[Gllug] DTI/Government Open Source Software consultation

[James de Lurker]

Thu, 8 May 2003 09:34:42 +0100 Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 08:39:56AM +0100, James de Lurker wrote:

>>That factor is probably the biggest risk to the interests of Open Source
>>in government, by this perspective. The GPL ( and other Open Source 
>>variants ) must be perceived as an entity that requires fair representation 
>>to compete with proprietary IP owned solutions. Who is the "owner" exactly?
>>How will they be commercially disadvantaged by lack of representation?

>>That is possibly the line of any counter arguments that must be made.
>>Their duty of care towards public funds demands a proper hearing.


> There's two points here.
> 
> Firstly Red Hat, SUSE and others are quite happy to accept contracts
> to carry out specific work, and they (Red Hat anyhow) will release the
> results under a GPL or GPL-compatible license. However, that's just
> work for hire with a twist.

Quite - and the commercial model is so new and "unproven" that it falls
below the radar screen of most business people. What? You _give_ _away_
IPR?? <*Shock, horror*> The fact that IPR is now a joke, and has been
perverted from its original intentions (thinking patents, particularly)
to a game that only international corporations and independantly wealthy
individuals can play with big firms of lawyers is another factor.

But the Likes of RedHat and Suse, and also IBM mean that corporate buyers
_do_ have an entity that can be contracted with for business purposes.
The strengths of Open Source in the sense of avoiding vulnerabilities
of being a fixed target for undue influence must not themselves become
a weakness when entering the commercial marketplace.

Time will tell if that becomes a business model that is seen to be
effective, and attractive, versus the proprietary ones that are the
only game in town. To the people of influence making strategic decisions.


> The second, broader point, is I have absolutely no problem with
> Microsoft picking up all the big government contracts, **provided**
> that they are forced to release their work under a GPL license. [..]

Unfortunately the term "Open Source" has been embraced and extended,
insofar as the important non-technical decision makers are concerned.
Microsoft succeeded in muddying the waters with their offers to "make
code available for inspection". The fact that you cannot independantly
_build_ any complete system is conveniently omitted. As are NDA terms,
which cripple peer review options.

Ross Anderson's report that there is no real security benefit to be had
from the inherent "peer review" options of open source code, as opposed
to proprietary codebase generation didn't really help matters much, either.


> Does the MoD buy tanks with secret designs and the bonnets[1] welded
> shut? Or does it insist on getting the designs and having their own
> people able to maintain them, both at base and in the field?

> [1] Actually I have no idea if tanks have bonnets, but you get the
> idea.

Actually there probably is quite a lot of kit around that relies upon
security by obscurity, in part. Crypto, authentication, EW stuff often
has to treated as a "black box" to the extent that much of it is tamper
protected, and will self destruct code (and even hardware) if examined.


In the true recursive spirit of GNU, I suspect that this thread might
have been inspired by yesterday's Slashdot - making a case for Open
Source. Some of the comments are interesting. So here is the link:

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/05/06/2127253.shtml?tid=117&tid=99&tid=187

-- 

   -- James

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