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.
As for aircraft, much of the worlds aircraft companies built airplanes by hand until WWII and automobile assembly line methods could be integrated into aircraft manufacture. The US again took the lead. In 5 years, the US made more aircraft in one month in 1945, than it did all year in 1940. Private companies (using taxpayers money) on an "open" production line.
That partition is the larger of two partitions, one big (around 32GB), one small (around 8GB) on the Master IDE hard drive. Then we also have two same-sized partitions on a second hard drive. All are formated FAT32.
We visit the hardware maker's website and download ALL the updates --- we do not use the hardware updates from Microsoft.
To Install W2K Pro, we do roughly the following:
(1) After the OS appears to have successfully installed from the CD, we restart four times.
(2) After the fourth restart, we set the energy savings; we do not use standby or hibernate --- the machine will either be ON or OFF and nothing else. Here, we also check the virtual memory page settings --- often we find that the installation of additional RAM has not properly been taken into account by the OS, so we adjust the setting(s) --- we'll usually put the "swap file" on one of the second hard drive's partitions.
(3) We then get the latest ROM upgrade and install it, followed by any related hardware updates from the maker.
(4) We install Norton SystemWorks, chiefly for Norton Utilities and Norton Anti-Virus.
(5) The Microsoft Windows Updates follow.
(6) Then we complete the installation of the maker's updates.
(7) For steps 5, 6, and later, after each software application's installation, followed by two restarts, we run Norton Utilities WinDoctor and then another restart.
(8) Every step of the way, we try to keep it as clean an installation as possible.
I have seen hardware tests completely miss bad hard drive or keyboard or mouse connections, but usually, these kinds of marginal connections are indicated during startup --- failure to repeat "the same old startup."
In your place, I would install another CD player and read the install discs from it.
This is because private ownership stimulates innovation.
It's not clear what you are trying to say here. You start with a false premise, the old canard about the Japanese not being able to invent anything (the second-largest holder of U.S. patents is a Japanese company, Canon).
From there you proceed to tell us that the advantage we have over these other guys is the idea of private property. What on Earth makes you believe that the concept of private property is unique to the U.S.? The Japanese had a whole generation of entrepreneurs (Honda, Matsuda at Mazda, Akio Morita at Sony, etc.) who followed trajectories very similar to those of Henry Ford or David Sarnoff. All built very large private corporations and became fabulously wealthy men, just as any successful entrepreneur here would.
There's nothing wrong with a little rah-rah, but lying to ourselves about our competitors having weaknesses that they don't have is the first step toward getting complacent and losing to them. The compact disk was invented by Sony and Philips; the DVD by a British company. We certainly have our share of ideas, but let's not kid ourselves: ideas can happen anywhere.
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Actually, there is. WHY doesn't Apple release a version of their new "Unix-based" OS that runs on Intel hardware?? There is a lot of information that says they have developed one.
More features than users WANT. I have been running Windows since W3.1, and have really not had any trouble with it, and have not seen a crash in years and years- Just by excercising common sense about what I allow to install and run.
But XP's embedding of the unwanted Messenger, among other things, like Media Player's defaults, etc. have made me no longer trust MS, and I am no longer comfortable running their programs, simply because many of the bloated new "features" were NOT written for ME, or MY use...They were written for other reasons, some of which I consider sinister.
Two machines here converted to RH9 Linux, five to go.
Could you kindly explain how a company that distributes software essentially for nothing can out-corrupt a company like Microsoft with some 40 billion dollars in its bank account?????????????
That is quite possible.
It sounds like you've bought the weird MS propaganda that Open Source is some kind of Communist thing.
No my friend, it is apparently for you that these are the only sources of information. I simply know some industrical organization and economics of R&D. This is where, I said, the issue belongs. Perhaps you should postpone further arguments until you avail yourself of that knowledge.
1. No, Adama Smith did not address the problem of innivation in a monpolistic market.
2. Your view of monopoly as something negative is a common misunderstanding based on what you (mis)heard in Economics 101.
3. A dynamic monopoly may produce results completely different from what you expect.
4. Our society celebrates monopoly and PROTECTS thousands of monopolies each year in the form of patents.
Read something beyond Adam Smith. You'll be a real sage then.
"Cannot invent aything" is a strong statement. You made it; I did not. Yes it is an old fact that the Japanese have perfected the already existing ideas, and that in itself requires innovation. That innovation was marginal (and a lot of marginal increments can produce a large, even infinite integral, as you know), and you cannot possibly compare any of their corporations to our automobile or aviation in their respective infancies.
As to the private property, again, I did not say that it is unique to the U.S. -- you assumed that. The ease of business formation is still unparalleled in the U.S.
What also had in mind is that, placed in the public domain, the servicing of a product acquires feature of a public good. I do not think that, say, N years out, the provision of support for it will not fizzle. I have more confidence that a private good will be provided by the market.
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