In the light of what was said on Wednesday night on the Civil Society, this is my contribution to part of the debate.
I think my points are valid - if the government wishes to gain instead of lose on the IT front, they had best start by using software that can be used in _all_ facets of training, and where a vulnerability may be fixed on the spot instead of relying on the goodness of a convicted predatory monopolist. If anyone wants to copy my ideas and _also_ roast the guvmint for its idiotic ideas, feel free - just amke sure you recast it so it's not a word-for-word copy - and if someone could pass it on to the other LUGS in NZ, that would be par for the course. Wesley Parish Wesley Parish Christchurch The Rt. Hon. Helen Clark Prime Minister Dear Prime Minister It is with some dismay and indeed disgust that I read that New Zealand had entered into a contract with Microsoft (The Government Security Program) that allowed the New Zealand Government access to the source code files of the latest Microsoft operating system.*1 I am disgusted because a government, in these times, not only has to use technology responsibly, it has to adopt technology that can be in some way, streamed into the training and education of its people. And I have read the Microsoft Shared Source licenses including the GSP, and they may be succinctly expressed as "Look but don't touch". In other words, they open the source code so that government computer scientists and technicians may see that there are or are not external vulnerabilities that may imperil the nation's security. But they deny said computer scientists and technicians the right to do their own fixing of any such vulnerability. And in the world of state security, a vulnerability recognized or fixed too late, is as bad as one not recognized. And also, as this "Shared Source" may not be freely shared among the universities and polytechnics the way that SELinux and OpenBSD may be, this program is extremely inefficient in training New Zealanders to take care of New Zealand's own problems. As such it constitutes a gratuitous waste of taxpayers' money. I ask you to rectify this as soon as possible, by adopting something that fits the two criteria I identified - empowering the users by allowing feedback and on-site fixing of vulnerabilities; and empowering universities and polytechnics in the training of students to fit New Zealand's computer security requirements. Or by demanding changes in Microsoft's licensing regime to make it fit the above criteria, for example, by releasing the source code under the BSD/MIT license. Yours Sincerely Wesley Parish P.S. The two alternatives I mentioned - SELinux and OpenBSD - are suggested for starters, though they are not the only two that fit the criteria. *1 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2574863a28,00.html "Microsoft lifts its skirts" -- Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
