On Sun, Jan 08, 2012, Zeev Pekar wrote about "Re: Social Justice II. Digital Revolution 2012.": > group of the society. The issue with the credit cards created pressure > on the government and I think they need and want to undertake decisive > steps in order to show that they care however I doubt they know what to > do. I'm afraid they will buy some ugly expensive software (from your tax > money!) instead of going FOSS and investing money into peoples'
While I'm (as most of you know) all for free software, you can't convince people with flawed logic. How is the latest credit card list leak going to cause the government (!?) to buy some "ugly expensive software"? Software to do what? Which free software would you like the government to use, or develop, instead? According to the reports in the media (I have to admit I have no direct knowledge in that matter), at least some of the breakins were caused by substandard system administration on the infiltrated sites: Credit-card databases were hosted on the same machines as unsecure services, and once the perpetrator broke into the unsecure service, he would use some local vulnerability to take over the rest of the services on the same host. Such breakins could have happened, and have happened, on proprietary and on free software. I think that to suggest that free software alone would have saved the day (without educating system administrators as well) would only make us look like crackpots. > expertise thus leaving capital at home. Considering the background of > summer protests the opportunity for the national wide migration to FOSS > is quite unique and it is a pity to miss this. If the things will You're right that *in general*, free software can help keep programming jobs in the country, because when one needs some bug fix or feature, he can pay a local programmer to do it, rather than needing to pay the company who sold the software - usually a foreign company - to do the fix. However, the situation in *Israel* has an added twist: The local market is tiny, and most of the Israeli hightech sector sells its (nonfree) software abroad, not locally. So if the world moves to free software, it is not clear if this will really benefit the Israeli hightech sector. My belief is that it will, but it's not suprising that many people will think it won't. > FOSS is of good quality and secure (providing proofs - USA) and how it > can then be free of charge (see Cuba and Peru). FOSS is good quality and secure, but so is a lot of well-installed and well-maintained proprietary software. I'm afraid your arguments here are not convincing :( -- Nadav Har'El | Monday, Jan 9 2012, n...@math.technion.ac.il |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |It's fortunate I have bad luck - without http://nadav.harel.org.il |it I would have no luck at all! _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
