Posted on 09/13/2003 7:32:43 PM PDT by chilepepper
Governments like open-source software, but Microsoft does not
IN MAY, the city of Munich decided to oust Microsoft Windows from the 14,000 computers used by local-government employees in favour of Linux, an open-source operating system. Although the contract was worth a modest $35m, Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, interrupted his holiday in Switzerland to visit Munich and lobby the mayor. Microsoft even dropped its prices to match Linux—a remarkable feat since Linux is essentially free and users merely purchase support services alongside it. But the software giant still lost. City officials said the decision was a matter of principle: the municipality wanted to control its technological destiny. It did not wish to place the functioning of government in the hands of a commercial vendor with proprietary standards which is accountable to shareholders rather than to citizens.
Worryingly for Microsoft, Munich is not alone in holding that view. Across the globe, governments are turning to open-source software which, unlike proprietary software, allows users to inspect, modify and freely redistribute its underlying programming instructions. Scores of national and state governments have drafted legislation calling for open-source software to be given preferential treatment in procurement. Brazil, for instance, is preparing to recommend that all its government agencies and state enterprises buy open source.
Other countries are funding open-source software initiatives outright. China has been working on a local version of Linux for years, on the grounds of national self-sufficiency, security and to avoid being too dependent on a single foreign supplier. Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons. This month, Japan said it would collaborate with China and South Korea to develop open-source alternatives to Microsoft's software. Japan has already allocated ¥1 billion ($9m) to the project.
Why all the fuss? Modern governments generate a vast number of digital files. From birth certificates and tax returns to criminal DNA records, the documents must be retrievable in perpetuity. So governments are reluctant to store official records in the proprietary formats of commercial-software vendors. This concern will only increase as e-government services, such as filing a tax return or applying for a driving licence online, gain momentum. In Microsoft's case, security flaws in its software, such as those exploited by the recent Blaster and SoBig viruses, are also a cause of increasing concern.
Government purchases of software totalled almost $17 billion globally in 2002, and the figure is expected to grow by about 9% a year for the next five years, according to IDC, a market-research firm (see chart). Microsoft controls a relatively small part of this market, with sales to governments estimated at around $2.8 billion. But it is a crucial market, because when a government opts for a particular technology, the citizens and businesses that deal with it often have to fall into line. (In one notable example, America's defence department adopted the internet protocol as its networking standard, forcing contractors to use it, which in turn created a large market for internet-compliant products.) No wonder Microsoft feels threatened—the marriage of open-source software and government could be its Achilles heel.
Policymakers like open source for many reasons. In theory, the software's transparency increases security because “backdoors” used by hackers can be exposed and programmers can root out bugs from the code. The software can also be tailored to the user's specific needs, and upgrades happen at a pace chosen by the user, not the vendor. The open-source model of openness and collaboration has produced some excellent software that is every bit the equal of commercial, closed-source products. And, of course, there is no risk of being locked in to a single vendor.
That said, open-source is no panacea, and there are many areas where proprietary products are still far superior. Oracle, the world's second-largest software company, need not worry (yet) about governments switching to open-source alternatives to its database software. But Microsoft is vulnerable, because an open-source rival to its Windows operating system exists already, in the form of Linux.
If Microsoft is indeed squeezed out of the government sector by open-source software, three groups stand to benefit: large consultancy firms and systems integrators, such as IBM, which will be called in to devise and install alternative products; firms such as Red Hat or SuSE, which sell Linux-based products and services; and numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for governmental users.
As a result, the company has been fighting back. Microsoft and its allies have sought to discredit open-source software, likening its challenge of proprietary ownership to communism and suggesting that its openness makes it insecure and therefore vulnerable to terrorism. The firm also created a controversial slush fund to allow it to offer deep discounts to ensure that it did not lose government sales to Linux on the basis of price. And Microsoft has paid for a series of studies, the latest of which appeared this week, which invariably find that, in specific applications, Windows costs less than Linux.
More strikingly, Microsoft has been imitating the ways of the open-source “community”. Last year, the firm launched a “shared source” initiative that allows certain approved governments and large corporate clients to gain access to most of the Windows software code, though not to modify it. This is intended, in part, to assuage the fears of foreign governments that Windows might contain secret security backdoors. Microsoft has also made available some portions of the source code of Windows CE, which runs on handheld PCs and mobile phones, to enable programmers to tinker with the code. Tellingly, this is a market where the company is a straggler rather than a leader.
Jason Matusow, Microsoft's shared-source manager, says that developing software requires leadership and an understanding of customer needs—both areas where proprietary-software companies excel. As for proposed legislation that would stipulate one type of software over another, it is anti-competitive and could leave users hamstrung with products that are not the best for their specific needs, says Robert Kramer, executive director of the Initiative for Software Choice, a Microsoft-supported lobby group. Microsoft will advance these views next week in Rome, where it is hosting the latest in a series of conferences for government leaders. But the signs are that many of them have already made up their minds.
Hey, I'm just pointing out MS's business model -- find a product of another company that is successful, then tie that product as closely to the Windows OS, then use fraud, coercion, FUD, predatory pricing, marketing, purposeful breach of contract, etc to destroy the original company, so that there's no danger of having to compete on equal terms.
Every product you just mentioned uses this same business model.
