Open Source Preference
I saw yet again another article about open source in other countries.
Why do I care? because China, Japan and Korea (IIRC) are developing their own official distribution of linux. Germany is implementing a linux conversion of a whole bunch of machines. I see one of these every few months for another country. Even the state of Mass has recently passed legislation stating that all future documents need to be done in the Open Document format (a format MS refuses to support, despite the fact that they helped design the format).
Open source is growing. Let’s do a little mental excercise. suppose that the top 10 richest countries continued to use MS, and the rest moved on to Open source for financial reasons. What would happen?
Well, the OSS countries would be able to work together to increase the value of their software. As more countries used it, more bug reports would be filed, and the general quality of the software would improve. those countries who could barely afford MS products would have cash freed up to hire their own people to make changes to the software. They will become more independent. Their own people are suddenly more valuable, and can take work from over seas. It’s not like software development requires you to sit in a small room with a boss looking over your shoulder every 10 minutes. This could make outsourcing a viable option for every business, large or small. The system will continue to feed itself, gaining better developers, and providing better software. Where will it stop? Who knows, but I get the feeling we’re going to get a chance to watch.
And for those who are worried about my outsourcing comments and are convinced OSS is bad because of it, think of this: MS are the same people that brought you Frontpage, Access and Visual Basic. They made programming and web development “simple for the masses” meaning every drooling middle management goon can now design a database, create a program and make a webpage about it. Where do you fit in? oh, you get to fix their frontpage code 2 years down the line when it “loads too slow” because it’s 2 Megs in size.
Tuesday 27 Sep 2005 | Jesse Morgan | Open Source, Rant, Linux
It is not just financial, these governments have a valid concern about being locked out from their own content. Imagine the Republic of Morgajel not being able to update the master copy of their constitution because the Microsoft sales rep is too slow returning calls to order the yearly (mandatory) upgrade for “MS Office: Small Country Edition,” which auto shuts down after using it for one year. To them this is more scary than the $400/computer licenses.
This scares Microsoft because they like to be the only game in town, and it is hard to sell bulk licensing when the software itself does not have an incremental cost.
Yup, not to mention the rumors that have been going around for *years* about the NSA/FBI/CIA/SS/DHS making microsoft put in back doors for them. If the source isn’t open to them, how can they check?
This was actually a big concern what, 5 years ago? They actually let the chinese gov’t see their source code to prove they weren’t misbehaving- or parts of it at least.
Now, true or untrue, it’s still a concern. suppose, from their point of view, they go to war with the US and MS really HAS put some sort of auto-locking kill switch in there. Imagine if their infrastructure was locked in the middle of a war? Bad news for the guy who gets it run on their machines. Now, if say this country was to find out about the switch, and use it against the US? would the US know it’s there? some branch somewhere would, but as we’ve seen in the past, the US gov’t isn’t exactly good at communicating with itself. Then we get pwned with our own software.
But that’s a very slim possibility. I thought I was going somewhere with this.
Ah, yes. lets not forget about winXP activation. it would suck to be at war and not be able to re-activate your software when you decide to upgrade.
*continues to mumble*
You commies are all alike. Talking up the commie water. Drinking the commie kool-aid!
Mandrake! Get over here and feed me this belt of ammo!
I think that what you said is true about 3rd world and linux. But not about MS products and newbs using them. There are just as many cluster fuck apps written on linux or mac. Access is a piece of shit, FP is a joke. But VB, although I dislike using it, is powerful enough to write probably 95% of everything you need on windows. If you do it wrong, well that’s your dumb ass fault. But it’s that sense of ease that get’s people into trouble.
shedao, I mention them because I’ve had situations where either a) I’ve had to fix someone elses mess(check the wayback machine for seadent.com) or I’ve had management ask why it was taking so long to create an intranet when he could whip up a page in frontpage in 20 minutes.
You know it’s crap, I know it’s crap, but they don’t know, nor do they care. but it gives them the illusion of simplicity, and that’s where the problem is with it.