Requiring Software Freedom 356
An Anonymous Coward writes: "CNET is carrying a story about the increasing momentum that Open Source software and 'Software Libre' are gaining in Latin and South America and Europe. A certain company from Redmond WA USA is mentioned several times in the article as the impetus to free foreign governments from certain onerous licensing agreements (not to mention the cost savings involved). It is interesting that some of these governmental entities are actually requiring the use of Software Libre, not just encouraging it. Maybe it's time to visit Rio?"
Economics of Software Freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
Before starting any discussion of economics, I need to pin down what I mean by ``benefit to society''. Underlying the attitude of this essay is the belief that a computer is just a machine, and the benefit of a machine is derived from its use to do things. From this point of view, the main benefit to society that software brings is that it allows users to run programs to do things that they regard as useful or entertaining. There is a clear economic component to this attitude: benefit to society can be regarded as the production of programs that users want to use. This benefit is hedged about usual common-sense provisions, of course; it's hard to argue that virus production is of benefit to anyone other than security experts.
An alternate view regards computers as ends in themselves. I'm someone who enjoys theoretical computer science and also enjoys tinkering with my systems for the pure love of it. So this view is something that I espouse in deed, if not in word. This point of view is of benefit to society in the same way that science, art or literature is; it expands our horizons and makes us mentally richer and more cultured human beings. This view is perfectly reasonable -- I also think that it is a view underlying many of the attitudes of the FSF. However, in terms of wider benefit to society, it is likely to be eclipsed by the purely utilitarian considerations of the economic viewpoint.
Software Libre -- A Compromise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, the freedom to do what you will with the software. Who wants their government's (and by extension their) rights to use software restricted by a multi-national headquartered in another country?
And Secondly, the price is right. I'd rather see my tax dollars go towards quality software and support, -and- other services, than into MS's pocket for proprietary software that doesn't work (anyone remember Russia's lost nuclear materials? thanks MS SQLServer.)
A natural course of action (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what true effects this will have on the quality and quantity of free software.
Where's the freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It does work the other way around... (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember, part of the open source definition [opensource.org] is that software must be for anyone, whether it's a pro-freedom organisation or a bunch of international terrorists.
If you were to start saying that "It's free, but only to people we like", you're becoming worse than that certain company. AFAIK, they'll sell to pretty much anyone...
Micros~1 and the OPECkers (Score:2, Insightful)
Software is... like drugs.... (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, that's the business model for software, isn't it? (shareware, etc) I am not saying Microsoft is evil -- they are doing what is good business for them, and to someone who does not have money, that may *seem* evil. But... it's not. It's just the capitalist economy at work, folks...
So... I think these countries are smart... They see the large hook in the eventual future... IT doesn't have to be just Microsoft -- it can be any first-rate, high-priced software company. If you bite now, you will be hooked in and be forced to pay high license costs forever... It's a good business decision -- if you don't have money, it's much better to use free software. If you really want to make it a point, you make it a law.
Honestly speaking, Linux and other free software works just fine. Give 3 complete newbies 3 different boxes (Mac, Win, Linux)... I've found that they adapt just as quickly/slowly, and the bundled software on each platform works quite well for all of them. (the only time you get messed up is in opening Win stuff on other platforms, but that's really not anyone's fault but M$) Forcing free software on a country is a rather interesting tactic, but it sure seems a lot better than being locked down to an expensive license contract -- especially if I don't have money to begin with...
Also an enormous trade imbalance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Requiring The Use of Open Source Software (Score:1, Insightful)
A lot of it depends on what people are doing, too. It isn't really any harder to compute stuff in Gnumeric than Excel; it probably doesn't even require a significant amount of training to get people to switch. Then in addition to not paying licensing fees, they're not having to pay consultants like you to come over and fix things every time a macro virus does something unpleasant. Not cost effective?
