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UK Conservatives Slammed Over Open Source Stance

Posted by timothy on from the fully-support-my-party's-stance-on-the-issue dept.

Golygydd Max writes "The UK government has been criticised by the opposition Conservative (Tory) party for its lack of support for open-source software. Now, according to Techworld, a security company that has examined the Tory plans has come out against the use of open source software, citing the number of security problems inherent in the software. This is a sensitive issue for the UK government, still smarting from the loss of 7m family records from HM Revenue and Customs in 2007. What makes this criticism interesting is that this is an attack on the policies of what will certainly be the next British government — it's unusual for a party to be criticised like this before it comes to office. It's an indication of how IT is going to be a battleground in the future general election."

13 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > it's unusual for a party to be criticised like this before it comes to office

    Clearly timothy is unfamiliar with UK politics.

    1. Re:Hmmmm.... by Xest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      > It's an indication of how IT is going to be a battleground in the future general election.

      Indeed Mr AC, you're right.

      The UK doesn't have battleground issues in politics like the US, the UK is plagued with football team style voting, most of Yorkshire will vote Labour, most of London will vote Conservatives, the rest of the country will vote one or the other depending with a few Lib Dem pockets (Sheffield, Cambridge) littered in between.

      It doesn't matter what their policies are, people don't care about that, the people in Yorkshire (disclaimer: that's where I live) will as always go on about how Thatcher ate their babies in the 70s/80s and so vote Labour, the people in rich areas will go on about how Labour caused a big recession in the 70s and vote Conservatives and the few parts of the country capable of intelligent, dynamic thought will actually vote for the party that actually fits their political hopes best.

      People here rarely seem to vote on the merit of a party's politics or agenda but instead based on whatever x party did 20 to 40 years ago and those that weren't around then still vote on what party x did 20 to 40 years ago because their parents have whined to them all their lives about how hard party x made life for them all that time ago.

      I think part the problem is that in the UK we get no political education whatsoever, kids grow up without a clue as to what left wing and right wing are, what the different flavours of conservatism for example are, what liberalism and libertarian are and where our parties sit in these areas. We're never taught the importance of voting, or how our vote can effect the outcome of an election, hell most people don't even know what the house of Lords is, they think parliament is one big single chamber of sheer boredom. I find this quite shocking, because whilst I can see the merit in music class, religious education, art and so on I really do think politics is perhaps more important, yet oddly entirely neglected. I could quite happy have lived without the hour a week spent in music class, or the 2 to 3 hours spent on English literature (although language is of course important), I understand some people do want to know this, but it should've been optional whereas I'm not convinced politics should be. We already have history lessons to teach us about our and the world's past so I simply cannot see what is more important about analyzing Wordsworth's Daffodil poem, searching for things that Wordsworth probably never really actually intended us to decide was there as a hidden meaning in the first place to merit a complete national ignorance of how our country is run and how our elected powers work.

      I wonder if part the reason there's no will to change this is because both Labour and the Conservatives know that whilst no one has a clue about politics then one or the other is guaranteed to get in via the current football team voting mentality and as such there will be no threat to power being taken away from either of them- when one has had a few years, the other is bound to get in, rinse and repeat.

      I think this is the fundamental difference between British and American politics at least, whilst you do get Republicans who always vote Republican and Democrats that always vote Democrat at least you had the likes of Colin Powell endorsing the Democrats because he realised despite them being the opposition, they had the better policies at the end of the day.

    2. Re:Hmmmm.... by sqldr · · Score: 5, Funny

      Clearly timothy is unfamiliar with UK politics.

      Could be worse.. half of america thinks Obama is the antichrist.

      --
      I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  2. The British like Americans seem to be incompetent by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...Now, according to Techworld, a security company that has examined the Tory plans has come out against the use of open source software, citing the number of security problems inherent in the software...

    I think we need to be objective here. Software both closed source and open source is created by human beings.

    By nature, these human beings make mistakes.

    The question then becomes: Which model of software development fixes security issues faster? We should collect statistics here and convince these Britons that OSS is still the best model around.

    We should also remind the skeptics about OSS, that more than 80% of internet traffic is handled by OSS systems, so if OSS were that insecure, it would show...fast.

