Replies to paper on open source, games, and public policy [ip]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:31:11 +0000
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur () independent co uk>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Solveig Singleton on open source, games,        and
 public policy

Hi ...

At 9:30 am -0500 on 18/11/03, you wrote:

><x-flowed>---
>
>"FreeCiv" and its Discontents:
>Policy Lessons from Open Source Games: A Case Study
>by Solveig Singleton

Well, I guess that about wraps it up for explaining why there aren't many
open-source games.

So could someone explain what the *hell* this has to do with governments
adopting open source for things like office programs, which seem to get
open-source-developed fairly well?

One suspects the key reason why there's plenty of office software that's
open-source yet little games software is because:
-geeks need operating systems and office software they can rely on that's cheap
-geeks don't necessarily need games.

Seems like another example of CEI pursuing a strawman, punching it to bits,
and declaring itself a winner.
And I greatly enjoyed mentally replacing every mention of "innovators" with
"Microsoft". It read just the same, except in the latter way it made sense.

And by the way Apple, which could probably be called an "innovator", makes
the codebase of its OSX operating system (Darwin) available on an
open-source style basis. So the two aren't completely incompatible.

Oh, and just to finish - I can think of two very fine open-source games in
ongoing development: GnuChess and GnuGo. Both have very fine rankings on
the internet tournament sites where you can play against them or other
humans. There's freeware chess programs that are Master-level.

In short, a badly-constructed example which ignored the wider meaning of
the word "game". And since when was server software a game?


        best
        Charles
--
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
The Independent newspaper on the Web: http://www.independent.co.uk/
        It's even better on paper

---

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:43:00 +0000
From: David Tomlinson <d.tomlinson () tiscali co uk>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Solveig Singleton on open source, games,        and 
public
 policy
References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031118091732.022304a0 () mail well com>

A responce to:

> "FreeCiv" and its Discontents:
> Policy Lessons from Open Source Games: A Case Study
> by Solveig Singleton
> The passionate and often vitriolic debate between advocates of “open 
> source” software and “closed” or proprietary models is now drawing the 
> attention of policy makers.

I would question the use of games, as public policy rarely involves the 
purchase of games, outside the eductaional sector. But what disturbs me 
more, is that as a casual observer I am more aware of the issues 
surrounding Open Source Procurment than a Senior Policy Analyst, who has 
studied the subject.

Mr Singleton should be moe aware of the real issues associated with Open 
Source in Government, such as those outlined by Peruvian  Congressman DR. 
EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ, which is a carefully considered analysis, in 
contrast to Mr Singletons polemic (rather than reasoned policy argument).

http://www.opensource.org/docs/bill-EngTrans.php

Mr Nunez identifies the following issues:

    * Free Access of the citizens to public information
    * Perenniality of public data
    * Security of the State and of the citizens

I suggest that Mr Singleton, read the whole document as he may find it 
enlightening, and not monivated simply by anti-american or anti-microsoft 
sentiment, which is the motivation Mr Singleton attributed the promotion of 
open source in public policy.

Microsoft then commented with a letter.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/msFUD_to_peru.php

Which is more considered case than that expressed by Mr Singleton.

And to which Mr Nunez replies, restating the principles in another letter.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php

Lessons for Pulic Policy.

Mr Singleton does not appear to be aware of tyhe destinction between Open 
Source and Free Software. Open Source is a superset of Free Software and 
includes a variety of licences one of the most permissive is the BSD sytle 
licences

See: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

As opposed to Free Software, which is predicated on the FSF or GNU public 
licence.

http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

However, I have argued that the GNU Public Licence, in effect uses 
copyright to deny copyright. So not only does the licence place the 
software in the public domain, as BSD stlye licence s effectively do, they 
prevent appropriation by closed source software.

However neither impact, on the use of the software, the GNU public licence 
only impacts on modification and distribution of software. If you do not 
wish to publicly distribute the software, then the GUN public licence 
places no restrictions upon you use. (IANAL).

However the fruits of public money should be available to the public, you 
can make a choice can be made about the potential to commercialise the 
fruits of public speading, and an appropriate licence selected.

I am sure the argument has moved on since Mr Nunez, but I am not party to 
it, I could further deconstruct Mr Singletons arguments, but no one is 
paying me for my time. I would just like to thank Mr Singleton for exposing 
his views and advice to a public forum, in return I have expended half an 
hour of my private time responding in the hope of informing the public debate.

