Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access To Free Software

walterbyrd writes: Fresh on the heels of the entire Munich and Linux debacle, another story involving Microsoft and free software has popped up across the world, in Chile. A prolific magazine from the South American country says that the powerful Microsoft lobby managed to turn around a law that would allow the authorities to use free software. "An independent member of the Chilean Parliament, Vlado Mirosevic, pushed a bill that would allow the state to consider free software when the authorities needed to purchase or renew licenses. ... A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted. To make things even more interesting, some of the people who voted in favor of the first law also voted in favor of the second one. ... The new bill is even more egregious, because it aggressively pushes for the adoption of proprietary software. Companies that choose to use proprietary software will receive certain tax breaks, which makes it very hard for free software to get adopted."

Comments

Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[i kan reed]

Who kowtowed to any lobbyist, regardless of which one it happens to be.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[wiredlogic]

If they're anything like American legislators they just let the lobbyists write the laws so they are free to put on an act of serving their constituents.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, turns out I can blame both. Unexpected, I know, but I tried it, and I swear it worked.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[i kan reed]

Yeah, well I was responding to the tone of the summary that suggested that Microsoft was entirely at fault(as if lobbying in Chile were illegal or something), and didn't even make any room for the people actually pulling the vote. You can play as complex and nuanced a perspective as you want. I'm not opposed to that at all.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[ShanghaiBill]

It is difficult to tell from either the summary or TFA if that is even true. The summary is horribly written (what is a "prolific magazine"?) and uses the word "bill" and "law" interchangeably. ALL countries that have income tax allow software purchases to be deducted, so I don't see why that is thrown in. These tax deductions apply to Open Source (which is not necessarily zero priced) as well as proprietary software. TFA would be far better if it had more facts, and focused less on trying to generate outrage.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[i kan reed]

Oh come on, someone posted this exact sentiment over 20 minutes ago. I even replied to them, so you can't pretend it's because you don't see ACs. I'll repeat my reply for your benefit though:

Nuance is good. Please be nuanced about blame allocation, just don't let elected officials slide.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Em Adespoton]

Plus, just in the summary, two MPs are conflated, and following that, we have the idea being pushed that legislation to promote free software in government is somehow hobbled by more legislation to provide businesses with tax credits to offset software purchase costs?

Last I knew, the Chilean government wasn't a federation of businesses, and the second bill just makes commercial software look more like free software (in terms of purchase/license cost) to businesses.

Seems to me that the second bill could also be used to offset purchase costs of free software that comes with support, making it an extremely lucrative option.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[the eric conspiracy]

Chile is often held up as being one of the more libertarian governments. As such it seems logical that it would often appear to be a federation of businesses.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[exomondo]

Who kowtowed to any lobbyist, regardless of which one it happens to be.

Precisely! But when is this actually going to happen though? Clearly these politicians are corrupt and you can pay them to pass whatever laws you want. Going to every lobbyist and telling them not to offer bribes to politicians because the politicians will take them achieves nothing, the people of these countries need to stand up to corrupt politicians! If they weren't corrupt in the first place then lobbyists would have no power anyway.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Trogre]

I guess I think of it as if you leave your front door open, how much blame must you accept when thieves come in and take your stuff?

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Curunir_wolf]

Chile is often held up as being one of the more libertarian governments. As such it seems logical that it would often appear to be a federation of businesses.

Some people are always claiming libertarian governments would mean big businesses would run everything. But if that were true, you have to wonder why big businesses never support libertarian ideas, but prefer big government instead.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Darinbob]

Big business does push for libertarian ideas, such as the idea that government stay off their back. Big business wants a small weak government in general, a government where they can control the regulations. The only time you see big business backing a bigger government is in areas where they prefer the workers to pay the bill or where they can take advantage of government as a customer (such as big military for big profits).

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're anything like American legislators they just let the lobbyists write the laws

This is all just smoke and mirrors anyway.

Microsoft are a spiteful, thrashing old dinosaur in their death throes. They'll do some damage and win a reprieve occasionally when they buy a politician or two, but the wave is almost ready to peak and overwhelm them. Their last bastions are in lumbering behemoths like the major corps and government, that are unwieldy and slow to change. Many nimbler organisations have already switched to lighter, cheaper options that don't require so much maintenance or risk,

Look at the government involvement in open source on Github - it's an exponential increase, as was the adoption of alternative OSs in the mobile arena.
https://github.com/blog/1874-g...

Re: Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot businesses promoting Intellectual property laws which require a strong government. The vast majority of libertarians esp the anarcho capitalist crowd reject the idea of intellectual property and therefore proprietary software.

Re: Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Wootery]

Not to mention the whole military/industrial/prison/media-complex thing.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Grishnakh]

It's not just software that can be deducted, it's anything at all that costs money which your business purchases. If your business purchases a coffee machine for employees to use, it can deduct that. It has nothing to do with software, it has to do with business expenses.

Proprietary software costs money, so of course it can be deducted. However, deductions aren't a good thing; they only reduce your tax liability. You come out ahead by simply not spending the money at all, and paying the tax on it. So if option A is something that costs nothing, and option B costs money, and both are equally good, then option A is better from an economic standpoint.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[Curunir_wolf]

Big business wants a small weak government in general

You REALLY need to supply some reference for that, because it's the opposite of everything I ever see.

a government where they can control the regulations

Yes, this *is* what they want, which by definition means a larger government: more regulation, more people to enforce the regulations, more rules, more profit protectionism, etc., etc. It's also the opposite of wanting a "small weak government".

They also want to control how government educates the kids (witness Bill Gates and his "Common Core"). They want wage slaves trained to perform the menial tasks that robots can't do. And focused "job skills". What would be anathema to them is a government that promotes the general idea that everyone can have (or be) their OWN business, and offer their wares or skills to multiple other businesses or enterprises. That is the way of the future, and the way for people to control their own destiny.

Re:Or you could blame Chile's MPs

[dkman]

"The news" would be far better if it had more facts, and focused less on trying to generate outrage.

FTFY

Easy to lobby when funded by the taxpayer

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much of MY money that I am forced to give Microsoft went on harming technological advancement for all this time.

Re:Easy to lobby when funded by the taxpayer

[armanox]

Actually I think he was referring to money he spent on stuff that either contained a Microsoft Product or payed patent royalties to MS. I could be wrong though.

Re:Easy to lobby when funded by the taxpayer

[symbolset]

Any is too much.

Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

should always equal OSS/Free/Libre software.

- Usually better software quality.
- Prevents monetary kickbacks.
- No stupid license fees (an evil in itself)

In this regard, I am in agreement with RMS.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[i kan reed]

And while that's probably a moderately popular opinion among people who work with software for a living, not IT workers get to vote on things too, and they don't care so much.

Democracy isn't meritocracy. And no one has invented a system of meritocracy that doesn't devolve into plutocracy or autocracy rather quickly.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[jedidiah]

All government data needs to be open to auditing. Thus any government data needs to be stored in open formats that can be examined and manipulated with tools that can be sourced from multiple parties. Furthermore, the government should not be in the business of helping entrench particular software monopolies.

The nature of the binaries being run is really just a side show.

It's the DATA that needs to be open.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[JaredOfEuropa]

There are many reasons why proprietary software is sometimes the better choice. In some cases the TCO will be lower, or the software is easier to use for office workers (like it or not, Windows / Office is pretty much what employees will already be familiar with). It may be easier to find support staff for some proprietary software. And in some cases, the proprietary software will simply be of better quality, more reliable, or a better functional fit. Also, I fail to see why license fees are evil.

With that said, I think governments should use open standards for data, document storage and interfaces where available, and avoid products (proprietary or otherwise) that do not support such standards.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[i kan reed]

That's a nice theory too. It's got a good reason for being wanted.

But what about military secrets?
What about ongoing stings of organized crime syndicates, and the undercover police who might threatened?

Are these exceptions? How many lives is this principle worth?

If(instead) these are valid exceptions, what objective criteria would you use to separate the valid secrets from the invalid?

People have been trying to solve the problem you just laid down a simplistic solution to for decades now.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[armanox]

Agreed. They should avoid being locked into a certain vendor.

Also, there certainly is plenty of reasons to vote against OSS solutions - take the whole RH7 disaster with GNOME 3 - if you are running it in a virtual environment for users (say, like a terminal server), GNOME 3 (which is the default) is no go (doesn't play nice in virtual) so you're left with Microsoft.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Penguinisto]

But what about military secrets?
What about ongoing stings of organized crime syndicates, and the undercover police who might threatened?

Both eventually become open records to the public anyway (after an expiration date, naturally), so aside from keeping such exceptional data sufficiently isolated from the public until their expiration dates (which happens anyway), what do you think detracts from GP's philosophy as per data format?

Back in the Bad Old Days, everything was typewritten on paper... a completely open data format. So...

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many reasons why proprietary software is sometimes the better choice

Free software is about ethics. If governments are using unethical software to save money, then they themselves are unethical. Proprietary software gives the users no chance to see the source code, or to hire others to modify it; you're usually beholden to a single source. There's no chance to educate yourself as to what the software does, so who knows what it's doing without you knowing?

