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Thai IT Minister Slams Open Source
patiwat writes "Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: 'With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source.' This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."
If nobody can make money from it ...
Maybe he would be so kind as to provide links where Netcraft confirms that IBM, Sun and Google are dead or dying?
Spoken like someone without a clue. Sheesh.
He sounds eminently qualified for politics.
in a public ceremony today, the thai government thanked microsoft for their generous assistance in lining government coffers, i mean, developing thailand's it infrastructure.
Netcraft confirms: IBM, Sun, and Google make boatloads of money off of the countless unnamed and unpaid developers who write the code that they use. Does the amount they contribute back exceed the amount they gain by benefiting from the work of others?
You know what? You and the Thai IT Minister are right. I don't know how I missed it for all these years.
OK. Everyone, let's pack it up and go home. Some one be sure and shutdown the web servers on the way out. I hear that Best Buy is hiring, maybe I'll try there.
At first I was going to bid the minister a hearty, "Good luck starting from scratch!" Then I realized that he's choosing a path guaranteed to furnish him with a huge government budget and staff to control. I figured this out when I noticed he never used the word 'cheaper' when comparing open to closed source options.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
"With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain."
I am hoping something was lost in translation, because if it wasn't this guy is not only not getting the idea but totally missing the point. Then one must ask, what kind of country has an "IT Minister"? I bet he gets razzed for that... in fact that my explain this. If the guy can't install anything open source without causing errors, I really don't think he belongs in that job.
Great Intellect...
Hmmmm... By what means was his message delivered? What kind of server?
HTTP/1.1 200 OKDate: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:15:11 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.2.2
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.2
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Let's not forget that Thailand's legitimate government was toppled by the army a short while ago. I'm sure this clown is the least of Thailand's troubles right now.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can't say I'm in a position to properly evaluate this, but I wouldn't exactly consider the Thai government very trustworthy right now.
A country that doesn't like open government, doesn't like open sourced software.
They did have democracy, but the military 'closed' that.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source. Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache? I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site.
And you, mister politician, why should you serve your community? How about telling your people that you are looking for money, fame, and power? Fortunately, there are still people in this world who are not in it for the money.
As far as I can see he is a professor at an engineering university. His publication list suggests that he does inded know how to code. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=+Sitthichai+Po okaiyaudom
I think he is going to make a bot of money before Thailand returns to democracy.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest, fine and imprison offenders.
lese majesty also lèse majesté (lz mj-st)
n. pl. lese majesties or lèse majestés
1. An offense or crime committed against the ruler or supreme power of a state.
2. An affront to another's dignity.
When the mortgage and car payments bills grow into a huge pile next to your computer and you have a wife with six kids, writing software for free is just plain stupid. I guess most open source authors think somebody might be interested in hiring, but little do they realize its much easier to copy the whole software tree and hire some vietnam programmers for 13 cents an hour to takeover.... "Silly Programmer, Tricks are for kids."
Maybe, just maybe, people are not in it for the money. Maybe they love to code for "the pure fun of it". After all, millions of people do crosswords, solve sudoku, climb mountains, ride bicycles, and blast apart aliens, for the sheer joy of it. They don't get paid a red cent (or ) for doing it. Maybe they like the recognition of being the one that wrote $widgit$. Maybe they want to put "Accomplishments: Developed $wigit$ software" on their resume. Maybe they're already so filthy stinking rich that a few measly $100K a year isn't worth the hassle of cowtowing to a pointy haired boss with no more imagination than week old oatmeal, who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag if all he had to do is double click on the "Escape from paper bag" icon.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
However, it is interesting to note that it was running Linux about a month ago.
Well, everyone should stick to what they know and not shame themselves by useless proud ignorance. I think the proper reaction to this speech should be total dismissal and disregard. Otherwise he might think his opinion counts.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
this guy is not only not getting the idea but totally missing the point.
He is a smart politician.
That means: what he says has little or nothing to do with what he thinks. A politician says something for one of two reasons:
Once you understand this, the world will start making more sense to you.
I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software? If companies can come in and use open source components in their own creation in a way that they make money without violating licenses, but at the same time aren't obligated to give anything back to the community, where's the motivation for new developers to go open source? Not everybody operates with an altruistic "I'm giving back to the community" motivation.
Personally, I don't develop software just so that I can be an anonymous contributor to future technology. I do it to pay the rent, buy cars, etc.
What am I missing here? (And I'm not being sarcastic with that, I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want to share the fundamentals of their creation in a way that would compromise any potential future earnings.)
"Thai software slammed as useless and full of bugs. OSS community says 'keep your code, we don't want to see the source'."
OK, so he's an idiot politician.
The good thing is, he's an idiot politician who knows the terms "open source" and "source code" and can use them more or less coherently in a sentence. This shows that these concepts are becoming more mainstream.
Better, if a politician makes a comment like this, it starts a debate. People who didn't know what "open source" means might start to want to find out.