I am sure more considered and professional responces will be forth coming 
for more offical open source and free software sources.

Regards

David Tomlinson


---

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:51:03 -0800
From: Creede Lambard <creede () penguinsinthenight com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Solveig Singleton on open source, games, and public 
policy

Declan,

I can't help but think that the author of this article is making some
incorrect assumptions about the types of games that would be successful under
open source. This seems to be based primarily on the example of first-person
shooters and other run-jump-shoot type, graphically intensive games, and
relies as examples of failed open source models the work of Loki Games, which
were not open source at all, but were ported from proprietary operating
systems and sold as proprietary products with little open source content
apart from an installer written by Loki.

The author makes much of saying that artists will want to be paid, but then
mentions "NetHack," which contains no artwork at all other than crude
terminal graphics. GAMES Magazine recently profiled an Internet-based
community who create text-based games similar to those pioneered by Adventure
International and Infocom (and which trace their ancestry back to the
COlossal Cave adventure in the mid-60s). These games use no graphics at all,
but allow the player to imagine the setting from the text. Saying that these
games could not be produced because artists want to be paid is much like
saying that it's too expensive to produce radio drama because people want to
be paid to paint the sets.

Play-by-mail games such as those conducted by Flying Buffalo
(www.flyingbuffalo.com) are perfect for open source game creation. They again
require little or nothing in the way of graphics, just a database to store
all the information and produce the reports for the players, and email
capability for the players to negotiate with each other.

Games have been played by mail for as long as there have been mail and games.
Open-source clients already exist for chess, backgammon and go servers on the
Internet. A programmer can make these clients as simple (curses-based console
graphics) or as complex (with sound, background music and animated avatars)
as he or she wants to make them.

Perhaps the open source community simply hasn't found what games are best
suited to its particular way of operation yet. I fully expect that it will
eventually do so. Granted that Nintendo-Sega style games make money, but the
open source world isn't all about money. It's more often than not about
writing "software that doesn't suck," even -- and sometimes especially -- if
the person who wants that particular piece of software has to write it
himself.

And even after reading the article twice I'm not sure how we got from "you
can't make money with open source games" to conclusions about the role of
open source in government.

---

From: "Tony Healy" <thealy () siliconchic com>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
Subject: [Politech] Dearth of games highlights inconsistencies in open 
source model REMOVEEMAIL
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:06:27 +1100
Message-ID: <JOEGKPGBGLJACNIDAOHBKEBHCEAA.thealy () siliconchic com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal


Declan

Hargreaves' explanations for the failure of the open source model in games,
referred to by Solveig Singleton in her paper, are wrong, in my view.

Modern 3D games demand a high level of programming expertise and innovation
which, contrary to popular mythology, open source simply cannot provide.
Games also differ from other software in that the fast rate of change
renders older public and university code bases useless for competing in the
games market.

I concur with Singleton that the lessons of the games market, where
innovation is at a premium, highlight the dangers of the open source model
for government. I have written on this subject in the Australian context:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=616

The value of intellectual property for innovation has also been confirmed in
a paper by Sunil Kanwar and Robert Evenson, which used cross-country panel
data on R&D investment, patent protection and other country-specific
characteristics over the period 1981­95 to conclude that intellectual
property rights unambiguously spur innovation.

There is also an absurd implication in Hargreaves' explanations. To say that
the stumbling block in open source games is that artists won't work for free
implies that programmers will. I find it extraordinary that open source
advocates do not examine this anomaly in more depth. The true explanation is
found in the observations by Bertrand Meyer and Nikolai Bezroukov that
so-called free programming is often funded by taxpayers in one form or
another, and that open source essentially represents a distortion of the
market.


