On Mon, 2012-01-09 at 08:42 +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: > 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"?
There are two points: a) they need to show to the electorate that they care, b) solve the problem. If they can do both - great! If not, you can imagine in which of them they will invest their effort. They could buy whatever software that has "security" in its name and the more money they will waste, the better they will demonstrate their devotion. It is exactly what Matrix did - they bought a company that deals with credit cards fraud several days ago. That company provides no technology to prevent what happened, but it doesn't matter since most of the folks don't understand what it is all about anyway. However Matrix will get new clients because of this deal. > 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) That's exactly what I've said in my last email - the money they spend on software they should invest in educating people. > 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. 1) I mentioned governmental IT infrastructure and not that of private companies. This will influence the private sector also to some extent however. But anyway local market in Cuba is not much bigger than the Israeli one. 2) There is no problem to develop proprietary software based on free software. We ( avtechscientific.com ) do just that using exclusively free tools. Even if we are asked to do smth. for Windows we port our apps to it without leaving Linux. > > > 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 :( > It's more about attitude rather than about particular software. If you use FOSS you always check what happens with other similar projects, so you have software that suits you best. This widens your horizon and you are always up to date(this crucial for security related issues). However if you have learned smth. AND paid money for it - there is little chance you will move to smth. else. So there is no reason to check available options and you stay with one app for years. But most important point is : FOSS is good/secure AND free of charge so government is obligated to choose it in order to save tax payers' money. Zeev _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