Governments should not be promoting such a thing. They should be promoting openness and sharing. If they need software and there is no free software that does the job, they should have it created.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[i kan reed]

Sure, but now you're talking about what does happen. GGP was talking about what should happen, and I was challenging them to consider edge cases rather than laying out a simplistic ideology that "always works".

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Kabukiwookie]

In some cases the TCO will be lower,

That is true, but only when looking at TCO in the short term. In the longer term, proprietary software will always turn out more expensive. Either because licencing fees go up or the business eventually goes out of business and expensive projects will need to be started to replace the functionality of the now unsupported software. Using free open source software, means that the user always has access to the technology and is able to ensure the product continues to perform the function that it was intended to perform, which in turn improves business continuity.

Unfortunately, most people don't plan beyond the next couple of years and short term gains have become more important than long term continuity.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free software is about ethics." To you.

To most it's about the best tool for the job, which is almost always the one that creates the fewest headaches. Everything you mention falls into the equation I'm sure, somewhere between "Default GUI color scheme" and "Company mascot".

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free software is about ethics." To you.

No, it is about ethics. When you have a government that is supposed to be for the people using software that they have no real control or understanding of, and that they can't modify without the permission of some company, then you have a real ethical problem on your hand. Not only is it nothing more than corporate welfare, but who the hell knows what the software is doing?

Governments should promote the common good, and education and knowledge are a common good. Locked-down proprietary software is not the common good.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anon-Admin]

Wait, GNOME3 does not play nice in a virtual environment so you are left with Microsoft??? where did that come from?

Dont use Gnome3, I never use a gui on a server but if you are making a terminal server as you say then use any of the other WM's From KDE to FVWM, there are lots of WM choices and you are not just stuck with the default. Well with linux you are not stuck with the default, cant say the same for Windows.

See http://xwinman.org/

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Completly wrong. Anyone that advocates free software has no idea what is envolved in creating software in the real world.

I help work on free software, and I advocate free software. That is the real world. Or do I live in a fake world? If so, you're communicating with an extraterrestrial being.

Free software is an ethical issue. Governments should not use proprietary software; it's unethical.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

What are you, some kind of communist or an hippie?

Copyright (a government-enforced monopoly over ideas that infringes upon free speech and real private property rights) makes a nation more communist-like than a nation that's otherwise the same but without copyright. Let the free market decide whether or not someone succeeds and can make money from software. If they can't, then they sure as hell don't deserve the ability to stop people from copying certain data using their own equipment.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[armanox]

You are stuck with either GNOME or KDE for RHEL, and most users are going to expect GNOME. We also run into where our users have to emulate the users' environments, which often means GNOME for the GUI. Third, there are a lot of situations where a GUI is required (say, the default installer for a lot of things, like Documentum, Matlab, Oracle, etc). Trying to get people not to use the default GUI is near impossible.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[whoever57]

With that said, I think governments should use open standards for data, document storage and interfaces where available, and avoid products (proprietary or otherwise) that do not support such standards.

As long as the products really do support the standard and the standard doesn't allow blobs of proprietary data formats.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

How is that different (bearing in mind an acceptable response is that "it isn't any different") from anything else? Whether that's physical goods, food, hardware, engineering documents for construction projects, etc ... ? Do you know what goes into the concrete in the bridges and roads you drive on? In the food you eat? Or even how the hardware in the various computers you use works? If this indeed is an "ethical issue" then it is a lot wider spread than software and was around long before governments were buying and using software.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[bloodhawk]

That is BS. publicly funded Government departments Priorities should be first and foremost to ensure they are getting best value for money, if that is OSS/Free software then great, license fees are a tiny part of the cost of most software and while they are an important consideration the overall cost and effectiveness is far more important. Also plenty of OSS sucks (just like plenty of Closed source software does), and NO open source doesn't prevent kickbacks as it still needs to be supported and inevitably this comes down to commercial companies.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

But you can never really achieve that until you have won the battle on mandating open hardware. Even if you do manage to get them to use FOSS that will still almost certainly be using closed drivers somewhere along the line, even if you could get all fully open drivers it's still going to be interfacing with closed hardware.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a Government, even with OSS they still have no control or understanding. Governments rarely pay or employ sufficiently skilled people to get the benefit of the ssoftware source code actually being available.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[bloodhawk]

That is a religious argument. personally I would prefer my government to stay out of religion. Software is a tool, governments concerns should be using the best tool for the job with the least cost. Hopefully that is free software, if not then that is fine too.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just BS, Many software items have very well defined lifetimes where TCO can easily be calculated for the entire life and proprietary can definitely be cheaper. The mindset that OSS is always cheaper is the sort of idiotic preconceived view of the world that is as bad as managers that always buy IBM or Microsoft.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

Pretty much every word processor can save to HTML or PDF so archive it as that.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, how about paper?

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about military secrets? What about ongoing stings of organized crime syndicates, and the undercover police who might threatened?

Just because the data format may be open does not mean that the data itself is open for the public.

Secret data is even more important to be stored in an open format. If stored in a closed format, and the format drops out of use, what do you do? Failing to convert formats means you lose valuable data, and converting formats may require the help of people who have no business accessing the secret data. If you always use an open format, you always have the choice to maintain your own software to handle it or write your own software to convert it.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

If stored in a closed format, and the format drops out of use, what do you do?

Has that even happened ever? You can open ancient MS Word documents in LibreOffice, every now and then you come across a formatting bug but that's hardly a big deal.

Failing to convert formats means you lose valuable data

No it means theoretically there is the possibility that some day you could lose valuable data, but it's actually highly unlikely because in reality you can still load up a copy of Word for Windows on Windows 3.1 in a VM. If you're suggesting they may be able to somehow scrub the internet of all software that can read those documents I'd say that's pretty ridiculous.

But even then that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, the topic is about the software, not the format. You can use pretty much any software you want and when you archive your documents you can do it to PDF or HTML if you want.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright (a government-enforced monopoly over ideas that infringes upon free speech and real private property rights) makes a nation more communist-like than a nation that's otherwise the same but without copyright.

So release under and support creative commons / copyleft instead and avoid the content released under the ideology you despise.

Let the free market decide whether or not someone succeeds and can make money from software.

It already can, you are free to choose creative commons / copyleft but you are complaining that what you really want is content / software created by a system underpinned by copyright but you want it under your terms. The reason for that is the creative commons / copyleft system does not work to your satisfaction, if it did you wouldn't have anything to complain about. The two systems arent mutually exclusive, they can and do operate in parallel.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

So release under and support creative commons / copyleft instead and avoid the content released under the ideology you despise.

I release under the public domain, which makes more sense.

It already can

Oh, really? So I can share copyrighted content with others with no legal repercussions? If not, then no, it can't. Right, my use of my own property, as well as free speech, is being restricted so that some people can have little government-enforced monopolies over data.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a Government, even with OSS they still have no control or understanding.

But they have the potential to, or at least have the potential to hire those that do. That potential makes all the difference.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is everywhere, and can do so much good, but it can also do a lot of evil. Without having the source code to know what the software is doing (especially after the NSA's activities were detailed by Snowden's leaks), you don't truly know what it's doing. Governments and the people should always be aware of what the software is doing, and no one should be beholden to a specific company.

And yes, there should be people who do understand what goes into concrete, in food, etc. None of those things should be beholden to a specific company, either. They're not sets of instructions and don't have the same implications that software has, but I still think that being blindly ignorant of everything is bad. The government needs to promote the common good, and education, sharing, and knowledge are definitely good.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a religious argument.

You do realize that the discussion of ethics is separate from religion, right?

Software is a tool, governments concerns should be using the best tool for the job with the least cost. Hopefully that is free software, if not then that is fine too.

With proprietary software, you do not know what the software is doing, cannot modify it to your liking, and cannot hire someone else to modify it. You certainly can't share your changes with everyone to help everyone else. This has privacy implications, because who knows what the software is doing without your knowledge. There are so many disadvantages; cost is not the only factor, and certainly far from the most important one.

The government should encourage sharing, education, and knowledge, and it cannot do that with proprietary software; it would be sending an entirely different message.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[sjames]

In those cases, the data might need to be withheld for a time, but it should all eventually be made public and should be in an open and free format when that day comes.

It absolutely should NOT be in an undocumented format openable only by a piece of proprietary software that hasn't been available for 10 years.

In the unlikely event that there remain compelling reasons for secrecy decades later, there will also be a strong need to still be able to actually read the documents. Free and open formats win again.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, really? So I can share copyrighted content with others with no legal repercussions? If not, then no, it can't.

No what I mean is you can prove whether or not the copyleft / public domain model works, but the products of it are *mostly* junk because there is no incentive for people with talent to invest in it.

Right, my use of my own property, as well as free speech, is being restricted so that some people can have little government-enforced monopolies over data.

Then dont use copyrighted stuff, your problem is you want the products of the copyright system because the copyleft / public domain system is not adequate and produces very little of any value, the things of value and the things you want are a product of the copyright system.