1. Shawn Hargreaves, Playing the Open Source Game, July 1999
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/games.html

2. Solveig Singleton: "FreeCiv" and its Discontents: Policy Lessons from
Open Source Games: A Case Study, CATO, 2003
http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2003-November/000227.html

3. Sunil Kanwar and Robert Evenson: Does intellectual property protection
spur technological change? Oxford Economic Papers 2003; 55:235-264
(Department of Economics, University of Delhi, and Yale University)

4. Bertrand Meyer: The Ethics of Free Software, Software Development
Magazine March 2000
http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/s=746/sdm0003d/0003d.htm?temp=OeMRYHq5pQ
(Needs free registration)

5. Nikolai Bezroukov: Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of
Academic Research, October 1999
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_10/bezroukov


Regards, Tony Healy

---

From: "Dave Howe" <DaveHowe () gmx co uk>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031118091732.022304a0 () mail well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Solveig Singleton on open source, games,and public 
policy
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:36:07 -0000

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> "FreeCiv" and its Discontents:
> Policy Lessons from Open Source Games: A Case Study
> by Solveig Singleton
> The implication that open source "belongs" to the public is a
> peculiar one,  since open source is not public domain.
> The open source license entails considerable obligations,
> the legal implications of which are sometimes unclear. For
> example, the GPL rather complicates the question of fair
> use and derivative works. (A derivative work is a work
> based on another work,  perhaps by including a part of
> the original work, or transforming it somehow).
A poor, but common comparison. GPL is not the only Open Source licence - an
example would be the BSD licence which Microsoft made use of to include
networking code released under such a licence in their Windows product (an
odd happenstance given their public aversion to the Open Source movement).
The more restrictive LGPL licence allows use of the technology and "source"
in a commercial product, with the stipulation that changes to the technology
must be shared with the community (note this does not mean the commercial
product, but improvements, bugfixes or changes to the technology that the
company is, after all, getting for free)

> Most importantly, the public would not be best served by forcing
> innovators to work with one model of intellectual property license.
Indeed - this is why the Open Source umbrella covers a multitude of
possibilities.
Another good example is the Mozilla licence - which allows GPL style "viral"
use of all the source by the OSS community *but* also reserves to the
originators all *commercial* exploitation of the source, either original or
contributed.  MySQL operates a similar duality - you may use MySQL as much
as you want, for free - *but* if you want to bundle it in with a commercial
product without giving away that product to all comers, source and all, you
need to commercially licence it from AB.


> If the purpose of  government research is to fund projects otherwise
> too risky for the private sector to fund, the researchers will need some
> flexibility to ensure they are rewarded for taking the risk.
What risk? if the government funds research, then all the costs and wages
involved are covered by the government, win or lose.
I can see why the *additional* incentive of being allocated the rights for
commercial exploitation of any successful research might attract more
"partners" than a pure research contract - but no other setup in the
commercial world works this way. If I go to a research company and ask for a
research team to investigate something for me, under contract, then I get
quoted a price and any results of that research belong to me. I don't need
to offer them costs+profit and *then* on top of that the right to sell
whatever they discover to the highest bidder.

> Privatizing revenue streams through
> intellectual property or other means often serves the public well.
Few IP restrictions serve the public well; the only real good Patents do is
to encourage public documentation of innovation in return for which the
holder is guaranteed exclusive rights to use and abuse that process or
method for a limited term. That was fine in the era of gentleman researchers
finding their cleverest inventions being taken and mass-marketed by the
nearest big business in the field without a penny of return; however, those
days are well past - commonly patents are taken out on "novel uses" of
existing technology (or even business methods!), on minor lab discoveries
without any known benefit (in the hope someday down the line something
similar can be claimed to be derived from that process) and every big
company now has whole filing cabinets full of patents purely to use as
weapons in licencing wars and raise the barrier to new entrants to the
field.
Few and far between are the bright new innovators who, without working in a
lab for a Big Company or in university, come up with a new and novel
invention that revolutionizes even a small part of the market.


