Re:Government involvement is a double edged sword
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eGovOS 3 Announced
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· Score: 1
I think you misunderstand the governmental concept of promoting free software. It doesn't mean promoting it to you and me in the street - it means promoting it to other authorities who are wavering indecisively.
Despite what you may have heard, in the UK at least, there's very little one authority can do to control/influence another. They all have very clearly defined powers and rights. If Nottingham County Council adopts Linux on the desktop, there's still absolutely no reason for Shropshire County Council to do so, if it doesn't feel like it. And central government can do nothing to force NCC onto Windows anymore than SCC onto Linux.
The benefit the government sees is free-as-in-beer, largely. Followed up shortly afterwards by more-secure-than-Windows, meaning better results from the Audit Commission.
Don't credit the government with more coherence than it actually has. Believe me, most of the time it has enough stuff of its own to do without devising conspiracies. Whitehall hardly ever gets to force local authorities into something.
Advance only so far, then come to a speeding halt?
on
eGovOS 3 Announced
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· Score: 4, Interesting
disclaimer: UK-only view below, I do not speak for the rest of the EU
Government would be an ideal environment for open source development, because it's a highly collaborative world. Authorities get together all the time, online and off, to share information and work in partnerships. They're far, far better at collaboration than private companies - not least because of limited resources.
What stops government being open source entirely, in the UK at least, is that open source applications for government don't exist. Do a search for 'government' on SourceForge and you get back less than four active projects, mostly unsuitable for Europe. I know, I've looked. Authorities need systems that can do things like council tax, sundry debtor tracking, payroll, personnel, time recording, electoral registration, development control, building control, licensing, contract administration, GIS, records management, benefits claims, cost of works, invoicing, BACS, asset management, inventory management, architectural works, flexitime monitoring, enforcement notices recording, dog warden control, callout control, grant awarding and tracking, sampling storage and results monitoring and so on. That's an extract from one authority I worked for, and it only employs 300 people. Local government is hugely multifunctional.
The only OSS work I know in that list is in the area of GIS and it's not that advanced. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Believe it or not, authorities don't want x300 PHP/MySQL content management systems or yet another webserver, which is what SourceForge consists of on a bad day.
If open source does gain a bigger foothold in government, it'll only be on the desktop and in OpenOffice. Maybe Apache. But it'll never displace proprietary systems from government unless it expands beyond the developer-centric to include the kind of back office systems we use here. I think after that little list it'll come to a screeching halt due to lack of apps.
Oh, and in the UK we emphatically do not call it Libre Software. Methinks that's the French up to their linguistic nationalism again. It's continental Europe that doesn't call it free software - those of us from the country that gave the world English actually use the English word:-)
...teenage humans who get access to guns, that is. The ready availability of weapons that kill tens of people in minutes is what leads to the tragedy in the end. A mad kid doesn't hurt many except himself. A mad kid with a gun is a spree killer.
Because if you're a company that has something to do with internet services, and there were rumours of a 'net tax, you'd probably stop some of your initiatives and hoard money as a contingency fund.
When the quote says 'certainty', that means a lot to any risk-conscious company. If you have a risk mitigated or removed, you feel safer in going ahead with an initiative like setting up broadband, etc.
As others have pointed out, we have this in the EU (UK) already and it hasn't been egregiously abused. The reasoning behind has nothing to do with cut and paste - it's about protecting the effort the owner has made to collect/assemble that particular set of information. Database protection extends fifteen years, but even before that, anyone can market a similar collection - assuming they assembled it themselves.
So it depends on the wording of the US bill. The UK version is more akin to copyright - this particular collection is mine, and you can't pass it off as yours. If the US bill is more like patents - nobody else can collect this information, ever - then you're sunk.
So I'd suggest checking the wording before you mouth off. If it's only a protection of that particular company's particular effort, there may be little to worry about.
I don't think Apple needs to worry too much, yet. Microsoft is helping to build a school that's due to open in two years' time. Apple kitted out the entire state of Maine with iBooks right now.
I think the point is that the software patent system has got to the stage where it's impossible for any company to be sure of that (after all, it's not like Microsoft's legal department is small). Yet another reason to hope against hope that the EU will reject the notion of introducing them here.
If the technology reaches that stage, then sadly, a legislator somewhere will most likely have insisted it has so-called safeguards to (a) stop it file sharing, (b) 'protect the children' or(c) to 'help' any war on terror still going on at that time.
The upshot being your software's safeguards recognise you are a sick and twisted soul and the program informs on you (can you imagine Outlook flashing up a box saying "I'm sorry, Dave, but I have decided to report your activities to the police because you are a terrorist"?).
Total Information Awareness by the back door, eh? And then you could even have some country decides to use the software safeguards to predict whether a user is a political dissident...
Maybe you can't stop the march of technology (as he says in the article), but you could direct it with a little more forethought.
So you would be referring to the man who in 1786 founded Molson's beer in Canada, having emigrated from Britain where cider is so common that the West Country (south-west) in particular is known as one of the great cider-making places in the world, and is only peripherally - not to mention frequently reluctantly - close to France, a country that is known mainly for its wines and champagne?
