what would be good is to educate the government about open source and its benefits over proprietary software. the government should do well to prefer open source but not to restrict itself to it. otherwise that will severely limit the available choices for them. di ba open source is about choice? let's not take the "choice" away from them.
On 7/11/06, Rage Callao <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 7/11/06, Dean Michael Berris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I personally would think this is a bad idea (forcing the government to
> adopt open source software) and I will outline my reasons below.
What I consider worse is that we're forced to adopt proprietary
software just like what is happening now.
> 1) Restriction of Trade -- whenever the government becomes biased for
> or against a certain class or type of any
> device/service/product/anything of value in the free trade market
> (like software for instance), you might run into issues like the
> restriction of trade with government. The bill will be hotly
> contested, and since cost is an issue that will always come in
> whenever open source software will be considered for any purpose, you
> need to remember that people need to make money too -- especially
> Filipinos.
Government is well within their purview to restrict trade if it
considers the subject to be detrimental to society (e.g. drugs). I
would argue the point that proprietary closed source software is
detrimental to society but not on this thread.
> 2) Licensing Issues -- please do _not_ restrict the license to the
> GPL, because there are many other open source licenses out there to
> which a lot of quality software are released under. The GPL looks
> good, but it's really bad in so many instances, it doesn't even make
> sense anymore.
If you're using Linux right now, more that 2/3 of the software
installed is GPLed. Linux would not have gotten this far without that
GPLed code. What doesn't make sense to me is advocating the open
source development model without giving credence to the free software
philosophy that empowers it.
> Consider using correct terminology -- do _not_ get
> bulldozed by the Free Software Foundation and the hype surrounding the
> GPL. Instead, use relaxed terms for general "source-available" and
> "redistributable-source" software. A good idea is to clearly define
"Open source" is hyped more that "free software". Why? Because its
business friendly. "Relaxed" terms do not obligate users to share
software or improvements. This defeats the purpose of free software
and we will all likely end up with closed source proprietary software
if this continues.
> The government should also be aware that Open Source is not just Linux
> -- there are other development projects there that are locally grown
> that also need the support that Bayanihan Linux is currently enjoying.
?
> If the bill is about open source software and open systems adoption in
> the government agencies, this should be recommendatory and not
> absolute -- otherwise, it won't be fair for commercial software
> development firms, as well as the local software development industry.
Agreed.
--
RAGE CALLAO
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Site: http://bayanihan.gov.ph
Blog: ragecallao.wordpress.com
Bayanihan GNU/Linux 4 beta 2
Amor patriae
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