[luau] News - Bruce Perens vs. CompTIA "Software Choice"

[Warren Togami]

This article well clarifies Bruce Perens' Sincere Choice initiative,
showing how he is opposed to CompTIA's Software Choice that pushes to
lock open source out of government in the name of "fairness".

http://www.idg.com.hk/cw/readstory.asp?aid=20021018003

 Open source advocate Bruce Perens, who last month left Hewlett-Packard
Co. (HP) after announcing his desire to become more active in promoting
open source software, took an aggressive stand Thursday against
Computing Technology Industry Association's "software choice" campaign,
saying it does not promote fairness, as CompTIA claims, and would lock
open source software out of the government marketplace.

CompTIA has "carefully crafted a message that appears to call for
fairness while actually supporting policy that would retain the status
quo of a strong bias toward proprietary software," Perens said during a
panel discussion at a conference here on the use of open source software
by governments. "They explicitly call for public entities to blind
themselves to the merits of one intellectual property policy over
another and they have the nerve to call that fairness."
...
 "The saddest thing about CompTIA's efforts is that an 8,000-company
organization allows itself to, in effect, become a mouthpiece for the
vision of a single vendor," Perens said. "The other side doesn't find a
real choice acceptable because on a sincerely level-playing field, open
source would win most decisions."
...
 The [Software Choice] initiative's backers are alarmed over the more
than 70 proposals calling for governments to buy open source software in
24 countries, including many that mandate open source software and
exclude proprietary software from the worldwide multibillion dollar
government marketplace, Kramer said.
(continued in article)