I think your geography's a bit off, as is your history of liquor (hmm...perhaps the two are related)...
Oh, and we didn't conquer France in 1786 - they were busy winding up to chop a lot of people's heads off. A suitable fate for SCO executives, perhaps.
If there is a real need then the organizations that want/need it can fund a developer(s) to write and customize it for them. OSS does not mean you can make me change my hobbies and interests to do free (as in beer) work to meet your needs.
No, that's Microsoft's work ethic.....but seriously, sticking with my example, I think there is a real need and sometimes the organisations that want/need it can't fund developers. If you don't want to think about local councils, what about charities?
Besides, my point was to do with promoting the adoption of OSS, which is done by creating more and more kinds of software that appeals - we know a web server appeals, by now. And I think something like OpenOffice or Linux has got well past the point where its future survival was in doubt - why not (horrible CVS pun warning) branch out more?
Of course everyone is free to code what they like, otherwise it'd be Work. My hope is to see OSS spread beyond its current selection of packages, though. After all, if Linux consisted of just the kernel, BSD wouldn't be dying.:-):-)
I found his answer to the question (paraphrased) "did you find everything you needed from open source?" was a good point; that most OSS is developer-centric. Check out SourceForge for the number of PHP content management systems, for example. Yikes, what's an OSS advocate to do...
On the other hand, where I work (UK public sector) is desperately short of money, composed of lots of small organisations who can hire one or two developers each at most, and yet very tight-knit - there are partnerships going on all the time. One of the things we're after is records management - document management on stereoids, if you like. Unfortunately, there's no OSS equivalent for me to recommend to others in the partnership.
Are content management systems all that exciting to code? I dunno (and I've written one)..but I think the OSS world needs to branch out into other markets beyond the "let's fork another HTTP server and put Linux on an iPod" type of project - surely the only way to reduce Microsoft's ubiquity is to be a ubiquitous alternative yourself? How about some OSS records management, workflow, online forms, asset management, planning applications, licensing apps?
PS: If anyone knows of such OSS projects, advice gratefully accepted...:-)
Sorry, you're thinking of the wrong country. In the UK, it takes 3-4 years for a degree; 1 year for a Masters (MBA); and then the doctorates can yawn on as long as a decade, if you can come up with cunning enough proposals for funding.
About the only similarity with the American system is the names, really - and the dry personalities that result from 20-odd years in academia when some folk emerge blinking into the world.:-)
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I think you misunderstand the governmental concept of promoting free software. It doesn't mean promoting it to you and me in the street - it means promoting it to other authorities who are wavering indecisively.
Despite what you may have heard, in the UK at least, there's very little one authority can do to control/influence another. They all have very clearly defined powers and rights. If Nottingham County Council adopts Linux on the desktop, there's still absolutely no reason for Shropshire County Council to do so, if it doesn't feel like it. And central government can do nothing to force NCC onto Windows anymore than SCC onto Linux.
The benefit the government sees is free-as-in-beer, largely. Followed up shortly afterwards by more-secure-than-Windows, meaning better results from the Audit Commission.
Don't credit the government with more coherence than it actually has. Believe me, most of the time it has enough stuff of its own to do without devising conspiracies. Whitehall hardly ever gets to force local authorities into something.
disclaimer: UK-only view below, I do not speak for the rest of the EU
Government would be an ideal environment for open source development, because it's a highly collaborative world. Authorities get together all the time, online and off, to share information and work in partnerships. They're far, far better at collaboration than private companies - not least because of limited resources.
What stops government being open source entirely, in the UK at least, is that open source applications for government don't exist. Do a search for 'government' on SourceForge and you get back less than four active projects, mostly unsuitable for Europe. I know, I've looked. Authorities need systems that can do things like council tax, sundry debtor tracking, payroll, personnel, time recording, electoral registration, development control, building control, licensing, contract administration, GIS, records management, benefits claims, cost of works, invoicing, BACS, asset management, inventory management, architectural works, flexitime monitoring, enforcement notices recording, dog warden control, callout control, grant awarding and tracking, sampling storage and results monitoring and so on. That's an extract from one authority I worked for, and it only employs 300 people. Local government is hugely multifunctional.
The only OSS work I know in that list is in the area of GIS and it's not that advanced. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Believe it or not, authorities don't want x300 PHP/MySQL content management systems or yet another webserver, which is what SourceForge consists of on a bad day.
If open source does gain a bigger foothold in government, it'll only be on the desktop and in OpenOffice. Maybe Apache. But it'll never displace proprietary systems from government unless it expands beyond the developer-centric to include the kind of back office systems we use here. I think after that little list it'll come to a screeching halt due to lack of apps.
Oh, and in the UK we emphatically do not call it Libre Software. Methinks that's the French up to their linguistic nationalism again. It's continental Europe that doesn't call it free software - those of us from the country that gave the world English actually use the English word :-)
It's the price you pay for living among humans...
...teenage humans who get access to guns, that is. The ready availability of weapons that kill tens of people in minutes is what leads to the tragedy in the end. A mad kid doesn't hurt many except himself. A mad kid with a gun is a spree killer.
