Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
Linux battle becomes political (BBC)
BBC News
reports on efforts by the Initiative for Software Choice lobby
to stifle adoption of open-source software by governments.
"Many governments like this software because it is cheap, has a ready source of experts to help with problems, runs on a huge variety of hardware and does not lock them into lengthy licence agreements.
Some have even gone as far as to mandate the use of open source software in big projects."
Thanks to Martin Rowe.
(Log in to post comments)
Linux battle becomes political (BBC) Posted Aug 21, 2002 4:10 UTC (Wed) by HalfMoon (guest, #3211) [Link] Oh please start covering the non-economic reasons to prefer Free software ... the reason smart customers have long preferred "Open Systems". Points identified by Peruvian Congressman Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez identified three of those reasons right up front:
Now why are media groups like the BBC lying and saying that economics are the only justification? Sure, that helps, but those other reasons have longer lasting effects. Citizens need to be guaranteed that they can use all public data without having to pay a tax to a third party, and without risk of losing that access when that third party goes out of business. We are not made safer, collectively or individually, when governments place the keys to society into the hands of organizations (not just Microsoft) which place their profits over the public welfare.
Linux battle becomes political (BBC) Posted Aug 23, 2002 21:21 UTC (Fri) by strcat (guest, #3400) [Link] You are so correct, organizations that appose Free Software want you to think that you are actually getting value for your money when you buy proprietary software. These people want us to miss the point Free Software costs money. It's not a low end way to save money. It's about getting the best applications available, just the sort of stuff you are pointing out. Non the less we will see Corporations try to confuse people into thinking that we are talking about freeware, something that is generally thought of as less then the full product. It's a hard battle to fight, but we have to keep at it."Open Systems" is a good name too, In the Article Bruce Perens calls it Open Source. what ever you call it, I like Unencumbered Engineering. UE helps get us thinking about all the things we are not getting from the proprietary software. We are not getting the ability to fix things, export data, Add value to the product. Free Software, Open Systems, Unencumbered Engineering it's all about getting the user the best technology available, not just what some vender happens to have control over. It's about you controling your data, and not being traped into a single solution from a provider that wants to trap you into there solution. If you happen to save money, well that's good to.
|
|||||||||||||