For what it's worth, I wrote the PM an Open Letter a few years ago on the "cuddle-up-to-Microsoft" Government Shared Source policy, which I thought as useful as the proverbial tits-on-a-bull.
My main points were security-related, and working with MS stuff on an almost daily basis, I can see that I was being gentle with them. A virus scanner that can't be run as a service (aka daemon)? An updater that can't write to its own folder because it must run in the foreground and as administrator, not as a service in the background of a user session? That's not baroque, it's roccocco. Of course, Microsoft's now up for a dog's-dinner treatment because of some payments they made to a soon-to-be spammer's delight now known as The SCO Group, and IBM wants to know what we all want to know about Microsoft and that fraudulent case. I suspect this is a Vietnam-style "de-escalation" of that case. I'll have to check Groklaw, and if PJ hasn't heard of this, I'll get onto her to dissect it - laws may change from here to there, but a bad argument is a bad argument whether the sky is blue, gray or white. Wesley Parish Quoting Steve Holdoway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > This piece was brought to my attention by /. this morning. What it's a > piece of, I'm not too sure. IMO Chapmann Tripp should be shot for using > such inflammatory language, but I suppose that without any licenses to > write, they'd be going out of business. Altruism isn't a word they > understand in this context, I take it. > > Some of the highlights: > > "Understanding the Infectious Effects of Open Source Licences" - so > they're all bad for you then? > > "64 As its standard position, all Development Agreements should > prohibit > the use of any open source code in the supplied software." - so how are > we > going to develop ( eclipse ), compile ( gcc ), publish ( apache )... it > then? > > It's put me off my morning coffee, that's for sure. > > http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-source-legal > > > Steve. > -- > Let us have a moment of silence for all Americans who are now stuck in > traffic on their way to a health club to ride a stationary bicycle. - > Congressman Earl Blumenauer (Oregon) > "Sharpened hands are happy hands. "Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands" - A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge "I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot!" I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press