Even better, his arguments are ridiculously confused and easy to dismiss. "Public domain"? He may have power in Thailand, but governments in other countries looking seriously at open source software are not likely to be swayed by anything he's said. If Microsoft really were bribing him, you'd think they could have fed him some more convincing lines.
The only thing left is to look forward to the results of his policy. If for any reason things don't go as well as planned... perhaps it will be time for a different approach.
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
An authentic thai told me:
"open source" has almost no meaning in thailand because 99% of software you can buy is pirated
it's true though you can buy "Microsoft" Windows for like $5
at what seems like a real computer store
Necessity, not profit, is the mother of invention.
If it's needed, it'll get done.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I hope that James Clark will be able to help correct the situation.
In case you haven't heard of James Clark, he wrote groff (for displaying man pages amongst other things), XSLT, the expat XML Parser and the Relax NG schema language. I'd be very surprised if anybody here hasn't used his stuff... Take a look at his bio.
-Dom
1976 called. It wants Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists back.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I would hardly call it exploiting. It would be exploiting if people were forced to do their programming in a sort of sweatshop. As it is, it is a deliberate choice to share your code.
As it is there are some very compelling reasons for a coder to make open-source software:
I for one am rather positive that most companies give back to the community one way or another, by employing OSS developers, giving back code, and by paying money. As far as I have heard Apache is quite healthy; and has big deals with large corporations, and I suppose this will be the case for many of the 'core' projects.
If you are concerned that your code will be abused by the big corporations, don't open-source it. The license is clear.
.. coming from someone in a country where the average monthly salary wouldn't buy a legit copy of Windows without depriving the family of basic needs. I wonder if this is simply someone trying to get into bed with software vendors. And don't get me started on 'buggy'.
AFAIK, Thailands' universities have quite a decent track record in Open Source, with various school projects targeting low cost IT for schools (a bit like what happened later in Spain in the Extremadura region) and I think they have decent code for OpenOffice as well, with algorithms to support spell checking for a language where spaces between words appear more or less optional.
In summary, I think some people shouldn't be allowed near the press for their own good..
Insert
The Netcraft link you posted does claim that it was running Linux in September, but it also claims that the web server was still IIS. Perhaps this is me mis-interpreting the way that Netcraft presents its data, but how does one run IIS on a Linux platform? Unless it was something like Apache temporarily configured to report that it was Microsoft-IIS, but I can't see the point in doing that.
The IP address is also radically different, so my guess is that the domain was temporarily redirected to another hosting service in September that had a server configured quite differently, and possibly wasn't reporting its state as accurately.
This is correct; many OS advocates believe Open Source automatically leads to better code. The truth is that most OS coders are just average. Many OS project members believe that when experienced guru X leaves the project, others will follow (or worse, they try to compensate the guru's absence with many average coders). Turns out the good devs are NOT expendable.
However, with Closed Source the situation really isnt any different. The only visible difference is that abandoned projects vanish, and do not reside in freshmeat/sourceforge/etc. But plenty of CS is *bad* code; just look at those ugly telco install CDs, many small shareware apps, many drivers (especially TV card ones)...
That said, big opensource projects usually develop some sort of quality assurance. New code is reviewed, only core developers can actually commit to the repository etc.
The clear OS advantages are security and availability. If I have 2 packages doing the same thing, one is OS, the other CS, then I usually choose the OS one, because I can examine it for buffer overflows, hidden trojans, backdoors etc. The CS package is a black box. (This is the main reason why OpenBSD opposes binary drivers.) Also, 3rd party patches are possible, which touches the second advantage: availability. If a CS software is abandoned, its *dead*. It won't be ported to succeeding platforms, it won't be patched etc. You have a binary copy, that's it. With OS, it is never really dead, you CAN port it (just look at the zillions of Doom ports), fork it, improve it, even if you are not the original developer. This is becoming more relevant in the future, when someone has to access very old files, but the format is unknown, and the only programs capable of reading it run only on machines that no longer exist. (NSA had to deal with this in the past.)
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source. Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache? I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site.
Apache Software Foundation (apache.org) has a donation link on their site because they are a non-profit corporation. So by definition they don't make money. That does not mean they don't get money and resources; it just means that they use it all on improving the product.
That said, the companies listed (and many others) have indeed contributed to as well as profited from open source software. IBM spends billions every year on Linux alone. And where do you think all that code comes from? the magic code monkeys? People that work for these companies are either paid directly to work on open source software or allowed to do so because of permissive policies that derive directly from the fact that those companies are making money from the profit of their labour.
Meanwhile all of this work is shared and the wheel does not have to be reinvented. IBM benefits from the code contributed by Sun as well as Chucky down the street. And it works the other way too. And all of them are making money ... I mean even Chucky gets a job or can do consulting work because he's been working on this stuff all that time. Like when AOL hired all the Mozilla people. Or RMS's consulting, which probably has not made him particularly rich, though he is not exactly starving to death.