Indeed.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Yes, they can own a patent on the file format itself which means the style of formatting the data. They own many patents and have threatened the SAMBA team in the past with patent suits if they made SAMBA able to interoperate with Windows too well for MS' liking.
And guess what? SAMBA did exactly as you suggested, they sat down and wrote their own code and still got threatened. Microsoft has openly stated in the past that if open source .NET tools reimplement its proprietary .NET extensions like Windows Forms and ASP.NET too well that it reserves the right to sue the developers for patent infringement.
Patents are for those people who believe in a "fair marketplace" rather than a more or less hands off marketplace. The former draws a bit from market socialism....
Yes. You have no right to "own" an idea. That "right" was created by the government, it is not something you have a natural right to. Patents are a pox on a free market. They let little vermin sue the hell out of big producers and by the same token they let monopolies and big producers sue small competitors into oblivion.
If you want true competition, abolish the patent system and most federal regulations on production. That will make the barrier to entry much lower and will encourage excellence. The problems with the BS patents like "1 click shopping" are not extreme examples. They are the natural conclusion to the idea that you can own an idea. What we are seeing now is nothing more than the true nature of "idea ownership" taken to its natural conclusion.
Americans need to get over the idea of fairness in the economy. Life isn't fair so stop trying to make it fair.
I'll just have to come up with something different and better.
Ok then smart guy, how are your users going to transfer their data from Microsoft Office to your new Office suite? Copy and paste the data and pray that it is preserved in the clipboard accurately? Your "solution" which allows Microsoft to own the file formats they use works when the amount of data is small. What about businesses that have terabytes of data to transition? Your "solution" makes it functionally impossible for them to go out and buy a cheap product that is able to take the data from their Microsoft apps and turn it into data for a new product they just bought.
It is better to have too little government involvement in the economy than too much. I'd rather err on the side of economic anarchy than economic central planning.
Geezus, dude. Put down the Communist Manifesto and join capitalist society.
Patents are a rejection of the anarchaic free market capitalism of yesteryear. Why should anyone, from you to Microsoft, have to pay anything to use someone else's ideas? You build a better mouse trap and you should be free to sell it to anyone that wants it without paying out your ass in patent fees to the guy who came up with the original mouse trap.
As long as you have patents you won't have true competition. Congress has the authority to provide certain industries like the pharmaceuticals with select protection, but leave the rest unprotected. That's the other side of Article I, Section 8, Clause 3.
And speaking of Communists, how are you liking Bush's Keynesian deficit spending, massive handouts to old people who didn't bother to buy health insurance and/or save for it and calls for more and more cash to be thrown at Iraq? I'm sure there's a good rational argument for adding much of Iraq to the federal payrolls during a time of budgetary crisis.
China has never had political freedom and the current regime's founder was a diehard communist. But hey, someday you'll see the futility in comparing apples to oranges.
By comparing everything you don't like to communism, you make anti-communism seem like a cult, not a serious political stance.
I think your cause ("it grants no protection to intellectual property") is not the sole reason there is no Chinese "domestic software industry." Granted, it may contribute to it, but I think the stronger causes are probably the economic system they have (Everything belongs to the state), and the lack of true university-level education in that industry. There are undoubtedly more reasons, but I think the one you mentioned is kinda far down the list.
Again you pick a pathetic set of examples. Neither country has a government that functions at all. This country for much of its existance had a government that only minimally intervened in the economy and it didn't collapse. In the 1790s when our federal government was first being established we had virtually a state of anarchy compared to what we have today that's how little government we had. Guess what? We made it.
First of all, you don't know what you're talking about. Ideas can't be patented.
Then why is Microsoft allowed to own a patent on ASP.NET or Amazon allowed to own a patent on the idea of "one-click transactions?"
Second, it's in the Constitution.
No, only the power to provide for some form of IP system is in there. The Congress is under no constitutional obligation to setup such a system. It is completely their perogative. Congress could quite legally abolish every last trace of the system today if they wanted to and the IP interests couldn't stop them.
Then again you support a very strong IP system which itself flies in the face of much of the rest of the constitution. You value wealth over freedom.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen
The US Congress did not have the authority to pass most of what is in the DMCA. It does not have the power to ever restrict freedom of speech outside of the "clear and present danger" exception nor does it does not have the power to in any way regulate how someone uses IP in their house for their own use as that is within a state's borders and outside the feds' jurisdiction
I'll believe that when you denounce his waste of an administration.
Granted, Bush needs Congress to pass a budget
Congress needs Bush to sign the budget. Bush's limited vocabulary apparently doesn't include the word "veto." Bush has never met a big spending bill he didn't sign or for that matter actively campaign for.
(it's not fair to lay all of it on his shoulders)
Until he vetos his way back into fiscal responsibility, yes it is. He has the power to bring the Republicans' hog wild spending to its knees.
Bush needs to get us the hell out of Iraq. We have no responsibility to pick up the pieces and it is not his place to make the American people "make the sacrifices to do what is necessary, to spend what is necessary....." to continue getting our soldiers killed by a bunch of Islamofasicsts.
but I don't believe in deficit spending.
Then here's a novel thought: don't support the two party system. Vote for either the LP or the USA Patriot Party. If we would go back to a true capitalist system and republican foreign policy our federal govenrment would spend less than $200B a year total. If we'd just mind our own business and let other countries do their own thing our military could easily operate on a $75-$125B budget.
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