But it is ok in the software context, the software world is moving to SaaS which is even more viable with improved internet connections so then your concerns will be invalid anyway, you dont have the software, you rent it instead.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

No what I mean is you can prove whether or not the copyleft / public domain model works, but the products of it are *mostly* junk because there is no incentive for people with talent to invest in it.

That's because our system is explicitly designed to encourage copyright (essentially everything is copyrighted by default). What would it look like without it?

By the way, this isn't only about practical benefits, but about freedom. In fact, it's mostly about freedom. Controlling my property and my speech so you can have little monopolies is unacceptable.

Then dont use copyrighted stuff, your problem is you want the products of the copyright system because the copyleft / public domain system is not adequate and produces very little of any value, the things of value and the things you want are a product of the copyright system.

Good things can come out of otherwise bad systems. Even Nazi Germany had some good aspects to it. Furthermore, throwing things away just because of the system that produced them (How do you know they wouldn't have been produced otherwise? You presented *zero* evidence.) is illogical. And expecting me to ignore content when I just told you I despise copyright is rather silly. Your logic is abysmal, and you should feel bad.

In addition, what is and is not good is 100% subjective, and I never told you just about much I use public domain products, so once again you're making faulty assumptions about me. It would be like me saying, "You want copyright because you know you're an idiot who can't market his ideas without a monopoly enforced by government thugs."

But it is ok in the software context, the software world is moving to SaaS which is even more viable with improved internet connections so then your concerns will be invalid anyway, you dont have the software, you rent it instead.

Removing control from the user is terrible.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, this isn't only about practical benefits, but about freedom. In fact, it's mostly about freedom. Controlling my property and my speech so you can have little monopolies is unacceptable.

Unacceptable maybe, but tolerable? Most definitely. Many things in our society could be deemed unacceptable but are tolerable in order to maintain a society where people with different ideologies can co-exist.

Good things can come out of otherwise bad systems.

So we maintain both systems and leave the choice up to the content creator, for the end user they have ideological choice.

How do you know they wouldn't have been produced otherwise? You presented *zero* evidence.

I dont need to, you are the one suggesting change, the onus to prove that they *would* have been produced otherwise is on you. If you can prove it then your system is workable and I would support it.

And expecting me to ignore content when I just told you I despise copyright is rather silly.

I am saying live by the ideology you preach, demonstrate that your system is workable without relying on the products of the copyright system and if you could do that I may be convinced but I would not support abolishing the current system for your unproven theory.

In addition, what is and is not good is 100% subjective, and I never told you just about much I use public domain products, so once again you're making faulty assumptions about me.

If your use of them is not 100% then you rely on the copyright system to a degree, a system you think can be abolished. Prove it can be abolished and I would support you.

It would be like me saying, "You want copyright because you know you're an idiot who can't market his ideas without a monopoly enforced by government thugs."

No because you *require* childish ad hominem attacks, I do not.

If you can unequivocally *prove* your system is better then I would be convinced but remember that "morals" and "ethics" are subjective as is what you deem to be acceptable or not.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Your.Master]

But even if I agreed, all that implies is that you need a source license, not that you need an open source or a free software license.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Your.Master]

With proprietary software, you do not know what the software is doing, cannot modify it to your liking, and cannot hire someone else to modify it.

None of these are necessarily the case. For instance, Google has obtained a source license to Adobe's Flash player. They can read the source, they can edit it, they can hire people to edit it, and they can redistribute in binary form -- but they cannot redistribute the source code because it is not open source.

This is before we dive into the fine distinctions made between open source and free software.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Your.Master]

Copyright turns what is "naturally" a communal asset, in that it is trivially duplicated, and turns it into a capital asset. Thus, it is *absolutely* more capitalist than it is communist.

I think you're confusing capitalist vs. communist, with liberty vs. authority.

(I don't find some degree of copyright bad in a capitalist context, nor do I find communism necessarily bad, but it's hard to even imagine how copyright could make sense in a communist context).

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

Unacceptable maybe, but tolerable?

Not tolerable.

So we maintain both systems and leave the choice up to the content creator, for the end user they have ideological choice.

Once again, can I use my own property to share copyrighted content with others? If not, then it's an infringement upon my private property and free speech rights. This response of yours is nothing but a cop-out.

I dont need to, you are the one suggesting change, the onus to prove that they *would*

Utter fucking bullshit. Copyright is unproven. It is on those who propose laws or defend unproven laws that need to present their scientific evidence. You can't just shove a law through without providing any proof that it will be effective and then claim that anyone who says the law is unproven needs to prove that it's ineffective; that's just nonsense.

I am saying live by the ideology you preach

I do. I ignore copyright 100%.

If your use of them is not 100% then you rely on the copyright system to a degree, a system you think can be abolished.

Relying or not relying on the copyright system is irrelevant. It's like telling people in dictatorships that they rely on the government, and therefore cannot want to abolish it in favor for a better system of governance. People who are surrounded by a certain system will inevitably end up seeing the results it brings, and you cannot hold that against them. But of course, you haven't proven that copyright is effective to begin with.

No because you *require* childish ad hominem attacks, I do not.

I don't think it's childish to use your own silly assumptions against you. You made assumptions about the way I think, so it is valid when I do the same to you.

If you can unequivocally *prove* your system is better then I would be convinced but remember that "morals" and "ethics" are subjective as is what you deem to be acceptable or not.

In "the land of the free and the home of the brave," freedom is absolutely more important than 'safety.'

My arguments stand on their own merits. Attacking me and telling me I supposedly rely on copyright will not debunk a single thing that I have said; it's just an ad hominem.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

That was in response to another misuse of the term "communism" to mean "anything that I don't like." I just turned that around on them.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the government needs to promote the common good. Sharing (sharing the results of modifying the code, and sharing the modified code itself), knowledge, and education (What does the code do and how does it work?) are all things that promote the common good. Proprietary software simply has too many unethical restrictions in order for it to be an ethical choice.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Dr_Barnowl]

This is true, but all things being equal, much of the data is held to ransom behind proprietary format at present.

"Open" implies that the format is accessible without prejudice ; beyond eliminating the need for a computer altogether (which is impractical), that means it should be accessible on the three big desktop platforms, probably the web as well.

Totally agree that for simple data like character delimited text tables it's not a problem, and Open Data should tend toward the simplest format practical to convey the information. But for complex things like office documents, there should be a F/OSS choice for the format chosen, because it's just not practical to ask people to code up their own viewer / editor for a given format.

And if there are F/OSS tools for your selected format, it would seem to be the logical choice to use them in public office, given that they are all about saving money, unless there are compelling reasons to use the proprietary software. And for open formats... there are usually compelling reasons NOT to use the proprietary software, because much of it almost seems designed to break open formats. (viz : all versions of Excel I've used have a tendency to completely ruin ODS workbooks containing formulas).

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[donaldm]

But what about military secrets?
What about ongoing stings of organized crime syndicates, and the undercover police who might threatened?

If you want your documents kept secret there is plenty of encryption software available. The problem you have with any type of secret documentation is not really with the software but the people using the software so to coin an old saying "loose lips sinks ships", and the more eyes on something the more likely it will eventually be leaked.

Anyway what is this got to do with a government or any other organisation using "open" software compared to "closed" software because what you have just said applies equally to both.

Are these exceptions? How many lives is this principle worth?

If(instead) these are valid exceptions, what objective criteria would you use to separate the valid secrets from the invalid?

Basically the creation and handling of any type of information falls under "Company Policy" and again it makes no difference if the underlying software is "open" or "closed" source. At some stage there needs to be some trust because the more you don't trust the people who are handling information the more likely that information will be leaked.

People have been trying to solve the problem you just laid down a simplistic solution to for decades now.

And therein lies the problem. People are human and under certain circumstances can deliberately or accidentally divulge information that otherwise should remain confidential or even top secret to a particular company or even a government.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anon-Admin]

No, when you install RHEL you get a choice, you do not have to have the gui at all or you can choose the ones on the disk or you can install another from RPM.

Just an FYI, you do not have to have the gui installed to use the gui installs for an app. All you need is a small subset of the libraries, not the whole WM. The client (Person doing the install) can use a lot of different software on their end, I am only going to point out two possible solutions. They can use cygwin and ssh with an exported X display then start the app install, or they could use putty and exceed in the same manner. Ether way it does not need to be a gui on the server. Heck with cygwin and ssh you can create a simple icon on the users desktop to connect, export the display, and start the application all in background so the user never needs to learn or use the WM on linux.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[donaldm]

You are stuck with either GNOME or KDE for RHEL, and most users are going to expect GNOME. We also run into where our users have to emulate the users' environments, which often means GNOME for the GUI. Third, there are a lot of situations where a GUI is required (say, the default installer for a lot of things, like Documentum, Matlab, Oracle, etc). Trying to get people not to use the default GUI is near impossible.

If you use a graphics installer for Redhat you are not really using a window manager like KDE, Gnome or even Xfce. Anyway have many users are using RHEL for the desktop? (although you could). As for installers for Documentum, Matlab, Oracle, etc they are specific to the software application and will run under most window managers. Actually you would normally install software like what you just mentioned via client software which could even be on a Microsoft Widows machine.

