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.
A lot of the anti-Linux feeling is really directed against the anti-capitalist user culture behind Linux. We have difficulty looking beyond that to the fact that Linux is a great little OS that is exceedingly good at doing certain things.
Apple has a similar image problem, especially among FReepers. But guess what: after getting my Macintosh, I still like girls. I even still vote for the same candidates as I used to.
And that is something I just don't understand. Linux itself (nor the GPL) is not anti-capitalist. Granted, I have not hung out with a lot of Linux users, but I've never seen any anti-capitalism expressed by people who do use Linux.
Good to hear. Just remember: if the Gay Fruit(tm) pops onto your screen, don't stare into it's eyes!
8^\
Bad news: Pretty soon, you'll start singing showtunes and want to redecorate everything in salmon...
Technician, patch thyself.
Simply blaming the vendor for ALL of the problems makes about as much sense as blaming gun manufacturers for gun violence.
The thing that makes the computer such a valuable tool is the way it can be adapted to the needs of the user. MS, in its ponderous way, instead forces the user to adapt to the tool.
To follow your analogy, some guns misfire and jam with far more frequency than other guns. When that happens, I don't adapt my gun use to coddle the gun's shortcomings. I get a more reliable gun.
What's wrong with salmon? They go well with the moose head and the animal skin rugs. Looks great in the den above the fireplace.
I don't like Bush because he doesn't know how to take on the left. He doesn't know how to control spending. Reducing the national debt by 50% and passing a constitutional amendment that bans deficit spending in peace time would go a longer way to helping our economy than short term tax cuts.
And this so called War on Terror, why hasn't Bush taken the most logical first step which is to shut down the border, round up as many illegal aliens as the feds can find and in a civilized way tell them to get the hell out of our country? Bush has put us on a collision course with a new Vietnam and a significantly higher national debt. Don't get me wrong, I think his heart is in the right place, but his politics are many things, but conservative or libertarian they are definitely not. He runs on many issues closer to the left than the right.
America's problems began when Woodrow Wilson made it our "mission" to "make the world safe for democracy." The moment that we went from trying to set a good example for the rest of the world to pushing our way of life on others was the moment we put ourselves in the crosshairs of many of our current enemies. Pull our troops back from overseas, restore our domestic freedoms and let each nation find its way in the world.
Of course the Bush camp won't admit that the post-WWII rehabilitation of Germany and Japan is not possible in Iraq. The former chose to modernize on their own before we won the war. They had formed their own modern nation states, built their own industries, raised their own professional armed forces, the whole nine yards. All we did was modify their political culture. This thing we call Iraq is nothing more than an artificial nation created by the British and French to divy up the Middle East.
But enough of that, this is about to go way off topic.
Or maybe if they had the level of discressionary income that most Americans do they'd be able to afford it. Of course I agree that their culture is a big factor, but so is their dismal per capita income level.
'Scuse me for jumpin' in here, but isn't China still a communist country? And if it were, wouldn't that be a clear indication of "no incentive for producers"?
Like I said, you sound like a damn Democrat and you are serving the purpose of the Democrats whether you want to admit it or not.
I have no use for Democrats and those who help them, wittingly or not.
Not possible why? Arabs who relocate to America seem to have no trouble running businesses and doing science and engineering. They haven't been able to do these things at home because the jihadist culture prevents a capitalist middle class from forming. Their banks can't even lend money at interest. There won't be peace in the Middle East, with or without our presence, unless we do what we did at Nuremberg and Sugamo: hold war crimes trials that result in the fascists being taken out and hanged so that a peaceful industrial society can be created. We can't afford to do this on our own, and neither can we count on any help from the rest of the world. We will have to use local oil revenue to create a new middle class whose prosperity depends on capitalism.
What Bush won't admit is the amount of Saudi compicity in keeping fascism going in the region. As the fount of the Wahhabi movement, we're probably not going to solve this problem without taking over in Saudi and stripping out the financial base of jihadism.
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