  3. What a credible argument against OSS by Walkingshark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Our own research, however, has concluded that open source software exposes users to significant and unnecessary business risk, as the security is often overlooked, making users more vulnerable to security breaches," said Fortify vice president, Richard Kirk.

    US outfit Fortify Software has come up with research to prove it.

    Uh, wow, a US company that sells software doesn't want the British government to switch to open source software? What a radical position to take! Of course, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that its hard to price gouge a rich government for security software if they're not running propriatary crap. I'm sure if they had their way the Brits would all be running Vista and MS Office.

    --
    The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
  4. An indication? by JPortal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It's an indication of how IT is going to be a battleground in the future general election."

    Not really. Politicians will grasp at anything to make sensational claims about their opponents. Doesn't matter if it involves IT, their sex lives or what they eat for breakfast.

    American here, maybe politics are better in the UK. (but I doubt it)

    1. Re:An indication? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

      Doesn't matter if it involves IT, their sex lives or what they eat for breakfast.

      Unfortunately with some MPs it may involve all three.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  5. Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    We should collect statistics here and convince these Britons that OSS is still the best model around.

    Yeah, maybe we look here https://opensource.fortify.com/ They scanned 103 projects with a total of 24668646 loc and found a total of 403 error which makes for 1 error in 61212 loc or 4 errors per projects. Not too bad I'd say. Oh, btw of those 403 errors found 383 are already fixed.

  6. Just another way to fight... by D-Cypell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Politics is about, "We would do things better than you do!", open source software is just an unfortunate, innocent bystander in this process. If Labour were open source advocates, the Tories would be saying exactly what the, presumably Labour funded, security company are saying right now.

    Personally, I think the time has come for another interesting political scandal so they will leave the software industry alone.

    For those of you not familiar with UK politics, it works a bit like this...

    There are 2 main parties, plus a 3rd with a small but meaningful number of seats. Each of the two main parties elect a leader who becomes candidate for PM. Labour are historically the party for the working man, formed out of the unions, however, in recent years they have figured out that the working man is significantly less likely to invite you for a spin on their yacht, so have shifted their position a little.

    The current opposition party, the conservatives (or 'Torys'), usually have MPs that come from the rich and privately educated set, such as the hilarious London mayor Boris Johnson (seriously, look this guy up, he is a laugh a minute). They stand for strong family values, but are actually quite likely to be found having a three-way homosexual romp in a public toilet while their wife is at home taking care of the kids.

    Neither party gives the slightest toss about open source software (at least, not even close to the level that we do here), but they *do* care about scoring some points. If FOSS is the battlegroud-dujour so be it... tomorrow it will be the colour of the sky!

    Incidentally, you have have detected a slight hint of British cynicism in my post, it is pretty common. When Obama got elected I was thinking, "Does this guy have a brother that can come and help us out?", then I found out he has a brother that has recently been charged with drug offenses in Kenya... but to be honest, I am still thinking... 'He'll do!'.

  7. Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete by williamhb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think we need to be objective here. ... We should collect statistics here and convince these Britons that OSS is still the best model around.

    Because there's nothing more objective than deciding what conclusion you want to convince people of before collecting the statistics! (You don't happen to work for Gartner, do you?)

  8. Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! by tokabola · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "press release" by Fortify for this claims that Larry Suto performed the test. He has a reputation for faulty, perhaps even fraudulent, testing methods. He also only tested 11 specific Java apps (and Fortify sells "audited" versions of those apps). The tests were performed using Fortify's software, no other testing software was used. So the accuracy of this test relies on the accuracy of Fortify's software, which hasn't been independently tested as far as I can tell. The press release also mentions findings by the Forrester Group, who are well known for a history of spreading inaccurate FUD about non-MS software.

    --
    Open Source for Open Minds
  9. Open source bad? by buggy_throwback · · Score: 5, Funny

    Then why use it for your website? http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.fortify.com

  10. Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete by supervillainsf · · Score: 5, Informative

    We can also look here http://www.fortify.com/partners/technologyPartners.jsp and note that Microsoft is one of their partners.