As for "trying to get people not to use the default GUI" that is the wrong thing to say since if you are the system admin it is very easy to set up particular users to only use a specific Window Manager using "kickstart" (very useful if you want a consistent configuration across all machines). Of course you could do a manual installation as well but that can get very tedious across hundreds of machines.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about military secrets? What about ongoing stings of organized crime syndicates, and the undercover police who might threatened?

Obviously, those things are going to have an even greater need for open formats. (All secrets eventually expire. There's nothing about Eisenhower's troop movements that we need to worry about Hitler learning. If someone squealed on Al Capone, that person doesn't need to worry about retaliation anymore.)

Due to the requirement for secretness, their release is going to be delayed and proprietary formats, unlike open formats, get even harder to handle over time.

It's one thing for a government to say something as asinine as "It's the policy of this government that you should be a customer of Foo Corp" but it's a whole new level of absurdity for them to say "It's the policy of this government for your great grandparents should have a customer of Foo Corp and then also archived a copy of a proprietary program, and they and the generations between them and you should have been occasionally moving the archive to the new media of the day (perhaps in violation of copyright law) so that you'd have a program that you can still read, and then run on your emulator for n year-old computer system, which in turn may have its own archiving problems with the OS itself."

I mean, imagine if the Watergate records had been ruled confidential and had been stored in whatever proprietary systems were popular in 1972, rather than as analog tape, typed sheets of paper, etc. Then in 2012 it's released. First, you get the mainframe emulator. Then you install the proprietary software from 1972 (which IBM doesn't sell anymore) then you play/read it.

Type a confidential (but nevertheless in the public interest) letter in 2014 and save it as RTF and also Microsoft Word format. Which file do you think people will have an easier time reading in 2064?

If you have to read a proprietary format in 2014 (let's say Microsoft Word) at least you can probably (fortunately, Microsoft is willing to sell to everyone) spend a bunch of money and really buy what you need to read the file. It sucks, but it's possible. It should be intolerable for your government to make you to do that, but at least you can.

The longer the delay, though, the harder it gets. I bet there are people here with video files only 15 years old that they don't know how to play anymore, because some codec never got ported from PPC to x86, from x86 to x86-64, from Windows to Linux, etc.

Basically, there's nothing anyone has named so far, where confidentiality has a bearing on whether or not an auditor ought to be technically able to do their job. Maybe you point a gun at their face and tell them they are not allowed to do it, for a while. But if you we place extra barriers (especially if the barrier naturally gets higher over time) then I think the records are stored by someone who is working against the public's interests. Such people shouldn't be in our governments. We need to find them and expose them and rid ourselves of them.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[armanox]

If you use a graphics installer for Redhat you are not really using a window manager like KDE, Gnome or even Xfce. Anyway have many users are using RHEL for the desktop? (although you could). As for installers for Documentum, Matlab, Oracle, etc they are specific to the software application and will run under most window managers. Actually you would normally install software like what you just mentioned via client software which could even be on a Microsoft Widows machine.

As for "trying to get people not to use the default GUI" that is the wrong thing to say since if you are the system admin it is very easy to set up particular users to only use a specific Window Manager using "kickstart" (very useful if you want a consistent configuration across all machines). Of course you could do a manual installation as well but that can get very tedious across hundreds of machines.

There are cases where that works, and a lot that it does not. For production environments, it's not hard to pull off. In my case, in a lab environment, it does not work. We are strongly pushing users to avoid default setups for CentOS/RHEL 7, use 6 when possible, etc, but for the lab, it boils down to the users being in control of the VMs.

(Ultimately, I'm still pissed at the GNOME team (and Red Hat) for having a desktop environment that composititing cannot be disabled, and soft renders the whole thing when GPU isn't found. And then believing that it's a good idea! The Linux desktop will be its own killer.)

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[david_thornley]

The other thing governments should not do is mandate software or other purchases of specific things from specific companies.

The government currently would require me to buy health insurance if I didn't already have it. I looked at my options. There's something like seven insurance companies in direct competition, and if an eighth came up with a way to sell it cheaper they'd be welcome. No problem.

If I have to use IE, or Microsoft Office, to use government services or connect with the government, I'm being legally required to buy a certain product from a certain company. If another company wants to butt in with something cheaper, they can't.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[david_thornley]

You do realize that very few people share RMS's opinions, right? I flatly don't agree that proprietary software is unethical, and I have put a lot of thought into software ethics. People who aren't familiar with the philosophy are in general not going to think it's unethical, any more than a copyrighted book or song is unethical. (Yes, I know, some people think copyright itself is unethical, but again they're in a small minority.)

There is some really good F/OS software, but it's not always higher quality than proprietary. In terms of a UI that most people can handle, it generally lags Apple and Microsoft and Google. It's also a lot easier for a company to write software for Windows and maybe Mac OSX, rather than all the different Linux and *BSD distros people might use, so there's lots of vital software that is available only on proprietary OSes. F/OS software is very erratic in covering various needs, tending not to cover big business needs and the like, so there's lots of vital software functionality that's only available in proprietary software.

F/OS software does not prevent monetary kickbacks. Software license fees are only a small part of most projects, and a government project will have all sorts of other expenses. There's plenty of room for monetary kickbacks, perhaps more so if nobody has to pay for software licenses.

License fees are an annoyance, but evil in themselves? To produce large-scale software, people have to be paid somehow. People are paid to work on F/OS software because their business thinks it a net benefit. Either they benefit from the publicity, or they benefit from having better software to use, or something like that. Paying license fees is something like paying royalties: it's a very efficient method to pay creators.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[silentcoder]

It happened in Australia a few years ago. Much of their data was in the format of an ancient word processor whose parent company was long bankrupt and which no available software could read.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[silentcoder]

License fees here are evil because you as a taxpayer have to pay them and then to read a document from your government (which in many cases you are legally compelled to do: tax documents for example) you have to pay them again (since you aren't allowed to use the copy you and your fellow citizens collectively bought). At least when my taxes help pay for a road I get to drive on said road.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

Have you got a citation for that? I'm interested but couldn't find anything.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

Software is everywhere, and can do so much good, but it can also do a lot of evil. Without having the source code to know what the software is doing (especially after the NSA's activities were detailed by Snowden's leaks), you don't truly know what it's doing.

Like I said, how is that different to any other system? Do you have the schematics for the telephone and all the hardware used in the telephone networks? Or traffic light systems? Traffic cameras? etc... ? Pushing this at the software level is obviously silly, start at the bottom and get the hardware all open first.

Governments and the people should always be aware of what the software is doing, and no one should be beholden to a specific company.

Nobody is, you don't have to use any specific company.

They're not sets of instructions and don't have the same implications that software has, but I still think that being blindly ignorant of everything is bad.

And from that perspective open software is utterly pointless unless it is running on open hardware (and that the hardware it is running on can be audited).

The government needs to promote the common good, and education, sharing, and knowledge are definitely good.

No, the people need to do that. "The government" isn't a static thing, governments change all the time and it's the people that put them there.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the government needs to promote the common good.

In the fantasy world yes, but never in reality regardless of how much you spread that rhetoric. Governments have *many* more immediate and important issues to solve than concerning themselves with software development and spending resources auditing OSS codebases. Sharing software development is a low priority and completely unnecessary to have the government doing, we get along just fine without them thank you very much, there is nothing they can contribute that is of any use.

Even if they did use free software that gives other people nothing, they could modify it in house and they don't need to distribute it. It's not only a pointless endeavor, it's waste of valuable resources.

Sharing (sharing the results of modifying the code, and sharing the modified code itself), knowledge, and education (What does the code do and how does it work?) are all things that promote the common good.

Don't be stupid, you dont need the government for that. What *specifically* do you think they are going to provide?

Proprietary software simply has too many unethical restrictions in order for it to be an ethical choice.

"Ethics" is subjective, governments represent all people so you need to change society's perceptions which in turn will change the government rather than try to change the government's and have them force that on society.

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[Anonymous Coward]

Not tolerable.

Well you do tolerate it, what do you do to combat it?

Once again, can I use my own property to share copyrighted content with others?

Stay away from copyrighted content, but you can't, you are unable to. The problem is you know your system doesn't work and you *require* the products of the copyrighted system.

This response of yours is nothing but a cop-out.

No, your need for copyrighted content *proves* you need copyright until you can *demonstrate objectively* that copyrighted content would have existed without copyright. Can you?

I dont need to, you are the one suggesting change, the onus to prove that they *would*

Utter fucking bullshit.

Wrong again! The onus most certainly is on you but you want to shift that onus because you know you cannot prove your system is superior.

Copyright is unproven.

False, you already stated you copyrighted content is necessary for you but you dont like its terms which is the reason for your tirade.

You can't just shove a law through without providing any proof that it will be effective and then claim that anyone who says the law is unproven needs to prove that it's ineffective; that's just nonsense.

It *is* law, so prove it is ineffective and that all copyrighted content would have been created whether or not the law exists. Come on, prove it. Oh right, you can't.

