[PLUG] Linux in government ... still

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Oct 23 18:54:02 UTC 2003


---------- Forwarded message ----------
                             SuitWatch--October 23

  Views on Linux in Business

  --by Doc Searls, Senior Editor of Linux Journal

   The third item is an October 19 Associated Press story:
   http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/144617_source20.html by Justin
   Pope. Pope writes about the growing number of governments making
   open-source and open standards a policy for purchase and
   implementation of new technology. Making current news is Eric Kriss,
   Massachusetts' administration and finance secretary, who told the
   state's CTO to adopt exactly that policy when spending the state's $80
   million annual technology budget.

   And Massachusetts isn't alone. According to the story, the Initiative
   for Software Choice:
   http://softwarechoice.org "has tracked 70 different open-source
   reference proposals in 24 countries". And that organization is hardly
   friendly to open source. According to the Asian Open Source Centre:
   http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Initiative_for_Software_Choice.html
   :

     The so-called Initiative for Software Choice is an organization
     funded by a large international group of (mostly proprietary)
     software companies. These companies typically have a vested
     interest in the continuation of the proprietary software model. The
     organization's strategy is to put pressure on any government body
     that proposes open-source or free software be used in preference to
     proprietary software.

     The Software Choice part of the name can be considered to mean "we
     don't mind if you have the choice between proprietary and free or
     open-source software, but your government never should try to
     influence you away from proprietary software."

   The Software Choice Policy Tracker link is broken, as are about half
   of the links on the front page of the site. One that isn't broken
   brings up a .pdf version of a letter addressed to Mitt Romney,
   Governor of Massachusetts. It begins:

     The Initiative for Software Choice (ISC, www.softwarechoice.org) --
     a global coalition with over 260 software companies and
     associations -- is writing to express our concern that the open
     source software mandate recently announced by Secretary of
     Administration and Finance, Eric Kriss would incalculably harm
     Massachusetts public administration, its citizens, and its
     information technology (IT) industry and workers because it will
     eviscerate software choice presently available to the Commonwealth
     of Massachusetts. As a result, the ISC -- which is managed by the
     Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA, which
     represents 13,350 member companies including over 175 IT companies
     in Massachusetts) -- requests a meeting with your [sic] or your
     designee at your earliest convenience so that we may learn more
     about this policy and provide our input.

     The ISC strongly supports the development and adoption of all kinds
     of software: be it open source software (OSS), hybrid or
     proprietary. For this reason, we believe that mandatory government
     regulations, which give preference to certain kinds of software,
     weaken the overall software marketplace, biasing the choice of
     viable software options available to public authorities. Only when
     all software options are available can the specific needs of each
     IT project be met, driven by a flexible range of factors such as
     cost, reliability, security, functionality and availability. The
     ISC is aware of no barriers to unfettered software choice in
     Massachusetts. In fact, at this present time, the Commonwealth of
     Massachusetts can rightfully choose any type of software/platform
     it wants for its IT needs. As such, no legal obstacles stop its
     public administrators from going into the market and getting the
     best solution for a given challenge.

   The ISC is laying out a bit of a red herring here. That's because in
   many states technology often, by law or standard practice, is
   obtainable officially only through a procurement process that respects
   vendors as the only legitimate technology sources. In other words, you
   can only buy software and then only from vendors. As Tom Adelstein
   explained in his Linux Access in State and Local Government series:
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6990 on the Linux Journal
   site, work needs to be done at several different levels to open
   government to open-source procurement, whether the goods have any
   costs or come from vendors. A list of virtues involved in this process
   is provided by Bruce Perens through his Sincere Choice:
   http://www.sincerechoice.org effort, created in response to the
   Software Choice initiative.

   What gets lost here, on both sides of the argument, is that the terms
   proprietary and open source are neither opposite nor mutually
   exclusive. Take MySQL:
   http://www.mysql.com/ for example. The company fact sheet makes the
   matter plain:

     MySQL's company values and business strategy hinge on the open
     source software philosophy that software should be free and
     available to all. MySQL owns all rights to the MySQL server source
     code, the MySQL trademark and the mysql.com domain worldwide.
     Through this copyright, the company protects MySQL's integrity and
     reputation as a fully open source, superior database....

     MySQL's business strategy leverages the MySQL name and copyright as
     well as the company's deep expertise in the MySQL database
     software. The company's revenues are driven by the sale of
     commercial licenses, as well as strategic partnerships, consulting,
     customer support and other services. Commercial Licenses: MySQL
     employs a dual-licensing business model. The MySQL database is
     available at no cost under the GPL free software/open source
     license, and MySQL also provides commercial, non-GPL licenses to
     organizations that don't want to be bound by the GPL.

     With the availability of the commercial license option, leading
     companies are now using the high-performance MySQL database without
     the limitations of the GPL in the enterprise, as well as embedding
     MySQL with major software, hardware and other electronic devices.

     MySQL's dual-licensing structure supports its open source user
     community with a sustainable business model, and this community, in
     turn, is the engine behind the company's commercial business.

   In other words, it's free as in beer and speech, under the GPL; and
   yet it is completely owned and therefore proprietary. This means the
   company also is free to charge you for a license if you want the goods
   and services that come with that license and as long as what you do
   with those goods and services remains private and outside the scope of
   the GPL. This covers a lot of possibilities.

   MySQL's explosive success completely invalidates the beliefs that
   ownership and freedom are mutually exclusive and that you need
   restrictive licenses if you hope to make something valuable enough to
   sell. Scarcity and value are not tied to each other after all. Why
   make matters complicated for everybody? Expose your code, turn it
   free, let the world improve on it and sell the results in the form of
   software SKUs and paid relationships with customers of all sizes. Have
   it both ways, and then some.




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