[LinuxBusinessHawaii] Re: [luau] OpenSourceAdvocates

[Warren Togami]

On Sun, 2002-10-13 at 12:44, James A. Stroble wrote:
> 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. 

The proprietary format issue is slightly different from Open Source. 
Some of these legislations like in Peru demand "Open Standards" for
government publishing of information.  Microsoft Word .DOC files from
government is completely unacceptable, even though OpenOffice works
fine.  I am 100% for Open Standards in government, not necessarily
mandating Open Source.


> 	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!

OSS that is superior to proprietary solutions does exist, unfortunately
we lack one powerful factor here: marketing. =(

I see the California OSS legislation as one thing: publicity.  We wont
win, but we will attract attention.

Warren Togami
warren at togami.com