I am saying live by the ideology you preach

I do. I ignore copyright 100%.

Not the same thing, use only copyleft / public domain content or prove objectively that copyrighted content would exist without copyright law. Come on, if you're right that would be easy but your inability to do it proves unequivocally that you are wrong.

Relying or not relying on the copyright system is irrelevant. It's like telling people in dictatorships that they rely on the government, and therefore cannot want to abolish it in favor for a better system of governance.

Strawmen won't help you here, but nice try.

But of course, you haven't proven that copyright is effective to begin with.

There is absolutely no requirement whatsoever that *I* do that, you want change then you prove that your system is better, hey I will even let you off if you can prove copyright is ineffective. But you cannot even do that.

I don't think it's childish to use your own silly assumptions against you. You made assumptions about the way I think, so it is valid when I do the same to you.

Your failure to understand the term "ad hominem attacks" is quite clear here, you need to educate yourself on the meaning of that because your response is invalid.

My arguments stand on their own merits. Attacking me and telling me I supposedly rely on copyright will not debunk a single thing that I have said; it's just an ad hominem.

No it isnt. Actually you dont even know what ad hominem means so dont prove yourself to be even more uneducated by trying to use the term. You demonstrated you rely on the products of the copyright system and cannot prove that they would have existed without it thus your argument has no merit and change will not come about. What correspondence have you had with copyright lawmakers? Or those who produce the copyrighted works you so love? Copyright is their choice so how have you gone about convincing them to change? Obviously you have gone to great lengths to try to convince me but you do not even know me, so if you really believe in this what have you done to convince people who actually have influence in the area?

Re:Publicly Funded Governments

[redeIm]

Well you do tolerate it, what do you do to combat it?

Vote for people I feel would truly represent me, participate in protests, donate to various organizations who lobby for policies I agree with, write to my supposed 'representatives', and encourage others to do the same. That might not be much, but it's also not nothing.

Stay away from copyrighted content, but you can't, you are unable to. The problem is you know your system doesn't work and you *require* the products of the copyrighted system.

The reason I don't is because copyright is irrelevant to me. Don't tell me what I know, or I'll have to start doing the same to you. You know that you're 100% incorrect, and that's why you spew forth ad hominems left and right. Does that sound wrong? It probably is. But that's what happens when you assume you know what others believe. In fact, telling others what they themselves believe is something I've seen religious fundamentalists do quite often. Do you enjoy the company you keep?

No, your need for copyrighted content *proves* you need copyright until you can *demonstrate objectively* that copyrighted content would have existed without copyright. Can you?

I use copyrighted content because it is there. If it wasn't there, I would still live. It is by no means a "need," and you're an imbecile for using such a term in this context.

Whether it would be there or not is not known to you or me.

Wrong again! The onus most certainly is on you but you want to shift that onus because you know you cannot prove your system is superior.

It *is* law, so prove it is ineffective and that all copyrighted content would have been created whether or not the law exists. Come on, prove it. Oh right, you can't.

No, the onus is not on me, but on those who seek to create or defend laws that were never proven to be effective to begin with. Why do you get to impose or defend unproven restrictions without a shred of proof, and then you get to shift the onus on other people after you've forced through your unjust laws? That's an interesting strategy.

Not the same thing, use only copyleft / public domain content or prove objectively that copyrighted content would exist without copyright law. Come on, if you're right that would be easy but your inability to do it proves unequivocally that you are wrong.

If you think that proving whether or not something would exist in an alternate universe without copyright law is easy, then you don't much of anything.

Strawmen won't help you here, but nice try.

Not a straw man (you don't even understand that term); I was just using your own stupid logic ("If I force a law or system on people, then anyone who opposes it must prove it's *not* effective, instead of the other way around!")

Your failure to understand the term "ad hominem attacks" is quite clear here, you need to educate yourself on the meaning of that because your response is invalid.

I do not fail to understand what it means; that would be you, ignorant fool. Attacking me in such a way will not actually debunk my arguments.

But one thing you're overlooking is that I do not care only about how effective copyright is. The single most important reasons I oppose copyright is because it infringes upon free speech (through censorship) rights and real private property rights. I would oppose it even if it was 100% effective. Your insinuations that I "need" copyrighted content demonstrate your ignorance of what a "need" is, demonstrate your ignorance of my actual position, and demonstrate your ignorance of logical debate.

But I'm sure you'll continue trying to shift the onus of proof onto me simply because others forced through laws before they ever had a shred of proof that they'd be effective, and since they were able to push through the laws, that must mean the restrictions the laws place on people are perfectly valid and therefore the onus of proof shifts to those who reject the laws. That's definitely a just, workable system.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[silentcoder]

I remember it was a slashdot story at the time. It sort of kick started the whole open data movement so we're talking early 2000's sometime.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[silentcoder]

I don't think this was the original story - but it's a pretty good example of the same thing:
http://www.sro.wa.gov.au/blogs...

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

The files can pretty easily be recovered with virtual machines, the real issue is the storage medium.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[silentcoder]

Only if you can figure out what they are. Not all OS's used file extensions, not all extensions are easily recognizable today. And once you do you still need a legal copy of the software to put in that virtual machine. That may not be so easy to obtain if it hasn't been sold in decades.

Re: Publicly Funded Governments

[exomondo]

Yes it could potentially be difficult and yes when this sort of information is archived it should be archived in something like HTML or PDF but it's not that big a deal to think ahead and make sure you have a copy of the software going forward. If they can't figure out the file types then they are just as likely to have issues with lost passwords and encryption keys too.

Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[QuietLagoon]

So Microsoft has to resort to such legal tactics in order to get people to use Microsoft software.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue that using windows is easier for most people than it is using Linux.
Not to mention, they would need to retrain all their personal to use linux, make their own variant for security purpose and then actually Support that version of linux. In the end, that would cost too much.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[QuietLagoon]

I'd argue that using windows is easier for most people than it is using Linux....

Why is Microsoft afraid of allowing the marketplace to decide?

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Tablizer]

Only because of the "devil you know" argument. It's similar to QWERTY: we can't convert until everybody else does first.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Stormwatch]

I'd argue that using windows is easier for most people than it is using Linux.

After Windows 8, that's quite debatable.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[walterbyrd]

> I'd argue that using windows is easier for most people than it is using Linux.

Why? When I want to launch a browser, I click the browser icon. What is so difficult? When I want to print, I can clink the printer icon. And so on. I would say it is *much* easier to go from Win7 to Gnome2, than from Win7 to Win8. People keep posting about Linux being difficult to use. Why? What is so difficult about it?

> Not to mention, they would need to retrain all their personal to use linux

You mean like having to retrain people to use Win8? Win8 is radically different than previous versions of Windows. How about retraining people to that "ribbon" crap in ms-office. Why is it: if somebody does not want to learn the new MS whatever, that person is lazy and stupid. But, nobody should suffer the burden of learning Linux?

> make their own variant for security purpose

What?

> and then actually Support that version of linux. In the end, that would cost too much.

What makes you think so? What makes you think supporting Linux would cost more than supporting Windows?

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[walterbyrd]

> Do you honestly think, if Linux was superior to Windows in all the right ways, it would have achieved something better than single digits in terms of desktop usage?

Mostly it's about apps. Windows hugely wins on apps. Since windows has the huge majority of market share, everybody writes apps for windows. Nobody runs a PC just to run the OS.

> The issue of use goes further ahead than just clicking an icon. What if you try to go to a web site with a particular Flash widget you want to use, but it fails to work because it requires at least Flash 13 and the main Linux Flash plugin was abandoned at Flash 11? Yes, this is a problem at times that does occur. Maybe not for you, but it has for me and my wife.
> Or what about if you can't print in borderless mode because the people who made the printer drivers for your printer in Linux didn't add a GUI option for it?

Minor annoyance. Windows has tons of them.

> In Windows 8 the desktop is still there, the desktop conventions are still there.

Windows 8 is completely different, and it sucks. That is not just my opinion. Sales have been in the toilet, even with MS trying to force it on everybody.

> You can find Windows admins a dime a dozen, and with that selection on offer it's easy to pick the good ones as well. I don't know ANYONE who uses Linux as a primary desktop operating system, much less admins available.

Sorry about your ignorance. I used Linux desktop at my last job - a contract job at IBM. I know lots of people who use Linux desktop.

> Why must we keep explaining this? Can't you just accept Linux, on the desktop, has deficiencies?

And Windows doesn't? You MS shills just keep parroting the same crap you did ten years ago. "Linux is sooooo hard to use" etc. Ten years ago, maybe you had something of a point. Lots has changed since then. Desktop Linux has become much better, and windows has gotten much worse.

> Not all of those are of its doing, but rather Microsoft's dominance, but they do add up to make it less desirable than Windows for most people regardless. Just accept this as a fact of life and fucking MOVE ON already.

WTF are you posting about? I was asking what is hard to use about Linux. In Linux you launch your apps, and close your apps, in very much the same way as has been traditionally done in Windows, or MacOS. You MS shills constantly blather on about Linux being so difficult, as you have to be a software engineer to use Linux. But you cannot really defend your silly memes.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly it's about apps. Windows hugely wins on apps. Since windows has the huge majority of market share, everybody writes apps for windows. Nobody runs a PC just to run the OS.