>Procurement Policies should be Neutral.
> In several countries, including Brazil, China, Germany, and Singapore,
> government procurement policies have been rewritten to require
> preferences for open source. Proposed legislation in Oregon and
> Texas seeks to direct state officials to "consider" open source
> against proprietary software "on a value-for-money" basis. For any given
> software purchase, there might well be good reasons­ - including cost,
> quality, standardization,  and security requirements­ to prefer either
> open source or proprietary versions.
Indeed so. There are a wide range of factors to consider - Open Source is
never even effectively free; it always runs on hardware which must be
bought, requires support and maintanance (which may be free but which
equally may require you to hire programmers and staff only to give the
fruits of their labour back to the world) and generally as Microsoft are so
fond of pointing out, the payment made for a disk containing software is
only a single item in the overall cost.
That said however, odds are good that a functionally equivilent open source
package will be more cost effective than an expensive payware one - because
all other things being equal, you will *still* need to buy hardware, hire
staff, and pay for some support.  Many companies feel more comfortable with
support contracts on hand - even if some aren't worth the paper they are
printed on (nobody in the industry is foolish enough to guarantee to fix any
or all problems in software within a time limit; the few that do often have
little or no "pull" with the suppliers anyhow, and can only report problems
upstream and pray that the suppliers produce a fix before *they* (not the
suppliers) get sued for not sticking to the terms of their support
contract.)
With hardware this is much easier - you can afford to offer a guaranteed one
day fix if you are capable of replacing every component (shipping an entire
new machine) just to meet your deadline, and taking the old one apart for
salvage afterwards.
Similar support of OSS (which costs as much and occasionally more than
support for closed source products; at least with CSS you have the guideline
of the original sale price to calculate your 10% support offering :) is a
little simpler; no, if you rush a urgent problem out into "the community"
you aren't guaranteed a fix (and if you try pushing too hard, you might find
those who could help laugh in your face) but worst possible case, you can
hire your own programmers and pay them by the hour to, if not fix the
underlying problem, at least produce a problem-specific "cludge" to work
around the symptoms until they *can* fix the problem (or until the community
out there is insulted by the crudity of your patch and fixes the problem
themselves)

> Presumably, a competent software buyer can weigh all of these factors
> while making his decision. Note that it will not always be clear which way
> these concerns cut. For example, the idea that open source code is more
> secure than closed source code is open to question.
Indeed so. I will not get into that argument here, as both sides have good
and bad arguments, and both sides are usually too blinkered to see that the
other side has good arguments (while covering their opponent's bad arguments
like proof positive of failure, of course)

> While there are a plethora of worms and viruses directed at
> Windows because of the political proclivities of hackers,
  I would argue it is because it is an easy target - One of the major
factors in the efficiency of a burglar alarm and home security system is
that it doesn't matter as an absolute how good or bad it is - just that it
is better than the other targets the burglar has to attack.
  There are a vast number of windows systems out there whose owners have no
idea of security, will double-click almost anything that arrives in email,
and who prefer an email client that makes life easy and has pretty pictures
rather than one that makes life hard and is text-only.
  If that great number of people had Linux instead of windows, yes, we would
see the commonest viruses and worms attacking insecure and badly configured
Linux boxes. But for now, even a badly configured linux box is a harder (and
less common) target than a windows box.
  That isn't to say that it is entirely based on numerical count - the
commonest web server out there is Apache, yet the most commonly attacked is
IIS.  When apache is attacked though, the community is outraged, patches are
rushed out as fast as possible, and applied almost as fast.  When IIS is
attacked, largely MS will ignore the problem, suggest turning off whatever
"valuable feature" the attack relies on, or point to a patch they issued
some months previously and smugly claim that any now-suffering machines are
due to non-application of this patch. Well, in the latter case, yes - they
are. IIS admins are more lax than apache admins, more used to MS patches
breaking other things (so don't dare apply them in a production environment
until they have tested them on a spare server, when they have time) and
generally don't keep their IIS servers fully up to date with whatever
patches are available (this may have something to do with the carefully
fostered impression that MS servers take less skilled personnel to operate,
so overall have a lower TCO than unix - which unfortunately means less
skilled and more overworked admins trying to keep them safe and secure)
  To come back to the original point - Open source is not some universal
security bandaid (nor is SSL Vpn, IPv6, ATM or whatever else the vendors
sales force is pushing this week)

> this problem will not affect all proprietary software and might equally
> affect an open source program used by a political target.
  Unless tightly targetted, normally an attack is on low-hanging fruit. for
this reason, *ANY* monoculture is bad (I would write a paper on that, but
the last guy who did got downsized for possibly offending microsoft)
  An example that might get Commercial backs up a little less is the current
DNS system - largely BIND, and to a great extent the same version of bind.
A massed attack on bind (and there have been plenty of vunerabilities over
the years) could make the whole web near-unusable; there are alternatives,
and those little islands of sanity would survive, but as the DNS system is a
co-operative mesh of delegated authority, losing any link means losing
whatever is below it (so if for example .co.uk relies on BIND, then it
doesn't matter if you and microsoft.co.uk are both using Windows 2000 for
your DNS, your search will get as far as .co.uk and then stop. you won't
know how to reach dns.microsoft.co.uk so can't look up www.microsoft.co.uk
for your web browser or mailstop.microsoft.co.uk to send them email)
The only thing more important to the web than DNS is the BGP protocols used
by the ISPs to route traffic between themselves - but as that is not quite
as reliant on a single product, it could probably survive a massed attack
(ok, some isps might need to switch from cisco to juniper or vice-versa for
their border routing, but the world would recover relatively quickly)

