On Sun, 2002-10-13 at 11:29, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I agree with Warren 100% on this one. It is silly to say that open > source would be competing on its own merits if you force everyone to use > it. That's a dictatorship of sorts. Its like saying Sadam Housein is a > great leader because he is *the* leader of Iraq.
Now I haven't looked at the proposed legislation, so everything I am about to say is protected by profound ignorance. It seems to me that the issue in requiring open source software has very little to do with techical merits, and everything to do with politics. This is the main source of dispute between the Open Source movement and the Free Software folks. A government has a responsiblity to provide information to its citizens, and this means at the least that such information cannot be 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. 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! -- **************************;~) * James (Andy) Stroble * Honolulu, HI * * http://www2.hawaii.edu/~stroble/ * c. 39 "No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed nor shall we go against him or send against him unless by legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." John, king of England 1199-1216 Magna Carta 1215