Exactly! Finally some sense - nobody runs a PC just to run an OS. So why obsess over Linux failing to satisfy the needs of people if it clearly isn't running the stuff people want out of their machines? Windows does so, Linux doesn't. That's not a failing of Linux from a technical standpoint, but it is still a reason that can't be ignored when one asks why people don't use it much on the desktop.

Minor annoyance. Windows has tons of them.

There you go again. Dismissing actual features and required functionality as "minor annoyances".

Windows 8 is completely different, and it sucks. That is not just my opinion. Sales have been in the toilet, even with MS trying to force it on everybody.

I dislike Windows 8 as well, but if given the choice between it and Linux I'll definitely go with Win 8 because at least my workflow and setup can be transferred to it with minimal bother once I learn what's changed (which isn't THAT much so long as you bypass Metro).

Sorry about your ignorance. I used Linux desktop at my last job - a contract job at IBM. I know lots of people who use Linux desktop.

I use Linux at work. We're a bunch of very smart engineers here. But we basically all use Windows at home because one aspect of being smart is knowing what's worth spending time on. In my case it's my kids and wife; I'm too invested in life to waste time trying to build muscle memory in Linux to reach the same level that I ALREADY HAVE with Windows. No-one else is bothering at work - maybe they know the value of time?

You MS shills

No-one takes Slashdot seriously enough to bother shilling for it anymore. The worst thing is that I happen to like Linux, both as an idea as well as certain implementations, such as on servers and embedded systems. But the desktop execution leaves much to be desired, and the community's infatuation with labeling anyone who has issues with Linux as "shills" is killing things. You're making the Linux environment toxic to live in - and as time goes by I feel less and less enthralled by this community which is incapable of accepting differing viewpoints.

No wonder you're unemployed. Stay that way.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly it's about apps. Windows hugely wins on apps. Since windows has the huge majority of market share, everybody writes apps for windows.

And if Linux offered something really compelling people would use and write apps for it too.

Windows 8 is completely different, and it sucks. That is not just my opinion. Sales have been in the toilet, even with MS trying to force it on everybody.

If Windows 8 sales are "in the toilet" then i would hate to think how you would describe Linux usage. Windows 8 has a sizable market share, you cannot just chalk that up to inertia of Windows. Peoples applications run just as they always have, the absence of the start menu is not as big a deal as you pretend it to be.

> Why must we keep explaining this? Can't you just accept Linux, on the desktop, has deficiencies?

And Windows doesn't? You MS shills just keep parroting the same crap you did ten years ago. "Linux is sooooo hard to use" etc.

No you *completely* miss the point, this is what Linux advocates *always* do: dismiss criticism of Linux and point to Windows. Well Windows has the market, you wont get ahead by saying "yes Linux has flaws but so does Windows".

Desktop Linux has become much better, and windows has gotten much worse.

For the past decade Linux has been mind-numbingly easy to install *and* you can even try it with LiveCDs *and* it has lots of available applications *and* it has WINE to run most Windows applications so despite your claim that Linux has gotten better and Windows has gotten worse the fact remains that the gap is still large enough that the vast, vast majority prefer Windows.

And dont use the "shill" argument, that is just an excuse for your inability to provide a valid, objective rebuttal.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Dr_Barnowl]

It's really that most people have more experience of Windows.

I'd argue it's not actually any easier. Both have their quirks and complexities. I have a lot of experience with both ; I find Linux far easier than Windows.

My Mother had limited experience with both ; she finds Linux just as difficult as Windows, but I find it easier to support her on Linux. All things being equal she uses the same apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice), I'd rather she was on a platform I can support easily and is somewhat robust against security risks.

Microsoft know this ; which is why they are so aggressive about making sure that people's early experience of computers is with Windows - cheap deals for students and schools, etc.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Dr_Barnowl]

running the stuff people want .... Windows does so, Linux doesn't.

Depends on the people, depends on what they want.

You could invert that sentence and swap "Mac" for "Linux" for many audiences ; particularly creative types that have specialist apps that only run on one platform.

For simple uses... there's no problem. Linux has browsers, email clients, and LibreOffice. For business purposes, anything written in Java or one of the other virtual runtimes should be easy to port to Linux, or run right out of the box.

For complex uses... it depends on the niche. Certainly for software development, Linux wins for basically everything except native and .NET Windows apps. For other uses, I will grant you, the professional-grade applications are not available (even if they run in Wine). But I'm not an artist. I'm a developer.

Gaming is one of the things that keeps Windows on my hard drive, but Valve are trying their darndest to make this irrelevant. I'm watching with interest, but Windows won't be going away just yet....

But that's it. All my real work is done on Linux. Windows has been relegated to the status of a toy for me. I find it frustrating and clumsy to work with - even more so once the IT department has shackled the vast suite of corporate malware they deem necessary to the chain around it's neck. The software I produce is a mixture of server processes and client tools that run on both Windows and Linux. I even *gasp* pay for software to run on Linux.

I agree there is a vast technical debt built up apps written on platform-specific toolkits, but they become obsolete eventually and there's no excuse for porting them to another platform-locked toolkit any more.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[Chelloveck]

For complex uses... it depends on the niche. Certainly for software development, Linux wins for basically everything except native and .NET Windows apps. For other uses, I will grant you, the professional-grade applications are not available (even if they run in Wine). But I'm not an artist. I'm a developer.

I agree that you should use whatever OS runs the apps you need. Here's some anecdotal evidence to throw into the discussion:

I work in a software shop with probably 100-200 developers. Our software runs on Linux, but on specialized hardware so far removed from the desktop that you might as well consider it an embedded system. Compilation and debugging is all done on the target machines. Some people do their edits on the target machine, others prefer to edit locally and copy to the target to compile. We have no IDE and no particular reliance on office suites or anything like that. As long as you have an ssh client you're golden.

So, the choice of desktop OS has absolutely no bearing on development here. Everyone gets a laptop. You have your choice of Apple or Dell hardware (both with pretty similar specs) and any OS you want. Of the entire population of developers, roughly 75% use Macs with OSX; 20% use Dell hardware with Linux or (Open|Free|Net)BSD; and 5% use Dell hardware with Windows.

There you have it. For one small sampling of developers where the desktop machine is purely personal preference, the desktop environment of choice is OSX.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[david_thornley]

It's a network effect. If you use a certain OS, it's more valuable the more other people who use it. It becomes a point of congregation for software, knowledge, and support.

The single biggest advantage Windows has is that it can run Windows-compatible software better than any other OS around. As long as people get Windows to run whatever software they want, software vendors will write Windows versions. As long as there's more Windows versions of important software than anything else, people are going to want to buy Windows computers so they can run the software they want. When the first Linux-based netbooks came out, they faced opposition from purchasers who found they couldn't run their software on them.

It's also practical for a large number of people to get extremely knowledgeable about how to get around Windows' failings, since it has relatively few versions and a really big number of installations. If you've tried to find information on how to do something on Windows, and how to do something on Fedora or Ubuntu, you'll notice it's usually easier to find it on Windows. Similarly, it's easier to hire people with Windows experience in a whole lot of fields than to hire people with some form of Linux experience.

There's also the advantages of major corporate backing. Microsoft will go to great lengths to make sure their software is good enough, so it's the safe choice. Managers often vastly overestimate their ability to sue over software that doesn't work, but Microsoft wants to make sure that if you go all-Microsoft your systems will work well enough. IT is becoming more strategic in business, but it's frequently a cost center, meaning it's something the business needs but isn't making money on, so there's much to be said for paying the Microgeld to keep things running.

Re:Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace...

[david_thornley]

No-one takes Slashdot seriously enough to bother shilling for it anymore.

Are you sure? Whenever there's an article on the situation in Ukraine recently, it is flooded by people with Russian-looking names who spout what really looks like Russian propaganda. It surprised me. I really didn't think Putin cared about us.

Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a party-pooper but there isn't anything at all in the article about what "the Microsoft lobby" actually did or not. Only that a politician that were against the free software support law from the start managed to get a contrary law passed a while later.

Re:Details?

[CaptainDork]

I'm with you on this. TFA should be labeled, "opinion."

Re:Details?

[Em Adespoton]

...not even that. From TFS, you can deduce that the second piece of legislation isn't even contrary, but is just equally beneficial to ALL software instead of being tailored to encourage adoption of free software.

So the summary could be rewritten as: "Free Software Lobby fails to prevent the use of Closed Software in Government and Business."

Re:Details?

[Keith111]

This is Slashdot. If it's software related and negative, everyone blames Microsoft whether they are involved or not. It seems to me like the government wanted free stuff so it stands to reason that the people who create stuff for their livelihood would not like that. I mean... that's the whole point in people not liking piracy. Just cause you put it into law doesn't mean it's morally right... kind of like legal tax evasion for churches.

Re:Details?

[Ecuador]

Only that a politician that were against the free software support law from the start managed to get a contrary law passed a while later.

