From that Washingtion Post piece that delegatrix mentioned a couple of days ago:
Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign.and this:
But the effort may have backfired. A May 10 report prepared for the Defense Department concluded that open source often results in more secure, less expensive applications and that, if anything, its use should be expanded.On the one hand, we want the US Government (especially the Pentagon) to use the most secure systems possible. It would be nice if those were also the most cost-effective systems around. Cost is not a factor in the Pentagon budget, but it is an issue in departments of government.
...
"Banning open source would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security-focused DOD groups to protect themselves against cyberattacks," said the report, by Mitre Corp.
OTOH, the US Government is a very large IT purchaser, and if most of the software the government uses is open source, then a lot of commercial software vendors are going to see their business models evaporate. While there's a benefit to reducing the total IT budget outlay (reduced taxes; better spending of current taxes), there's also the issue of supporting American software companies (who employ lots of people and contribute to the economy). Factor in the trickle-down factor as other IT buyers follow suit (state and local governments, large to small businesses).
OTGH, the US Government doesn't exist primarily to subsidize American industry (although sometimes it's hard to tell...). I for one am certainly uncomfortable with a policy that actively grows the $40 Billion MSFT warchest with federal funds simply because the alternative would be "lost jobs and lowered tax revenue". But there would be a very serious impact to the software sector if the US Govermnent were to switch en mass to open source. But there's also a very compelling argument that the money spent on IT wouldn't go away, it would just go somwhere else -- much like no one complained when typewriters were replaced with computers, or mimeographs were replaced with photocopiers.
Damn, I hate politics...
But won't Office just become commoditized? Not any time soon. Microsoft has a huge lead in stability and features. Anyone who has used Sun's ShitOffice knows just what a crock it is. What a farcical abortion of a piece of software it is. What a frustratingly slow and buggy bucket of shite it is. Ahem. Anyway.
It's yet to be proven that open source builds anything but good infrastructure (operating system, server software). I believe that commercial software has considerable advantages over open source when it comes to responsiveness, usability, and other customer-centered development. I've seen very few innovations in end-user open source software, but a lot of copying of proprietary software innovations.
--Nat
Re:Open Source
ziggy on 2002-05-29T17:15:26
How do you define infrastructure? A law firm would certainly include Word[Perfect] in that mix.It's yet to be proven that open source builds anything but good infrastructure (operating system, server software). I believe that commercial software has considerable advantages over open source when it comes to responsiveness, usability, and other customer-centered development.I tend to look at it differently; it's about age and scalability. Operating systems and mail servers are old problems dating back to the 50's and 70's. They're reasonably simple, self-contained problems and have been very well studied even at the undergraduate level. Graphical user interfaces date back to the mid-80's (modulo the odd research project here and there), and are a much more complex problem. Hell, they are the problem that pretty much caused Object Oriented Programming to be invented. And we're still learning about the benefits, limitations and proper use of OOP.
Open Source office tools will win, but not this week. It's not just because Open Source will always win when given enough time (unless the sun going nova is really a limiting factor). It's also because the eco-system around office packages is changing. It used to be that office apps competed against each other based on price+features. Now it's mostly about file formats. Microsoft's upgrade treadmill and never-ending Critical Update patches are changing that to be about fewer features, security, usability and file formats. StarOffice is simply fighting the wrong battle -- no one truly cares about the Anyone But Microsoft solution to get the job done. But if StarOffice does crack the file format nut, it'll be a very important stepping stone to a full open source office solution.
That statement is still mostly true about basic infrastructure software as well. The number of purely open source innovations is rather small when compared to the number of features that copy something proven elsewhere.I've seen very few innovations in end-user open source software, but a lot of copying of proprietary software innovations.