> A government-mandated preference for one over the other simply leaves the
> end user with fewer options. Where government purchasing power drives
> the market, it might leave all users with fewer options.
  If this is true, surely it mandates that the government should move in
favour of open *standards* - rather than open source products.
  By promoting purchase of products that can communicate effectively with
all comers supporting the standard, they encourage not only the current
players to market their open source or commercial products to people, but
new players to produce new, but equally compatable products in the same
arena.
  Embrace and Extend disrupts open standards and attempts to close them to
competitors - which is good for the vendor who can achieve that, but bad for
everyone else (including customers of the vendor who find they are producing
output incompatable with software not produced by the same vendor, while
everyone including themselves can read the output of those who stick to the
standards)

> Those who absolutely cannot overcome their animus against Microsoft should
> remember that many other companies besides Microsoft produce
> proprietary software, many of which are not American.
Microsoft is a common target because of their repeated and well-documented
abuse of monopoly power.  IBM used to be the "big bully" on the block, and
in a few years it will be someone else. That most of these companies are
american is not surprising - most of the innovation in the computer world
took place in america, and amercian companies got a head-start that few
non-american companies can catch up with (there are exceptions - the most
secure firewall in the market is usually held to be Checkpoint's - which is
an israeli company.)
Anti-microsoft sentiment is seldom anti-american (which is another issue -
although the deliberate policy of shipping security-crippled products to the
rest of the world has partially led to the common impression that american
products are insecure).
Few buyers will deliberately search out non-american alternatives to
microsoft - while many will search out non-microsoft alternatives to
microsoft products (in the corporate email arena, microsoft's only two
serious competitors are lotus and novell - both american companies)

---

From: Zero Sum <count () shalimar net au>
Organization: Tobacco Chewers and Body Painters Association
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Solveig Singleton on open source, games, and public 
policy
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:54:05 +1100
User-Agent: KMail/1.5.2

Declan, I was rather sorry to see such an apalling mismash of truth and
deception publish with comment.  I hope you will publish this in response.


While there is much that Solveig has to say that is of interest,
unfortuately either by ignorance or obfuscation there are a number of
fundamental errors in his missive that somehwat undetermine his case.
It is posible that he may wish to reconsider some of them an producer a
newer, more accurate version...

> Policy Lessons from Open Source Games: A Case Study
> by Solveig Singleton
>
[snip]

>It tells a cautionary tale for those who would prefer open
> source out of ideology, without attention to results. Government
> procurement and research funding policies should remain neutral,
> preferring neither proprietary nor open source licensing.

The inherent assumption that all those who prefer open source do so out of
ideology is completely false.  I'll ask a question, "If Microsoft Windows
was a product produced in the PRC by PRC programmers, would you condone
it's use in American government institutions and defence areas?".
Caution, if you answer "yes", many people will question your sanity.
I very much doubt that any government is pleased to have its informational
infrastructure "0wned" by another country...

I personally vastly prefer Open Source.  But not out of ideology.

[snip]

> Finally, the lag between the development of open source games and
> proprietary games illustrates the relative slowness of the open source
> development process in completing very complex projects. It may be no
> accident that Linux lags behind the Mac operating system or Windows in
> developing consumer-friendly interfaces suitable for a mass consumer
> market, although the (originally proprietary) Unix model from which its
> overall pattern is taken goes way back.
>
Humm...  Take another look.  The recent releases of the KDE interface are
_more_ consumer-friendly than anything Microsoft or Apple have to offer.
I am selling systems based on precisely this fact.  I am selling home and
SOHO systems to people who are utterly astounded at the ease of use - and
the ease of modification and installation of new software.

Again, no ideaology here.  Purely a superior product.