Another thing to think about, though, is that training still happens somewhere, and the labor force will eventually adapt to whatever they need to. (Hell, they adapted to Windows! And it really wasn't all that long ago that people didn't need to know Windows. They had to know WordPerfect instead.) When the world is beginning to switch from horses to cars, the labor available 5 years later is all going to know how to drive. Likewise, if one of the conditions for getting a government job is that you have to know how to use Gnumeric, then within a couple of years, all the applicants are going to know how to use Gnumeric. It doesn't cost any more to train people for one product than the other, so whatever training costs there are, are a one-shot thing for the switchover. When you look at some of the horrible costs associated with not switching, that one time expense gets recouped pretty fast.
Re:Economics of Software Freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
If it does not then, well, you get the picture... "
This, of course, assumes that people only make rational buying decisions, based on which product offers the best value for the money and best meets their needs, rather than being influenced by advertising, peer pressure, brand recognition, etc. (The fundamental flaw of pure capitalism is that it operates on this obviously false assumption. The fundamental flaw of pure socialism is that it assumes the government will always make rational decisions, which is equally false. This is why pure capitalism and pure socialism both inevitably lead to Bad Things, and why every industrial country on Earth has found a balance somewhere in the middle.) The governments which encourage the use of free software are, in fact, benefiting their societies in a very clear way, one that can't be bought on the free market. And that's what governments are _for_, to do things that private citizens can't or won't pay for.
nitpick (Score:3, Insightful)
In Europe, where numerous bills and resolutions have been introduced, local, state and federal governments spent $7.8 billion on software in 2000. In Brazil, governments spent a mere $200 million the same year, an indication of how little the country has to spend on software and why free or low-priced software holds such powerful appeal.
This may look impressive, but one should also consider exactly what goes into the estimated costs on software purchases. If these estimates include the cost of man-hours for producing custom software, this is not going to be a fair comparison because it will have more to do with how much money European countries are putting into, say, development of custom military software than it will have to do with what OS the foreign ministry is using for their desktops. I browsed the net a bit but was unable to find out what the size of the budgets of all of the European countries was in comparison with the size of Brazil's budget. It would be much more compelling to see what percent of Brazil's budget was spent on software in comparison with the percent of the countries in Europe.
As a side note, I know for a fact that the US military uses free operating systems and free build tools for some of their software, but they are still pouring a ton of money into the man-hours to create that custom software.
While I advocate the use of free software, and agree that it will help save some money, the comparison between Brazil and Europe in this article is fairly ridiculous because of the likely nature of their software expenditures. This may be a little off the subject, but a pet peeve of mine is when articles throw out fairly meaningless numbers to attempt to support their point.
Re:Monopoly != Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We'll see more of this (Score:2, Insightful)
I think we're seeing the leading edge of an international movement to reject the USA copyright-patent paradigm wherever important national interests are at stake. It's mostly coming on to the global policy makers' radar screens now through China's attempt to join the WTO, because US interests are pressing China to crack down on mass-market software copying and fall in step with the US copyright paradigm. But the China stuff is like the MP3 stuff - Chinese computer makers are copying en masse because it's free beer and helps their profit margins, not for some national interest. Heck, they don't even HAVE free speech in China, so they're in a poor position to couch this as a human rights issue for global concerns to rally around.
But once you get a critical mass of Brazils publicly and officially declaring that US patents are fine for the US, but not fine where they hurt our citizens, you gotta believe some serious powwows among the diplomats and international-law-and-treaty types are going to occur. I think it's especially likely given that the current US administration's profligate rejection of international agreements has weakened its ties with allies. Same influence is created by the open-source policies which are the main topic here - they pressure the US on copyright the way Brazil's pharmaceutical decision pressures it on patent. And the bargaining positions of the world's Brazils is going to be this: "USA, either you overhaul your intellectual property rules so that they cut us more slack, and let your corporate citizens settle for a smaller share, or we will not enforce those rules in our country, and your corporate citizens will not get any share at all." Those modifications will bleed over into domestic law, and that, my friends, is the beginning of the end for the DMCA and like schemes. Overreaching leaves even a great power vulnerable - this is in Sun Tzu's Art of War, I think.
(yes, I'm from the USA, but I voted for the other guys.)