Subject: Re: Free Software Argument
From: James Gibson (twistedhammer@subdimension.com)
Date: Sat May 04 2002 - 23:52:55 AKDT
'scuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
I am thoroughly blown away. This politician is logical, rational,
eloquent, informed and cares about his government's moral obligations to
it's people.
What Rich didn't explicitly point out is that this bill makes use of Free
Software mandatory _only within (Peruvian) state organisations_. It has
nothing (directly) to do with the private sector. And the issues are
primarily ethical, rather than political or economic.
Truly this is a marvellous piece of writing. The Micr0s0ft Rep's FUD
letter is systematically dismantled and thoroughly rebutted. All the while
Rep. Nenez hammers home the fact that the issues here are ensuring the
security of public data and the transparency of public business, not
financial concerns. My favoured passage lies toward the bottom:
"the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not
belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens [...] the State
must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality,
and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software
raises serious doubts as to whehter<sic> these requirements can be
fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not
suitable for use in the public sector."
if the site is still /.'ed the google cache of the full letter is here:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:TvfSi6UFJpQC:www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html+resms.html&hl=en&ie=utf-8
James Gibson
On Sat, 4 May 2002, Richard Mckinney wrote:
>
> Finally a government official has embraced what I believe to be the
> strongest argument for the use of free(Open Source) software. In a
> letter to the Peruvian Micro$oft Rep. rebutting his pleas to scrap a
> proposed law concerning the use of software for wich source code is not
> freely available, DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NU=D1EZ =
>
> Congressman of the Republica of Per=FA explains in eloquent terms one of
> the most important reasons I believe that free software should be used.
> Link to the slashdot discussion found here:
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=3D02/05/04/220237
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Sat May 04 2002 - 23:53:17 AKDT