And that politician apparently had a name change between these two events, so I guess he might have gone through some life altering event which could explain it?

Re:Details?

[Trogre]

It's amazing what an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Bahamas can do for one's point of view...

Re:Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only that a politician that were against the free software support law from the start managed to get a contrary law passed a while later.

And that politician apparently had a name change between these two events, so I guess he might have gone through some life altering event which could explain it?

That name change is actually just a result of the Slashdot summary cutting and pasting from the original article without editing. This original context makes more sense:

"the bill passed the vote, with 64 votes in favor, 12 abstentions, and one vote against it. That one vote was cast by Daniel Farcas, a member of a Chilean party.
A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted."

Re:Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing what an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Bahamas can do for one's point of view...

Even if you are trying to be funny, it is kind of sad how much parts of the Slashdot community don't let facts get in the way of their preconceptions (the name change is a Slashdot summary editing error, he didn't change his mind he was against it all along).

Chilean Software Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a Chilean company could make a custom package and provide support for the OSS to be considered. Problem solved.

Re:Chilean Software Industry

[Dr_Barnowl]

I consider doing this even here in the UK sometimes.

My office shelled out, I estimate, around €30,000 for WinRAR licenses. Looking at the report justifying it's purchase, it's clear that 7-zip beats it out in basically every category of functionality that they assessed it on... but no-one sells 7-zip so you have no-one to point the finger at if it fails.

A small company selling support for F/OSS packages could really clean up (and probably not have to do very much real work), just by tendering prices a little under the "market leader" for F/OSS programs that occupy a commodity niche.

It seems like...

[toonces33]

The legislators were mainly interested in getting a price break from Microsoft, and they found a way to do it.

Well, wait,,,,

[mark-t]

By my understanding, tax breaks being offered on something only mean that you effectively only get some percentage of the money back that you spent on that thing.

But if you aren't spending any of your money on that thing in the first place, even if it would give you a tax break, aren't you still further ahead than if you did spend the money when you can only get part of it back?

Re:Well, wait,,,,

[Kabukiwookie]

Correct.

It will lower the threshold to continue or start using proprietary software though. It's about the market share first, the money follows later once you've cornered the market.

Can you trust the Free Software cult on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I pretty much don't. "Certain tax breaks" is a choice of words that could mean any tax deduction of expenses. "Would allow the state" can well be a euphemism for "forces the state". Sadly, I don't trust the FSF crowd to use words reasonably.

I have an idea

[slashmydots]

Instead of lobbying, lower your damn prices. At my US company we're sure as hell not paying $450 a seat for the corporate single license version with Access and Publisher. It's not my damn vault they lost billions on Windows 8 and the Xbone and need to make it elsewhere.

Re:I have an idea

[sconeu]

Actually, that per-seat license does make it your damn VAULT.

Re:I have an idea

[slashmydots]

Freudian typo :P We actually don't have a vault anymore; Microsoft took it.

corrupt politicians forbid libre software

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there a US law that forbids US companies from engaging in foreign corrupt acts, even if those acts are the norm there? Or is applying money toward foreign politics exempt just like for domestic politics?

Re:corrupt politicians forbid libre software

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Microsoft run all their licensing operations out of Ireland?

Re:corrupt politicians forbid libre software

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't rich people get what they want regardless of how it impacts poor people?

Re:corrupt politicians forbid libre software

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. They mainly get to pay so poor people can live in the same luxury without having to do the same efforts.

Writing Comprehension

[Anonymous Coward]

So Vlado Mirosevic changed his name into Daniel Farcas just so he could push the response bill? That's really clever! (Missed it? It says in TFA and TFS that the _same_ MP, but with a different name, pushed this).

Also, I smell hoax, FUD, what have you. One name sounds Serbian, the other Romanian. In Chile. We guys barely made it out of the area, much less into overseas ruling positions.

Re: Writing Comprehension

[Anonymous Coward]

Immigration has always relatively open in Chile. Most of the people in Chile in fact is of foreign origin (my family included). Very similar to the us in that sense. So having a lady name that is nor Spanish is not unusual (and btw, Spanish are also "foreigners").

'the same member' typo...?

[Anonymous Coward]

"An independent member of the Chilean Parliament, Vlado Mirosevic, pushed a bill that would allow the state to consider free software when the authorities needed to purchase or renew licenses. ... A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted."

The 'same member'...did Vlado change his name to Daniel after he pushed through the first law or is someone an idiot?

What "Munich Linux debacle"??

[Anonymous Coward]

Munich isn't ditching Linux.

Not often that SN gets the drop on /., they must be improving.

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/21/0836239

Re:What "Munich Linux debacle"??

[Teun]

Exactly!

There's a vice-mayor that heard stories of some city workers having trouble with the compatibility of certain file formats and he wants an investigation into it.

This says nothing about the Linux OS or something else OSS being ditched, it doesn't even mean he's getting his investigation!

Wow

[Greyfox]

You know, if anyone was actually bribed in the process of that, it would be VERY illegal back here in the USA. Just sayin'...

Re:Wow

[JRV31]

Bribery is not illegal in the US, we call it campaign contributions.

Re:Wow

[Greyfox]

Bribing foreign officials is, especially if you do business with the US government. It means fewer bribes *cough* I mean... campaign contributions... for our guys!

Re:Wow

[CptJeanLuc]

You sir have probably been watching too much regular US news (i.e. propaganda, sponsored content or advertisement). For something resembling actual news I recommend Last Week Tonight, The Daily Show or The Colbert Show. Yes, the only place to get decent commentary about the important stuff which is happening these days, is from comedians. Spend a year watching stories about the stuff that politicians and companies are not only doing but also proudly getting away with, and you might want to rethink how tough your country really is on corruption.

Old ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody bribes the old way.

Your spouse get consulting job, your son gets contract to discover effects of Moon's light on frogs population.
That's how is done, just look at the transfer of government money into lucrative contracts for private companies.

so to put it in argumentative terms

[nimbius]

Linux: we're faster, cheaper, and just as easy to install and use as windows, plus we come with an ecosystem of thousands of applications that do exactly what yours do, but are also free.

Microsoft: You make an excellent point, and we certainly wish we had time for a formal rebuttal but for right now we're too busy shoveling cash into foreign governments and municipalities. you see, with the departure of steve ballmer, our failed cellular endeavor, our failed search engine, our failed cloud computing service, our failed apps store, our failed windows 8, our failed mp3 player, and our recent mass firing we had to do something. Just dont think about how this relates to the restructuring. it doesnt really, we're the same company as before, just a bit more immediate and desperate.

The real problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

America brands itself as Valhalla for capitalism. An environment where a good business can triumph, rewarding the owners and punishing the weak and lazy.

Problem is that the whole thing is a lie.

America has dirty hands. Litigation or sub-rosa dealings are the norm at the expense of true enterprise. Lobbyists encourage lawmakers to enact rules which prohibit or hamper competition. Businesses engage in 'glass parking lot' lawsuits to bleed competitors and consumers dry.

The hopeful entrepreneur would be wise to remember this -- if you have a great idea, there will be many others who will try to take it from you by force or more you in legislation until you run out of cash.

Huffpost loses misleading tagline championship!

[clovis]

This just out: Slashdot publishes an article with the title "Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access to Free Software".
Anyone reading the article sees that no such thing has happened.
Huffpost slides into second place for misleading tagline, but still retains "sideboob" title.

Chile is America? South America I guess

[raymorris]

> America brands itself ...

Chile is America now? This article is about politics is Chile.

Can you say payoff

[JedCavins]

a large sum of money can buy a whole lotta law

Excuse me

[Anonymous Coward]

"Munich and Linux debacle"? Looks like you misspelt "success story" there, and nevermind the political backstabbing.

the same member of the Parliament

[Anonymous Coward]

An independent member of the Chilean Parliament, Vlado Mirosevic, pushed a bill that would allow the state to consider free software when the authorities needed to purchase or renew licenses. ... A while later, the same member of the Parliament, Daniel Farcas, proposed another bill that actually nullified the effects of the previous one that had just been adopted.

Are Vlado Mirosevi and Daniel Farcas the same person? Or maybe Vlado Mirosevi and Daniel Farcas are the names of the Parliaments, and one unnamed politician belongs to both Parliaments? Politics are so confusing...

It's about Maintenance (and _then_ ethics)

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Software is stuff that you're allowed to maintain, or get anyone you want to, to maintain it.

Proprietary software is stuff that you're not allowed to maintain, because it's usually a few orders of magnitude more difficult (if you don't have the source, then you have to patch binaries) and also possibly illegal (copyright law, you're making a derived work) and often a contract violation (if you licensed it rather than purchasing a copy, and most EULAs specifically forbid the user from maintaining the software).

The ethics aspect comes into play when you're choosing whether someone else is able to get maintenance, versus them being totally fucked. Most people would say that it's unfair to stick an unwitting victim with the "you are totally fucked" option without them first understanding how deeply they'll be fucked. Most "regular people" don't know anything about software maintenance, the expenses, and the laws. So they think they're merely buying something, whereas all us techies know it's far more complicated than that, since most software ends up needing maintenance.