> It should not be surprising that the open source business model has
> weaknesses as well as strengths. There is room in the market for a long
> continuum of types of intellectual property license. The English
> language is public domain, as are many common story lines and much
> creative imagery­but few good novels are. Government cannot and should
> not pick winners and losers in the world of technology any more than in
> the world of language. Policy should be neutral. The following
> recommendations would help keep it so.
>
Yes, policy should be neutral.  But by chosing proprietry environments it
is ensured that all further choices are not neutral.  Say you think that
"gnumeric" is the best spreadsheet program (I am not asserting the that it
is), if you have chosen a proprietry foundation, then too bad, it is too
late, your choices have been limited by the proprietry environment that
you chose.  While on the other hand, if you chose an open environment
there is no reason that you cannot use say, Excel if you wish (although it
may not be the latest and greatest version).

With regard to English being in the public domain, you have some
contrasting opinions about that.  Microsoft decided that the word windows
was not public domain.  Thankfully they lost their case.

> • Innovators Should Not Be Required to Make Government-Funded Software
> Research Open Source.
>
> Some have suggested that all government-funded software research be
> released as open source. Open source advocate Bruce Perens, for example,
> argues:
>
> “The people pay for government-funded research; its fruits should be
> available to all of them equally. We promote Open Source/Free Software
> licensing of all taxpayer-funded software and data as a means of
> distributing research results fairly.”
>
> The implication that open source “belongs” to the public is a peculiar
> one, since open source is not public domain. The open source license
> entails considerable obligations, the legal implications of which are
> sometimes unclear. For example, the GPL rather complicates the question
> of fair use and derivative works. (A derivative work is a work based on
> another work, perhaps by including a part of the original work, or
> transforming it somehow).
>
Either Mr. Singleton is extremely ignorant here or is being disingenuous.
The GPL is one of many, many Open Source facilities.

I suggest that he scan his computer for the word "Regent".  I he is using a
Microsoft product, he will find many, many occurences.  It would appear
that Microsoft developed their TCP/IP stack by starting with an Open
Source product (FreeBSD, I believe).  This isn't really surprising as they
were so far behind at the time that would never have caught up.
Microsoft probably owes its continued existance and certainly a great part
of its profitability from taking Open Source software and using it in
their proprietry systems with absolutley no "derivative works" issues.

Similarly for the Mac whose OSX is based almost entirely on Open Source
work.

This one really requires a retraction and apology from Mr. Singleton if he
is to retain any creedence whatsoever.

> Most importantly, the public would not be best served by forcing
> innovators to work with one model of intellectual property license.

> If the purpose of government research is to fund projects otherwise too
> risky for the private sector to fund, the researchers will need some
> flexibility to ensure they are rewarded for taking the risk. Privatizing
> revenue streams through intellectual property or other means often
> serves the public well.
>
Since the MS TCP/IP stack came from Open Source, the Mac TCP/IP stack is
part of OSX also from Open Source, there are very, very few people able to
use email that do not owe that fact to Open Source.

Researchers are normally paid salaries by some institution to do the
research.  I think that Mr. Singlton is being somewhat disingenuous if not
downright dishonest here.

> • Procurement Policies should be Neutral.
>
> In several countries, including Brazil, China, Germany, and Singapore,
> government procurement policies have been rewritten to require
> preferences for open source.

For very good and sound reasons.  Security, longevity and public
participation and ownership of the data being among them.  That a
goverment use and come to depend software that can be turned off remotely
by another government skirts close to the wrong side of the borders of
lunacy.  It is certainly not soemthing the US would tolerate.

> Proposed legislation in Oregon and Texas
> seeks to direct state officials to “consider” open source against
> proprietary software “on a value-for-money” basis. For any given
> software purchase, there might well be good reasons­including cost,
> quality, standardization, and security requirements­ to prefer either
> open source or proprietary versions.
>
You have a problem with this? If you do, why do you think taxes should be
wasted?

> Presumably, a competent software buyer can weigh all of these factors
> while making his decision. Note that it will not always be clear which
> way these concerns cut. For example, the idea that open source code is
> more secure than closed source code is open to question.

Please Mr. Singleton, you may open the question but few reputable security
experts would do so.  Security by obscurity is not security is the ususal
mantra.

> While there are a plethora of worms and viruses directed at Windows
> because of the political proclivities of hackers, this problem will not
> affect all proprietary software and might equally affect an open source
> program used by a political target.

