Tee author of this article puts quite some weight on the fact that commercial software can be audited by the company who produces it, but we must no forget that:
1) These audits must be conducted by third parties, in order to be trusted;
2) These audits are not done for free, and are added to the cost of the software.
The cost of auditing open-source software will probably have to be passed to the customers, for smaller projects. It could be split among groups of interested customers and benefit the whole community, and still remain cheaper than most commercial alternatives.
Of course, big customers (the Navy?) could implement their own auditing scheme and pay for it, and commercial software companies would probably open their source code to these priviledged customers. Unfortunately most small companies cannot afford to call Microsoft, or Accpac, or SAP, and force them to provide their source code and get an audit from a specific auditor. (And, as we saw lately, relying only on the reputation of such auditing companies as the Big Four can mean that they will give good results to their big golf buddies...)
Finally, customers like the Navy would probably get cheaper software if they would go for F/OSS alternatives and audit them at their own cost, rather than pay for audited commercial software.
I am not a lawyer and haven't read all of the GPL (fell asleep in the middle of the third paragraph...), but I would think that a French court having to judge a GPL-related issue would throw out only the parts that cannot apply, not the whole contract.
The objective of Law is to make things work fairly, and recognizing the parts of GPL that could be applied is how judges should see this principle.
This was a trivial accident, but my heart still squeezes every time I think of it...
A couple of months after getting my Commodore64, my parents offered me a Disk Drive to replace my slow, but faithful Dataset.
I then recopied my listings from the magazines and saved them to disk, for quick access to my favorite games.
I soon realized that all these programs (I had at least 12 at that time!) had to be organized, so I decided to rename my diskette from "Programs" to "Games". There was a rename option in the format function that did the job very well...
After I realized that all my games were lost, I got up, turned towards my parents (who were watching TV in the same room) and went to my bedroom, keeping a straight face.
Kids do have problems the size of the Universe... We just don't understand them!
During the first attempt, I acquired a virus or worm before I could finish the Norton update (machine powered down)
I understand that for Linux users, unaccustomed to The Marvelous World of Windows (TM), a machine powering down could look suspicious, but don't worry, it's part of the standard MS strategy of rebooting after every update. You'll find that a powered-down machine is very soothing.
I deployed OpenOffice to our call-center agents, in order to facilitate communication with them.
This choice was mainly driven by cost: we couldn't afford the implementation of applications like SharePoint portal and didn't want to invest in license fees for the agents. Although most agents are not power users, they were very familiar with the MsOffice suite. Furthermore, they are allergic to change and don't do any effort to understand what could be the cause of that change, and how it can improve their work.
Our biggest worries were that 1) our templates would have to be reworked, 2) the agents would lose all productivity while fighting with this new application, and 3) the application would stop working.
These worries were not justified.
1) We had one template to rework, but it was already an approximation of a PDF document that was delivered without source by our supplier. The corporate templates were not used by the agents and they were mostly 'receivers' of the documents. Even if the memos became misaligned, they were still readable and agents didn't complain.
2) The agents required no training at all! As I said, they are light users and seldom produce documents. When they do, they use mostly the tools on the standard toolbar. The only issue was that we had to show them how to 'Save as...' when they had to share their documents with the back office.
3) The application was very stable. We were running it on Windows NT4.0 workstations (the ACD client runs only on NT...) and appart from a slow startup, the agents had no problem.
In conclusion, I can recommend using OpenOffice for a targeted group, that doesn't produce many documents and communicates the documents internally.
Slashdot Mirror
Tee author of this article puts quite some weight on the fact that commercial software can be audited by the company who produces it, but we must no forget that:
1) These audits must be conducted by third parties, in order to be trusted;
2) These audits are not done for free, and are added to the cost of the software.
The cost of auditing open-source software will probably have to be passed to the customers, for smaller projects. It could be split among groups of interested customers and benefit the whole community, and still remain cheaper than most commercial alternatives.
Of course, big customers (the Navy?) could implement their own auditing scheme and pay for it, and commercial software companies would probably open their source code to these priviledged customers. Unfortunately most small companies cannot afford to call Microsoft, or Accpac, or SAP, and force them to provide their source code and get an audit from a specific auditor. (And, as we saw lately, relying only on the reputation of such auditing companies as the Big Four can mean that they will give good results to their big golf buddies...)
Finally, customers like the Navy would probably get cheaper software if they would go for F/OSS alternatives and audit them at their own cost, rather than pay for audited commercial software.
I am not a lawyer and haven't read all of the GPL (fell asleep in the middle of the third paragraph...), but I would think that a French court having to judge a GPL-related issue would throw out only the parts that cannot apply, not the whole contract.
The objective of Law is to make things work fairly, and recognizing the parts of GPL that could be applied is how judges should see this principle.
This was a trivial accident, but my heart still squeezes every time I think of it...
A couple of months after getting my Commodore64, my parents offered me a Disk Drive to replace my slow, but faithful Dataset.
I then recopied my listings from the magazines and saved them to disk, for quick access to my favorite games.
I soon realized that all these programs (I had at least 12 at that time!) had to be organized, so I decided to rename my diskette from "Programs" to "Games". There was a rename option in the format function that did the job very well...
After I realized that all my games were lost, I got up, turned towards my parents (who were watching TV in the same room) and went to my bedroom, keeping a straight face.
Kids do have problems the size of the Universe... We just don't understand them!
Just imagine the look of your agenda after taking the metro at rush hour!
During the first attempt, I acquired a virus or worm before I could finish the Norton update (machine powered down)
I understand that for Linux users, unaccustomed to The Marvelous World of Windows (TM), a machine powering down could look suspicious, but don't worry, it's part of the standard MS strategy of rebooting after every update. You'll find that a powered-down machine is very soothing.
I deployed OpenOffice to our call-center agents, in order to facilitate communication with them. This choice was mainly driven by cost: we couldn't afford the implementation of applications like SharePoint portal and didn't want to invest in license fees for the agents. Although most agents are not power users, they were very familiar with the MsOffice suite. Furthermore, they are allergic to change and don't do any effort to understand what could be the cause of that change, and how it can improve their work. Our biggest worries were that 1) our templates would have to be reworked, 2) the agents would lose all productivity while fighting with this new application, and 3) the application would stop working. These worries were not justified. 1) We had one template to rework, but it was already an approximation of a PDF document that was delivered without source by our supplier. The corporate templates were not used by the agents and they were mostly 'receivers' of the documents. Even if the memos became misaligned, they were still readable and agents didn't complain. 2) The agents required no training at all! As I said, they are light users and seldom produce documents. When they do, they use mostly the tools on the standard toolbar. The only issue was that we had to show them how to 'Save as...' when they had to share their documents with the back office. 3) The application was very stable. We were running it on Windows NT4.0 workstations (the ACD client runs only on NT...) and appart from a slow startup, the agents had no problem. In conclusion, I can recommend using OpenOffice for a targeted group, that doesn't produce many documents and communicates the documents internally.