems printing the letter. It must be a bug in Acrobat Reader </humor>

The telling part is that ....

[3seas]

... this effort is going behined closed doors... not public until someone finds out and leaks it.

In the public interest......means open to the public to know in such matters as this.

As such it should be made to back fire.

Re:fp

[bnenning]

It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy.

It benefits the economy, just as a cheap, abundant, renewable and nonpolluting energy source would benefit the economy. Specific industries might be harmed, but society as a whole benefits. To argue otherwise is the inverse of the broken window fallacy. And in the case of software, I'd argue that developers are helped more than harmed. What would the demand for web sites be if Apache and PHP cost $1000/seat?

The myth of the broken window all over again...

[aepervius]

Right now many firm have to fork $/ for microsoft and other proprietary software. They are NOT investing it in their own line of work, and they are not giving value added to their shareholder. Sure the software and PC revolution changed many of this industry forever, but right now this looks more like a tax than a value addition (think : difference of productivity between a worker using windows XP and windows Vista : NIL).

In other word this is the myth of the broken windows all over again : this consulting firm speaks of loosing value and strength in the economy, but in reality the money saved from paying the software would have been more likely to be reinvested into something else. And since msot big software as far as I can tell are US centric, many local economy in the world (i.e. : EU) would ON THE CONTRARY benefit by having the money reinvested locally into something else, instead of giving it away to the other side of the atlantic.

Zen and the coherent dynamic holistic ecosystem

[rs232]

"Doesn't it seem like obsoleting most successful software business models all at once, making it harder to make a living as a programmer", would lead to a net loss in software development?", nine-times

re obsoleting: If that were true we wouldn't have any Open Source software, as where's the money for the programer. The answer is that companies make money selling Open Source solutions and pay the programmers. Most sucessful?. Where do these huge profits come from. Have you factored in the cost of viruses.

Looking back I say we will look at the current situation as an aberation of the market. The only reason you see the huge profits is that once a company 'licenses' a proprietary product and puts all their records on it, they've effectively given away all their IP to a software company. They are locked in to the sofware company for life. The software company issues free lifetime upgrades but only until the next version comes out, at which point your 'license' becomes void and you have to buy a new 'license'.

"Obviously there would still be software, and there might be a long-term gain in pushing towards all software being open-sourced over time, but it's not a simple issue.", nine-times

It has always been able to copyright software. Why all the need for IP legislation. The answer being that if I only use 'proprietary' software I am bound to these IP clauses and am compelled to pay for a license to use the protocols, a guaranted revenue stream into perpetuity. The only obstacle to all this is Open Source. That certain people would like to reduce this to a discussion of 'software' is understandable. Lets see some quote from the ISC letter:

"the more information we [ISC] can gather .. the more coherent and better understood the software ecosystem can become.

For monoculture->insert, ecosystem. For globalwarming->insert climate change

"the study does add more information to this complex issue. It does not holistically reflect the full dynamics now occuring in the vibrant software marketplace."

Vibrant?. 'software' is a drain on a companies balance sheet. On average one fifth of revenue is going up the pyramed. It's a net negative on the balance sheet. No one ever made money out of buying software 'licenses'.

"It must reiterated that FLOSS is merely a business model for distributing software,"

Untrue, you would like us to merely think so. FLOSS according to the FSF is freedom to distribure and further modify the software as well as a developement and collaberation model.

"the proprietary model is supported to a large extent by a complex system of rights (i.e. IPR) .. it is an intricate and market-oriented stimulation of innovation that clearly works"

translation: We will give you bits of paper and you will give us money. You see having achieved such strangle hold on the market through the use of IP legislation and cross-licensing-do-not-sue-agreements that's there's no point going Open Source.

re Re:I, too, am convinced