I've been a hacker for over tthirty years.  I've never written a virus or
been on a system that I didn't have an invite to be in and I never will
knowingly do so.  Please get your terminology right and do not accuse and
insult the people who provided you with access to the Internet and that
capacity to write the email that I am answering. And please remember that
you used software derived from open source software to do it.

> A government-mandated preference for one over the other simply leaves the
> end user with fewer options. Where government purchasing power drives the
> market, it might leave all users with fewer options.
>
Please justify that ridiculous statement.

> Furthermore, some of the political support for building preferences for
> open source into the process comes from anti-Microsoft sentiment,
> compounded in Europe by more general anti-American sentiment.

I don't knowingly work for or with criminals.  The fact that Microsoft is a
criminal organisation was established by American courts, and as yet, they
go unpunished.  In much of Europe there are laws called against
"consorting" with criminals and criminal organisations.  It is actually an
arguable case that the use of Microsoft software and/or making a payment
to Microsoft is a criminal offense in much of the world.  and you write
this off as "sentiment".

> There are mutterings that should Microsoft cut prices to meet the Linux
> competition, it would be illegal in Europe. This does seem to be looking
> the gift horse of competition in the mouth. Those who absolutely cannot
> overcome their animus against Microsoft should remember that many other
> companies besides Microsoft produce proprietary software, many of which
> are not American. In any case, enshrining Company A versus Company B
> battles in general technology policy would allow a faddish tail to wag
> what should be a stolid working dog.
>
Here Mr. Solveig totally leaves reality for some sort of divinely inspired
message.  Please read carefully and try and understand.

You can't "cut prices" to compete with something that is free of charge.

It is possible to have a reasonable case against Microsoft.  A large number
of American state governments have done so.  That is not "animus".  I
realise that English is your second language, but there are plenty of
English dictionaries.

"Linux" is not a company.

Oh, and in case you assume that I am a "Linux wienie" (whatever that is) I
would like to make the point that there are 7 computers in my house for
the use of myslef and my family.  None of them run linux or are ever
likely to do so.  At least one of them is incapable of doing so.  It is my
belief that while it is demonstrably impossible to secure Microsoft
products, that that is pretty close to true for linux too.

> Conclusion
>
> The development of exciting ideas in software is not a matter of rote.

It certainly isn't.  Not is it something that MS does as part of its
regular bussines.  I have been in the industry of over thirty years and I
have yet to see a single innovation my Microsoft.

> The business is, as businesses go, still very young. As the years pass,
> many new models of developing and licensing software products will
> emerge.

Err, I think you must have left this in from something you wrote thirty
years ago.  I'm old, and spent my entire working life in the industry and
during that time many new models of developing and licensing software
products have indeed emerged.

> Some day, perhaps, someone will program a “software artist” to
> illustrate open-source games without the present problems of
> collaboration and risk. Tinkerers will continue to improve closed-source
> programs and general development models. There is no end to this
> process, no inherently-for-all-time best model, just as there is no
> “standard issue” computer user. In view of this, governments should stay
> well away from procurement and funding policies that prefer one model
> over another­proprietary, open-source, or anything in between.
>
Wrong.  The problem with proprietry products is that you surrender
ownership of your data to the owner of the proprietry format in which it
is stored.  I've already lost data to products "no longer supported".

What program you (or the government) chooses to use doesn't matter.
What is _important_ is that the data formats be open so that they remain
forever accessible.  Since proprietry products use proprietry formats they
should be avoided at all costs.

> Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and Senior Policy Analyst with the
> Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Project on Technology and Innovation.
>
> Notes:
>
> i. The “open source” development process includes releasing the source
> code of the software to the public along with the software; others may
> tinker with and improve on the code in turn so long as they in turn
> release their code, a process governed by the General Public License, or
> GPL.
>
If Mr. Singleton is as he claims a "Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and
Senior Policy Analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Project
on Technology and Innovation", he must know that the above is an outright
lie, as he either knows better or should know better (In Australian law
holding a professional position requires you to have knowlege of the
subject and "know or should have know" is a legal term).

What he says of the GPL is true, but that is only one of many, many
licences and without the benefit of those other licences it would be
unlikely that he would have the job that he has would exist. (follow the
money folks!).

--
Zero Sum<count () shalimar net au>   Nullus Anxietas Sanguinae

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
        John F Kennedy.

_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)