If you think most voters are extremely smart (or average smart but happen to have lots of experience in software maintenance), then it's reasonable to defend the practice of those peoples' governments buying into proprietary software: Joe Sixpack thought carefully before he voted for people who have a leaning toward that kind of behavior.

The strange thing is that I often hear voters being described differently. Thus, I think those people are probably being victimized unwittingly. And since I don't like to be victimized unwittingly, I consider it unethical to do that to other people. But my ethics are very simple. Some people might have some good rationalizations for why it's ok to harm the unsuspecting.

Re:It's about Maintenance (and _then_ ethics)

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we have reached the limit on the number of people claiming to be "victimized" whether they know it or not. Social media has turned facts into lies and opinion into facts. We are building a generation of people who have shaped their worldview using opinions published as facts and the number of likes their comments earn in their favorite forums and web sites. Forums that are no more than echo chambers that create a false impression of wide acceptance of the message being espoused. It's been said that individuals can be rational and intelligent beings and that is true. However, put these same individuals into a group and that rationality and intelligence decreases as the number of people joining the group increases.

Mob

[Anonymous Coward]

We at the Mob (hmm, Microsoft...)

it's a shame...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame. I am a chilean software engineer. The way that we are making the rich richer... it's unbelievable. It's rubbish. There still a lot of poor people here.
When I look at the german LiMux project... I just say we are light years from that. Micro$oft $uck$ big time here, now and forever.

Cheers
DIEGO URRA

Re:not a Holy war

[Anon-Admin]

Free software can be problematic also.

For one, serious use isn't free...enterprise use requires growing or renting expertise. Many of the major stuff, such as Mozilla, are supported by groups that actually do at least in part require funding.

They dont need expertise in windows? Both require someone to make it work.

For another, all open licenses are not the same - can matter depending on what one intends to do

True, but no one reads the Microsoft Licensing agreement. If legal ever did read it they would not allow the software to be installed. I know because I did a search and replace on the word Microsoft in their licensing agreement and then submitted it to legal. Legal put a stop to the install because we could not agree to the licensing terms of the software. They were surprised when I let them know it was Microsoft and eventually allowed the install.

Yet another, sometimes unintended consequences like Heartbleed are included equally 'free' yea right.

Ill take heartbleed security issue with the SSL cryptography over the millions of windows viruses any day.

Then there are things like shooter games and windows vs linux.

I really dont care which. Windows has it's uses as does Linux. Not sure I understand what you are trying to say here.

Finally, some of the commercial stuff works well in some respects,; Chrome is not bad on security although personally I do not like it's approach to customizations and store aps (Chrome is not exactly free it's part of the driving forward of the Googlezillan Empire)

You are right, some of the commercial apps are great and well worth the $$ you pay for them. However, the decision should be made on a technical level by the IT people who know what they are doing and not by a politician who can not even spell IT.

Also, some political entities, being supposedly sovereign, actually support intellectual property in the sense that Windows or Nvidia or HP drivers are not penetrable by ordinary mortals, but at least most of the time developed in a coherent manner. I myself prefer the idea that inventors/investors/first movers will do at least as well without DMCA, but not everyone agrees.

But laws saying what software can be used or dictating the OS to use is just stupid. That is not a matter for government it is a matter that should be decided by the IT departments in government. Laws saying that the data storage formats have to be open and available for review would be good but that does not appear to be what is going on here.

fuck you microsoft

[FudRucker]

i hope you choke and die on your state sanctioned monopoly

Bilingual speaker here! *

[williamyf]

My two cents here:

I read the linked English article, as well as the article in Spanish that they reference ("Ubuntizando.com"), as well as the original article in Spanish. **

The original article (in Ubuntizando) says NOTHING about the name of the legislator that did the counter-proposal, or anything about any alleged tax breaks. Is mostly derivative and incomplete. From this point onwards, I will reference only the article in "biobiochile"

The second article cites two others which I did not read (I have a limited amount of time). BioBioChile interviews only the "Pro-Free-Software***" (Mirosevic) legislator, and not the other (Farcas) who, as the summary clearly states, was the one who voted against Free Software****. Is only logical that the guy launched a counter-proposal. The only surprising thing is the turn-around time (24h).

Even more, the article (in biobiochile), indicates, in the words of Mirosevic himself***** "Half the people [referring to the other legislators, "diputados", or congressmen for those in the US] had no idea what we were talking about. I do not mean of the concept of Free software, but of software itself, but as we calculated, the rest followed those of us who understood". Is only logical, that they voted on the second initiative again whitout a clear understanding, either folowing party guidelines, or swayed by the 10 legislators that submitted the second motion.

From the way of writing (the subtle nuances are often lost in machine translation), starting with the title of the article itself ("Microsoft Raped Us"), I feel the magazine is "Amarillista" (think tabloid/sensationalist). And Slashdot is just being Slashdot, with the added hurdle of the language barrier.

While I am no big fan (nor am I an enemy) of Microsoft, I am less a fan of tabloids and crappy reporting, hence this comment

* For the record, 296/300 in my ToEFL way back when.

** Is in biobiochile.com, never heard of any of them, here is the link, for what is worth:
http://www.biobiochile.cl/2014/08/19/diputado-mirosevic-revela-sabotaje-a-proyecto-que-fomentaba-software-libre-microsoft-nos-violo.shtml

*** Again to recap, the pro-free-software resolution was voted by 64 yes, 1 no and 12 abstentions.

**** Free as in beer, "Libre in Spanish"

***** “La mitad de la gente no tenía idea de qué estábamos hablando. No digo del concepto software libre, más bien de los softwares, pero como habíamos calculado, el resto siguió a los que sí habían entendido”, relató Mirosevic a la publicación.

Re:Bilingual speaker here! *

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the original Spanish article:

http://www.elmostrador.cl/negocios/2014/08/18/el-lobby-de-microsoft-en-un-mercado-de-36-mil-millones-de-pesos-y-la-perdida-de-inocencia-del-diputado-vlado-mirosevic/

Re:Bilingual speaker here! *

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont understand this observation:
**** Free as in beer, "Libre in Spanish"
"Libre" is free as in freedom.
"Gratis" is free as in beer.

Re:Bilingual speaker here! *

[phantomfive]

**** Free as in beer, "Libre in Spanish"

FWIW Free as in beer = gratis in Spanish, not libre

In chile

[Anonymous Coward]

hi from chile.

ok this is some crappy attempt of a chilean news site to spam slashdot. guess it worked.

all software in chile is, and has always been tax deductiable in chile. ms did not need to do anything. all a wash on that front. both ms and open source cost a company the same in the end.

bigger isseu is there are sooooo few qualified IT people in chile to start, and even fewer with real open source experience. Many "computer Science" courses and diplomas still cover little more than making web sites in flash or programing viseul basic, even at the best schools in the country.

so, even as a rabid open source advocate myself, i have to say chile is not ready for it. things are changing, but too slow to simply dump a bunch of open source software on a chilean organization.

for those that will want to argue this with me, i would ask you to take a quick look at the number of open source repositories even mirrored in chile (compared to other latin american countries), let alone particpation of chileans in open sorce projects. the numbers are likly in the hundreds, at the most a few thousand. no where near sufficient numbers to support a full ecosystem of local open source deployed organizations requiring thousands of experienced open source IT people.

I really hope it changes. as it is now, it would be a desaster for both chile and for open source.

open source is about organic adoption.

It has happened at least once.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK a big Doomsday project was undertaken to do a census like that in 1086 of the UK. The data was collected at great expense and put on laserdisk (being the only medium big enough) by a propriatory data system which is now defunct, making the information collected unreadable.

IIRC volunteer work was underway to recreate the decode for the data and the hardware to read the disk, but was stopped (may now have cleared) by the owners of the technology having patented it and those patents being owned by another.

Re:It has happened at least once.

[exomondo]

The data was collected at great expense and put on laserdisk (being the only medium big enough) by a propriatory data system which is now defunct, making the information collected unreadable.

So the hardware failed? Surely they could load up the software in a VM in the worst case but there's nothing you can do if the hardware is broken.

Chile + Microsoft = Cray Cray

[Crizzam]

I live in Chile and am amazed by the deathgrip that Microsoft has here. It's amazing. When you use Microsoft software in Chile, according to the terms of use, you unconditionally agree to an inspection, in your business, by Microsoft, without warning. What happens is that a Microsoft representative arrives WITH POLICE and they are prepared to file criminal charges against END USERS and MANAGERS for the discovery of unlicensed software. They perform a scan of the network with their tools and require proof that each copy is licensed. To me, this is simple crazy corporate control.

Chilean Here

[kaendesmut]

It is worth notice that Farcas (the politician that was lobbied by microsoft) was implicated in a bribery case, called "las becas Valech", or something like that, he contracted the person who was the former government university inspector that approved his private university (UNIACC). Microsoft sought and found the right one to push in this case, he even voted yes to the proposition of Mirosevic, then the day after he told something like "we snatched it from you buddy" (laughing).