BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source's Economic Advantage 87
jrepin writes "The fundamental premise of the latest Software Alliance study — that licensed, proprietary software is better in many ways than pirated copies — actually applies to open source software even more strongly, with the added virtues that the software is free to try, to use and to modify. That means the potential economic impact of free software is also even greater than that offered by both licensed and unlicensed proprietary software. It's yet another reason for governments around the world to promote the use of open source in their countries by everyone at every level."
Can't go there (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, just because the message is one that some might like I can't get past the messenger. The BSA has spent decades lying to the public and politicians and using math that would never pass muster in any college in the developed world. They have lost any and all possible credibility they could ever possibly have, especially when it comes to on of their 'reports'.
I'm sure this will offend a lot of people here that are open source fans who would love to cite this. However I'm not about to become a hypocrite and give them credibility now just because they are saying something more palatable.
Post Facto Economic Impact -- Not Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Switching to GIMP, my productivity is about to go through the roof!
It's not about productivity, it's about economic impact. The article is kind of tongue in cheek poking fun of BSA's erroneous numbers manipulation to show that "properly licensed software" contributes oh so much to the economy. For clear reasons, your switch to GIMP from (presumably) a proprietary software alternative wouldn't move you from one column to the other unless you were to somehow pirate GIMP. While pirating GIMP is possible, you'd like just install it legally by downloading it with references to the GPLv3 license. Whether or not you believe it, GIMP with a copy of the GPLv3 is actually properly licensed software -- putting it in the column of the nebulous cloud of software that the BSA claims inflates our world economy to staggering heights.
To try to quantify the "productivity" of GIMP versus something else like photoshop would likely be subjective, nebulous and not 1 to 1. This isn't about productivity, it's about piracy. The author is pointing out how much of the mad moneys comes from open source software and all but accuses the BSA of co-opting that figure to appear to be their own work.
Re:Can't go there (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, the messenger is someone with degrees in mathematics pointing out how flawed the BSA's figures are. So you might find it interesting to go there.
Re:Why Goverenments (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Governments are supposed to be stewards for the country. They should be looking at the _long_ term. By setting a good example they show that they actually give a dam about spending efficiently instead of justifying mercenary assassination for "things" such as oil, power, control, etc.
There is a reason we have _standards_ in the first place: So we don't force everyone to keep wasting energy re-inventing the wheel. Open Source has it own set of problems (usually poor documentation) but the ROI on it is a major advantage when governments routinely spend other people's money. For using software that follows the standards we keep the vendor's implementation honest, and the money normally spent on licensing can be instead spent on hardware + people.
Open Source _can_ make good business sense. By having governments use it whenever possible it "legitimizes" / removes the stigma from OSS. How long did it take Microsoft to wean off Hotmail off FreeBSD ?
There are a lot of good OSS based on technical code quality. Of course there is also a lot of crap. But at least the difference is one can do a code audit and literally SEE the bugs in the code in contradistinction to closed source where you have no idea what kind of data they are selling behing the scenes.
Re:Post Facto Economic Impact -- Not Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny that you call someone out with "[citation needed]" and then start making claims that you aren't backing with a shred of evidence either.
Re:It's about liability and responsibility of faul (Score:5, Insightful)
How does commercial software give you anyone to pin liability on? All of it that I've seen either disclaims liability entirely or limits liability to refunding your money (even from major vendors like Oracle it reads like "if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces"). You definitely won't be able to hold the vendor liable for the cost of lost business due to the failure of their software. Sure it gives you someone to blame, but you're still left holding the bag when it comes to the actual money the failure cost you. At least with open-source software, if the failure's bad enough the business can put it's own resources to work fixing it. Contrast that with commercial software where the business has no choice but to sit and wait for the vendor to decide the problem's important enough for the vendor to fix it.
Re:Post Facto Economic Impact -- Not Productivity (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually no.
Since where you downloaded it from was, by virtue of the license, obligated to provide you with a copy of the license when you download the work, a gplv3 product without the license is an infringing one. You would not be guilty of infringing on copyright directly, but would nonetheless still possess an infringing copy, and it's not inconceivable to be held accountable for that. Although the defense of not actually realizing that it was infringing could well remove any immediate consequence, you would have to either immediately correct the issue of not having an infringing copy or else be found to be knowingly in possession of such a copy, which can and often is still legally actionable, even if you did not personally make that copy.