Because if you're a company that has something to do with internet services, and there were rumours of a 'net tax, you'd probably stop some of your initiatives and hoard money as a contingency fund.
When the quote says 'certainty', that means a lot to any risk-conscious company. If you have a risk mitigated or removed, you feel safer in going ahead with an initiative like setting up broadband, etc.
Er....laser is focused light, isn't it? I think we've got a few billion years left in the reserves.
As others have pointed out, we have this in the EU (UK) already and it hasn't been egregiously abused. The reasoning behind has nothing to do with cut and paste - it's about protecting the effort the owner has made to collect/assemble that particular set of information. Database protection extends fifteen years, but even before that, anyone can market a similar collection - assuming they assembled it themselves.
So it depends on the wording of the US bill. The UK version is more akin to copyright - this particular collection is mine, and you can't pass it off as yours. If the US bill is more like patents - nobody else can collect this information, ever - then you're sunk.
So I'd suggest checking the wording before you mouth off. If it's only a protection of that particular company's particular effort, there may be little to worry about.
I don't think Apple needs to worry too much, yet. Microsoft is helping to build a school that's due to open in two years' time. Apple kitted out the entire state of Maine with iBooks right now.
According to The Spy Who Loved Me you can use a beach to get out, as long as you're accompanied by Barbara Bach.
It would have fared much better....OOo does have slightly better MS Office compatibility...
So you're saying Abiword would have fared much better in a test of MS Office compatibility, even though OOo has better MS Office compatibility?
Quick! That window's open, I can throw my logic out of it too! :-)
I think the point is that the software patent system has got to the stage where it's impossible for any company to be sure of that (after all, it's not like Microsoft's legal department is small). Yet another reason to hope against hope that the EU will reject the notion of introducing them here.
If the technology reaches that stage, then sadly, a legislator somewhere will most likely have insisted it has so-called safeguards to (a) stop it file sharing, (b) 'protect the children' or(c) to 'help' any war on terror still going on at that time.
The upshot being your software's safeguards recognise you are a sick and twisted soul and the program informs on you (can you imagine Outlook flashing up a box saying "I'm sorry, Dave, but I have decided to report your activities to the police because you are a terrorist"?).
Total Information Awareness by the back door, eh? And then you could even have some country decides to use the software safeguards to predict whether a user is a political dissident...
Maybe you can't stop the march of technology (as he says in the article), but you could direct it with a little more forethought.
So you would be referring to the man who in 1786 founded Molson's beer in Canada, having emigrated from Britain where cider is so common that the West Country (south-west) in particular is known as one of the great cider-making places in the world, and is only peripherally - not to mention frequently reluctantly - close to France, a country that is known mainly for its wines and champagne?
I think your geography's a bit off, as is your history of liquor (hmm...perhaps the two are related)...
Oh, and we didn't conquer France in 1786 - they were busy winding up to chop a lot of people's heads off. A suitable fate for SCO executives, perhaps.
If there is a real need then the organizations that want/need it can fund a developer(s) to write and customize it for them. OSS does not mean you can make me change my hobbies and interests to do free (as in beer) work to meet your needs.
No, that's Microsoft's work ethic.....but seriously, sticking with my example, I think there is a real need and sometimes the organisations that want/need it can't fund developers. If you don't want to think about local councils, what about charities?
Besides, my point was to do with promoting the adoption of OSS, which is done by creating more and more kinds of software that appeals - we know a web server appeals, by now. And I think something like OpenOffice or Linux has got well past the point where its future survival was in doubt - why not (horrible CVS pun warning) branch out more?
Of course everyone is free to code what they like, otherwise it'd be Work. My hope is to see OSS spread beyond its current selection of packages, though. After all, if Linux consisted of just the kernel, BSD wouldn't be dying. :-) :-)
I found his answer to the question (paraphrased) "did you find everything you needed from open source?" was a good point; that most OSS is developer-centric. Check out SourceForge for the number of PHP content management systems, for example. Yikes, what's an OSS advocate to do...
On the other hand, where I work (UK public sector) is desperately short of money, composed of lots of small organisations who can hire one or two developers each at most, and yet very tight-knit - there are partnerships going on all the time. One of the things we're after is records management - document management on stereoids, if you like. Unfortunately, there's no OSS equivalent for me to recommend to others in the partnership.
Are content management systems all that exciting to code? I dunno (and I've written one)..but I think the OSS world needs to branch out into other markets beyond the "let's fork another HTTP server and put Linux on an iPod" type of project - surely the only way to reduce Microsoft's ubiquity is to be a ubiquitous alternative yourself? How about some OSS records management, workflow, online forms, asset management, planning applications, licensing apps?
PS: If anyone knows of such OSS projects, advice gratefully accepted... :-)
Sorry, you're thinking of the wrong country. In the UK, it takes 3-4 years for a degree; 1 year for a Masters (MBA); and then the doctorates can yawn on as long as a decade, if you can come up with cunning enough proposals for funding. About the only similarity with the American system is the names, really - and the dry personalities that result from 20-odd years in academia when some folk emerge blinking into the world. :-)