On Sat, 2002-10-12 at 22:25, Jimen Ching wrote: > >or Openly Sourced. It would be an equal shame to see OpenSourceAdvocates > >fail to take their message to the free market and allow it to compete on its > >merits. > > Can either you or Warren explain how these legislation prevent Open Source > or Free Software from competing on their merits? > > --jc
By mandating the use of Open Source Software, one would be ignoring three important factors: 1) Open Source isn't always the "best tool for the job". Are we going to force government to use an inferior tool? (Although some of these proposed legislations do allow for the use of proprietary software when there is little choice otherwise.) 2) By outright banning proprietary software, we didn't compete based on merit. Instead we used non-technical means to negate the competition process. I'd rather win fairly, and people choose our software sincerely. 3) Most societies aren't ready for the Open Source Software paradigm. The vast majority of IT service providers and developers have no clue what it is or how the community works. They will not transform overnight. I personally think that this attempt will fail in California and some countries, but other countries like Peru it may succeed mainly because of economics. They have large incentives to stop the constant exportation of IT cash to America, when it could be instead be used to stimulate their domestic economy. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the idea of everyone using Open Source Software. I just don't think this is a realistic way of reaching that goal at least in the USA. However... this is a good publicity stunt... and we will get a lot more attention because of it. Warren Togami [EMAIL PROTECTED]