Hi Paolo,
On 9/22/06, Paolo Alexis Falcone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 10:28 +0800, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
>
> Googling [define: bias] ::
>
> # influence in an unfair way; "you are biasing my choice by telling me yours"
> # a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
>
> Now, bias doesn't necessitate ruling out a particular class, but
> rather an unfair favoring of one over others.
Given the strictest sense of the word, everything has bias, man.
Not everything pare: _everyone_.
> In the case of Inferior FOSS vs. Competent non-FOSS : the government
> will use FOSS if this bill becomes law!!! And that's what you say is
> clearly more advantageous to government?
For crying out loud... you don't need the FOSS bill to consider that if
a particular FOSS solution would be clearly not satisfying the technical
and functional requirements - it won't even be considered! Isn't that
what bidding and qualification all about? Sheesh...
Oh wait, but the FOSS bill doesn't even cover that part of the
equation on procurement and acquisition of third party service! And
even if there's bidding process, let's say inferior FOSS still gets
through and it's pit against competent non-FOSS, then with the bill
made law FOSS will prevail!
>
> Then make a bill about open standards. Don't equate the advantage of
> open standards to FOSS, because it's not just FOSS that can work with
> open standards.
Don't you get it? This bill would be watered down for sure (unless fire
and brimstone rain from the heavens and annihilate all the corrupt
people in government). If you compromise your proposal WAY before the
arguments start, the end result won't be amounting to anything!
Do it once, do it well. Making extremist bills is not excusable even
if it's going to be watered down. What I'm disagreeing to is the
initial "mandatory FOSS" proposition, regardless if it's going to be
watered down in congress.
>
> I was saying that the arguments used to defend FOSS in government is
> the same one being used to defend the use of Microsoft products. If
> you're using Windows on all the computers, and are using the .NET
> framework in all your applications, and that you're using XML to
> communicate between and among components using *open standard
> protocols*, and serializing the information in XML, then you pretty
> much have a cohesive working system without the help of FOSS.
Duh. Even if its XML, if you encumber it with proprietary blob, it's
still NOT open standard. If you aren't even ALLOWED to implement it
freely without hitting patents, what's the point of using that format?
LIP SERVICE?
XML is not an open standard? Hmmm...
You can implement a SOAP server and a SOAP client freely without
hitting patents AFAIK, and you can serialize objects to and from XML
using a lot of technologies out there -- FOSS or otherwise. What's the
matter with that?
> You are OTOH arguing on a different line citing the vendor
> independence rationale for the bill.
Vendor independence is only one of the rationale why the bill was
drafted. It was YOU who gave the example on MS bastardized form of
_interoperability_. Read the bill, check HOW they defined
interoperability, then we talk.
Bastardized form of interoperability? They should work together if
they're all talking the same language. Now it's not FOSS or non-FOSS'
fault if the solution didn't use an open standard, because _that's an
implementation detail_!
>
> Which is precisly my point: if these were the objectives, then how
> does making FOSS mandatory achieve these goals again? Government can
> choose to use only RHEL or SuSE on all the systems -- and they're
> again locked into a single vendor. Using FOSS only in government will
> not directly translate to fostering the local IT industry.
Hardly lockin. Migrating would be expensive, but consider that with the
code being FOSS, the option to migrate to another platform that would be
open is, and will always be open. Contrast this to using proprietary
code on proprietary platforms - you don't even have that choice!
Lock-in in using FOSS is not impossible, and it can be self-induced.
Anyway, the specifics of the bill itself does not have to say how will
FOSS achieve the goals - that's what the rationale section is for.
The specifics of the bill should be in line with the objectives, and
should be made more targeted as compared to blanket policy and more
objective than preferential and biased for FOSS.
--
Dean Michael C. Berris
C++ Software Architect
Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Ltd. Co.
web: http://software.orangeandbronze.com/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mobile: +63 928 7291459
phone: +63 2 8943415
other: +1 408 4049532
blogs: http://mikhailberis.blogspot.com http://3w-agility.blogspot.com
http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com
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