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."

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

[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>

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?