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Re: [discuss] Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: [discuss] Open source software News


From: ian
Subject: Re: [discuss] Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: [discuss] Open source software News
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:01:17 +0000

On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 12:38, Chris Sherlock wrote:
> I suppose this seems like a fair enough answer... I guess you see 
> software more as an infrastructure that the govt should maintain and 
> develop. I'm still not so sure...

Not really, I see the government as a large customer for software acting
on behalf of me, the taxpayer and if I wanted a piece of software to go
on 100,000 desktops and I knew I could commission its development for
say £1m, I certainly wouldn't use someone else's code licensed at £100 a
machine. Its simple economics. 1 < 10 and once the code is GPL'd other
people will use it and probably lower my costs in other software
acquisition.

I have no problem with paying for licenses for a specialist product
where it cost say £10k in licenses but the development cost would be
millions.

> What I *do* think, however, is that governments should make it 
> compulsory for software companies (and peripheral companies, in 
> particular!) to open their code.

That would require legislation though I'm not against it. My solution is
simply using existing criteria for best value. In fact it could be
argued that the Government is acting illegally in not doing so.

>  Do you know the number of times I've 
> had to scrap or make do with 2nd-best because I couldn't see the source 
> code of some crappy product???? :) I guess that's why I only run Linux 
> now (especially now I've worked out CUPS and Samba).

You are doing better than me then :-)

Regards,
-- 
ian <address@hidden>





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