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Debate On Public Procurement of Open Source 22

Posted by timothy from the buggy-whips-come-to-mind dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A debate over at TechCentralStation has Jim DeLong arguing against favoring open source in government procurement contracts, and Julian Sanchez arguing for it." Sanchez' piece is especially well argued; I especially like his phrasing here: "it's not clear precisely what a 'hands off' policy means in a context where government is necessarily acting as a player in the market."
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Debate On Public Procurement of Open Source More

Debate On Public Procurement of Open Source

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  • James V. DeLong is, of course, uninformed. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alethes ( 533985 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:26PM (#4866351)
    Under the GPL, the licensee agrees not to sell or otherwise limit the reproduction of the software (though one is allowed to charge for costs of distribution, warranties, and services, as noted above in the discussion of Red Hat).

    If he had just bothered to read this [gnu.org],he might have had a little crediblity. Instead, he chose to believe Microsoft FUD.

    • I agree. I also like this:
      In addition, it is hard to see the cooperative effort working over a period of years in an environment in which hardware changes continually and software must be modified in response.
      I guess that's why we're still on the 2.0 series kernel.

      And another thing: Was it RMS that actually called the GPL "Viral" as DeLong suggests? I always attributed that label to Mundie...but I could be wrong.
    • If he had just bothered to read
      this [gnu.org],he might have had a little crediblity.

      Or even this [gnu.org].

    • It took a lot of effort to continue reading once he said this:

      But the elephant in the living room, seldom mentioned by OS advocates, is that the programmers must be supported somehow.

      The dude clearly hasn't done his homework. I've never known an "Open Source advocate" who wasn't willing to tackle this [non]issue head-on.

    • Exactly what I was going to say. He had a modicum of credibility until he made that blatantly ignorant statement. I was even willing to let his confusion about who coined the term "viral lecense" slide until I read that.

      The comment on the quality of MS support was really interesting, though, and he started to make some other good points, but failed to follow through. To bad he had to go and destroy his credibility like that, it might have become an interesting debate.

  • Strawman (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Meat Blaster ( 578650 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @07:09PM (#4866723)
    Like others, I was initially inclined to dismiss Jim DeLong's article on the basis that his research wasn't thorough enough to differentiate Craig Mundie's comments from Richard Stallman's. Upon further reading, I've decided instead to dismiss it because he's not factoring anything into his arguments besides the business perspective, and even that appears to be flawed when you consider the issue.

    For example, if the government needs an inventory system built, pays a professional to do it, and turns the results back to the public, then how is the quality of the system affected by the fact that the end result is open source? After identifying the groups with an interest in open source, DeLong spends the rest of the article explaining how such a system can only pale in quality over the long run in comparison to a commercial system -- without ever noting that the difference between open source procurement vs. commercial procurement will in most cases only determine whether or not the public will have access to the results of software design done for the government.

    On a related note, some background [capitalresearch.org] on the think-tank he works for. In some ways, this is like having Richard Stallman arguing the merits for copy-protection.

    • Excellent background link.
      These bozos are insane.

      One of my favorites:
      >PFF's Medical Innovation Project, headed by former Department of
      >Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, "seeks to replace
      >the current process by which new drugs and medical devices are
      >brought to market." To this end, it proposes transfer of Food & Drug
      >Administration safety and efficacy testing to private organizations.

      Let's work this out - suppose the 'private testing organization' rubber-stamps 'deadagra', an even more potent form of 'viagra'. However, 'deadagra' has some more unpleasent side-effects (say, sterilization?) that somehow didn't come out in the testing phase. How much do you want to bet that the 'private testing organizations' will be immune from lawsuits for that?

      These guys have a faith in the marketplace that is unfounded. There are two factors that they keep ignoring - first, the marketplace is never perfectly efficient, and second, that corporations can impact the regulatory environment for their benefit.

      I love how they still support 'more competition' in electrical power industry. They probably want to ignore California's experience, or they would state that there were loopholes in the law, and that the guilty parties will be punished. Don't buy that - first, the corporations are the ones that inserted the loopholes in the first place, and second, I see all of those companies keeping a larger chuck of their ill-gotten gains.

  • Why GPL? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dirk ( 87083 ) <dirk@one.net> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @11:17PM (#4868185) Homepage
    I have to ask, why is the GPL the only option other than proprietary? Releasing it as public domain, or a BSD style license (which is the license closest to PD) seems a lot more fair than releasing it under the GPL. The GPL is a great license, but it's main purpose is keeping the GPL around. It is great for people who want their stuff never to be closed source, but that isn't what the government is about. If software is created by the government, it is paid for by taxes. That should mean that anyone can use the software (and source) any way they want. If you want to use it in a GPL program, that's great, go for it. But if I want to use it in a closed source program (or even a BSD licensed program), that should be great too. From this perspective, the GPL is less a "free" license, and more of a "political" license. It forces people to do something specific with the code if they choose to reuse it.
    • The way I see it, the GPL works well because it protects the code that's already been paid for through taxes from becoming proprietary and therefore causing the taxpayers to have to pay for it again. It is true that a BSD style license will do that for the code in it's released state, and that's a good thing, but personally, I like the idea of the government working on and releasing software that must stay free.

      Unless I understand the concept wrong, releasing software to the public domain offers no protection at all - whoever wants to can come along and copyright the work and then it's lost to all others unless they are willing to meet that owner's licensing requirements, whatever they may be.

      • The way I see it, the GPL works well because it protects the code that's already been paid for through taxes from becoming proprietary and therefore causing the taxpayers to have to pay for it again.

        Um. BSD does this. The code that was originally paid for is always available. Any code derived from it (e.g. that was never paid for) may become closed. What's wrong with that?

        If vorbis was GPLed and I made a media player that played every audio and video format (including vorbis) I would have to release the source code to my player. Even though only a small part of it derived from GPL code. Does that seem fair? Luckily vorbis isn't GPLed for this very reason.

  • Every article... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by rm -f DMCA ( 605624 )
    ...the Open Source movement, which has some impressive strengths and has produced some significant accomplishments.
    Every article that does not favor OSS, Linux, etc. always includes such a disclaimer. How else to appear unbiased?

    Example:
    You dress nicely, however, you're ugly, dirty, smell bad, need to brush your teeth more, need take a shower at least once a month, and you have an all-around awful personality. But let me repeat, you dress nicely.

    Also, Sanchez points out "...the elephant in the living room, seldom mentioned by OS advocates, is that the programmers must be supported somehow."
    Ummm.... technical support? How about customizing software for a specific customer? Extra features? Many do that. Helping a company set up your product is usually very profitable. Example: Amazon using Red Hat? Sure, they could have downloaded Red Hat onto CDs... but they opted to have Red Hat employees help set everything up, and of course have ongoing technical support.

    Beyond this, a model that depends on free riding by corporations, individuals, and governments is not likely to be sustainable.
    See above paragraph.

    One last little rant: "btw"? How many real writers use abbreviations like that? (He used it while talking about academicians)

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