There are a lot of ways to make money from open source. Some of the easiest ways involve working with or for companies, but there are others. Still, to focus too much on the aspect of direct monetary gain is to miss the greatest benefits of free software / open source. The best thing about the software is when you actually get to USE the software. Sure, you can contribute code if you want to, and you can customize it for your needs, but ultimately you derive gain from the fact that you can use the software freely, unencumbered by onerous licenses and likely free as in beer as well. That means that whether you need software for your business or for personal use you have easy access to it and you don;t really have to do anything to get it other than go get it.
Maybe your business is making money from free software (lots of people and companies do). Maybe you are doing something else but you use free software to accomplish those ends (way more companies are doing that). Maybe you just use it to learn, or because you feel like it. But no matter what you end up saving time, money, and other resources because you are benefitting from the community, and thus you profit from the use of Open Source / Free Software.
The Thai information minister is right in that the motivation in closed source software to write good code (read code that sells better) is generally higher than that of open source software (even though there are very many exceptions of course). And, in general, companies like closed source for the simple fact that they have known support and someone they can blame in the case of a disaster. But he is also awfully wrong as to why this is.
If companies providing support and training for Open Source were to better advertise themselves, they would capture far more of the market. As it is, neither Red Hat nor SuSE nor Mandriva advertise much in public. The joke is that Ubuntu gets far more mainstream media attentions than any of the others, and that without Microsoft type of FUDvertising (word coined by me).
As for Thai companies providing good code, they may do so in Thailand for the Thai market, since localization to Thai is probably not high on many companies' priorities (it's ironic that Open Source support Thai better than most closed source software packages do), but they certainly don't have much say in the market outside Thailand.
I think this is kinda weird but this is how I see it. You know that show on cable, Junkyard Wars, where they take two teams and they have to accomplish something? That whole idea reminds me of the Open Source argument. You have two teams, they use their skill and knowledge and available resources to meet a goal. And sometimes they need to make a dune buggy or scuba suit, and maybe team A's device is better than team B only because they were more clever or had a better selection of resources.
This is where the analogy gets a bit strange. Let's say the two teams were still competing against each other but take the motivation away. Not just a contest, but let's say the goal was extremely important. Now the teams are stranded on a Junkyard Island and *need* to make a device to survive, to remove themselves from the Island.
Do you think they would do a better job individually or working together?
Intellectual Property at this point becomes "my team is better than yours no matter what resources we have, and we're gonna leave you here to rot".
FLR
"A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time cretain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. Who, then, will invest the funds to renovate and nourish its future life, when on one owns it? How does the consumer benefit from that scenario? The answer is, there is no benefit."
-Jack Valenti, quoted in "Digital Copyright" by Jessica Litman
Thank god Hollywood has stepped up to save Shakespeare et al.
Actually most scientists publish in journals that everyone can read. Most of the top scientific journals (in the biological sciences anyway) allow for anyone to read the articles one year after they've been published. If you want to read the latest research, you have to pay. If you want to read anything that's been published between (typically) ~1998 and one year ago, you're usually able to do so. Secondly, most university libraries have subscriptions to the top journals. I've never heard of a university library that turned away the public.
FYI, all journals (that I've published in) require us to pay to publish our articles. The last article we published (in the Journal of Immunology) cost us ~$2000.
"if I can write good code, why should I give it away?"
Because no matter how code the code from your one set of eyes is, it won't be anywhere near as good as the code that's been reviewed by 100,000 sets of eyes?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
That's what you get from you IT minister when he's appointed by a military coup directed by the military dictator ("king") against your too-popular Prime Minister.
Then again, when your PM uses his family's telco to steal over a $BILLION from the country, it's no surprise his IT director will be fired, and the old IT policies discarded.
--
make install -not war
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Copyrights and Trademarks fall under that bastard term Intellectual Property and you get to keep them.
Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain.
Wrong. Open Source != Public Domain. Anyone you distribute it to can use, modify/improve and distribute it, if they give the same rights to whom they distribute it. Even Playing field.
If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated...
Wrong.
a.If the code is not useful it is not used/maintained and becomes outdated.
b. If you do make money from useful OpenSource code (as many do, IBM/Apple/Nokia/Sun/RedHat/Novell ), you should use it to maintain your codebase.
c. Ever hear of Dual-Liscencing?
As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?
1. If you want to horde your superior code away go ahead.
2. Aren't you a government employee? shouldn't you contibute to the common good of your people?
In summary, You appear to be misinformed, ignorant or waiting for an MS Handout. (BTW, if the latter were the case, you get handouts faster from MS for using open source rather than by bashing it.)
Glad the new Thai government is already advertising its idiots, I was afraid they'd be hard to spot.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I happen to like writing software. In fact, the coding job I have right now (that pays money -- you know, the stuff that you give to people in payment?) is kind of a pain, so I write my own stuff on the side to clear my head.
It's like being an artist -- you have your day job, and then you have what you like to do. If you're really lucky, you do what you like as your day job. Where's Bad Analogy Guy when you need him?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.