[LinuxBusinessHawaii] Re: [luau] OpenSourceAdvocates

[James A. Stroble]

On Sun, 2002-10-13 at 11:29, hattenator at imapmail.org wrote:
> I agree with Warren 100% on this one.  It is silly to say that open
> source would be competing on its own merits if you force everyone to use
> it.  That's a dictatorship of sorts.  Its like saying Sadam Housein is a
> great leader because he is *the* leader of Iraq.  

Now I haven't looked at the proposed legislation, so everything I am
about to say is protected by profound ignorance. It seems to me that the
issue in requiring open source software has very little to do with
techical merits, and everything to do with politics. This is the main
source of dispute between the Open Source movement and the Free Software
folks.  A government has a responsiblity to provide information to its
citizens, and this means at the least that such information cannot be
tied up in proprietary formats. As well, a government must be able to
ascertain the integrity of the data it uses, which again means that it
should have access to the source code of the programs that process that
data.  It is not surprising that other countries are leary of being tied
to proprietary software that may contain backdoors, spyware, etc., when
they are not allowed to examine the code for themselves. 
	Forcing the use of open source software in the interest of freedom is
no different from requiring corporations to open their books and to be
subject to audits: no doubt it would be more efficient to just trust
them, but there is a public interest that overrides efficiency. I think
we should prefer open source to closed code even if it is technically
inferior, not that it is!
-- 
**************************;~)
*  James (Andy) Stroble
*    Honolulu, HI      
*
*  http://www2.hawaii.edu/~stroble/
*


c. 39 "No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned,
or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled,
or in any way destroyed nor shall we go against him
or send against him unless by legal judgment of his
peers or by the law of the land."
                  John, king of England 1199-1216
                        Magna Carta 1215