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Democrats target Microsoft | |
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| Time: 12:05 EST/17:05 GMT | News Source: Australian IT | Posted By: Brian Kvalheim | ||
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THE Australian Democrats are trying to embarrass governments into supporting legislation mandating open source software, by asking questions in parliament about how much departments spend on Microsoft products. And Democrats in NSW, the ACT and federal parliament are drafting open source preference legislation along the lines of upper house member Ian Gilfillan's Bill in South Australia, as part of a campaign to lift the profile of the software. SA Democrat upper house member Mr Gilfillan has led the way with his private member's Bill. | ||
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| #1 By 6859 (206.156.242.36) at 7/21/2003 12:20:19 PM |
| Seems to me the OSS movement is having a bit of a problem with themselves if they have to "embarrass" to get their way. Very childish. |
| #2 By 7797 (63.76.44.70) at 7/21/2003 1:07:15 PM |
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It is not the OSS movement who is trying to embarass governments. If you would have read correctly, Australian Democrats are trying to embarrass government, NOT the OSS movement.
Even if some members of the OSS movement would try to embarrass another entity to accomplish something this could not be generalized to say "the OSS movement" as a whole is doing so. Such generalizations just make you look foolish and onesided. This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 13:09. |
| #3 By 6859 (206.156.242.36) at 7/21/2003 1:15:35 PM |
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The Australian Dems are very OSS, they're the elected reps of the "people." They ARE the governmental "face" (if you will) of the OSS movement.
It's interesting how it's ok if the GNU/OSS/GPL people make a generalization, but if someone else does it then it's foolish and onesided. Don't believe me? Go read Slashdot. |
| #4 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 7/21/2003 1:46:53 PM |
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This sounds more like Anti-American efforts more than pro-OSS or anti-capitalism efforts.
"Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and we're making a hefty contribution," he said. "The whole world is being dictated to by Microsoft." And then there's this gem: "Once you get locked into purchasing proprietary software you are forced to upgrade that software, and often the hardware," he said Of course, you'll never have to upgrade your software or hardware with Open Source, right? WTF, are these people living in reality? And then more mindset of Democrats world-wide: What the country doesn't need is to be tied into a profit-maximising licensing system, and the way to combat that is to get government to break out of the paradigm." Capitalism? Bah, that's bad for Government. We need to nationalize everything and prevent competition. WTF? Forget competition, just legislate fairness. It never fails! *cough* |
| #5 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 7/21/2003 2:12:19 PM |
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I can see some of the arguments in favor of promoting a localized software industry, and I can see that OSS does help aid this.
But I also think it's somewhat short sighted in that OSS brings with it a ton of baggage which will ultimately prevent that software industry to flourish. I guess I'm baffled by this reasoning. I work with a lot of vendors who have software development operations out of Israel. In fact Israel has an extremely robust high-tech industry. Yet I don't see any evidence that Israel is promoting open source. This is the silver bullet theory of government, that all we need to do is this one thing and everything will fall into place to make us successful. The fact is, there is no silver bullet, success depends on hard work. |
| #6 By 7797 (63.76.44.70) at 7/21/2003 3:12:20 PM |
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Cthulhu: The Australian Dems are NOT the governmental "face" of the OSS movement.
"It's interesting how it's ok if the GNU/OSS/GPL people make a generalization, but if someone else does it then it's foolish and onesided. Don't believe me? Go read Slashdot. " I never said it was ok for the GNU/OSS/GPL people to make generalizations and yes when they do it its also foolish and onesided. But you don't want to put yourself into a situation where you'd say "well if its ok for them to do it.. its ok for me too"! In other words, I see a lot of foolish and onesided people over on slashdot making stupid generalizations and I doubt you want to be the one on Activewin doing the same! This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 15:15. |
| #7 By 415 (199.8.71.121) at 7/21/2003 4:18:03 PM |
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;-)
The thing I like about Activewin is that _most_ people frequenting this piece have a bit of a sense of humor left in whats left of their grey matter. Should what the australian democrats do really be taken this seriously? |
| #8 By 1295 (216.84.210.100) at 7/21/2003 4:18:29 PM |
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What I think everybody is missing here is that politicians are making IT spending decisions across the board. Does anybody think they are qualified to make any sort of blanket decision.
Not to mention once it is a law... what happens if there is no OSS application that will perform a task that some proprietary app can do and that task is mission critical (sorry I love that term). Politicians should just keep to doing nothing about computer technology... laws like that are stale and outdated 1 hour after being passed anyway. What happens if all decent Linux vendors go belly up in 5 years... are they going to start making their own flavor? |
| #9 By 10896 (65.213.122.66) at 7/21/2003 4:31:58 PM |
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SCO has been given copyrights on their System V code.
Looks like the beginning of the end of Linux and the GPL. Maybe these politicians should read the news before advocating OSS |
| #10 By 7797 (63.76.44.70) at 7/21/2003 4:47:31 PM |
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billmac:
"SCO has been given copyrights on their System V code. Looks like the beginning of the end of Linux and the GPL." Nice logic! By the way.. they already had the copyrights.. just now they registered them. Maybe instead of reading the news you should attempt to actually understand what it means or at least know the context of a story instead of just blabbing off. This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 17:00. |
| #11 By 10896 (65.213.122.66) at 7/21/2003 5:21:22 PM |
| #12 OK They registered them, which is the step that SCO's lawyer said was necessary prior to taking action against the Linux code thieves. |
| #12 By 7797 (63.76.44.70) at 7/21/2003 5:28:17 PM |
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parker:
"It means Linux will cost corporations a lot of money. Or they'll get sued. " Thats not true, although SCO probably sure wishes it was. Unfortunately this whole mess is a whole lot more complicated than that. But comments like yours is exactly what SCO hopes to generate with their FUD campaign. "And Linux won't be saving anyone money." But some people would argue that linux doesn't save any money already anyway. billmac: No registering the copyrights was not required to take action against the Linux code thiefs. By the way it would be "SCO code" thiefs. And more particulary that would be IBM employees that have done the theft, not Linux guys.. IF it is really true that stolen SCO code has been put into linux ... and IF that code has not an even prior source in a BSD .. but all of that in itself has to be proven in a court first so don't hold your breath. By the way, if SCO would reveal the code in question it would be removed from linux very fast because having stolen code is the last thing they want. It is also very easy for them to find out who submitted any stolen code because of the electronic trail generated by the submission process. This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 17:38. |
| #13 By 10896 (65.213.122.66) at 7/21/2003 5:39:41 PM |
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#15 Keep your head in the sand if you want.
Here are the quotes: "SCO Group, a company arguing that Linux infringes on its Unix intellectual property, said Monday it has been granted key Unix copyrights and will start a program to let companies running Linux avoid litigation by paying licensing fees." "Since the year 2001 commercial Linux customers have been purchasing and receiving software that includes misappropriated Unix software owned by SCO," Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of the company's SCOsource intellectual property division, said in a statement. "We intend to provide them with choices to help them run Linux in a legal and fully-paid for way." |
| #14 By 10896 (65.213.122.66) at 7/21/2003 5:54:55 PM |
| #17 Agreed there is no money or value in Linux. They will sue users of Linux unless they pay a licensing fee. This latest development has nothing to do with the IBM case. |
| #15 By 7797 (63.76.44.70) at 7/21/2003 5:59:52 PM |
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billmac:
I'll keep my head in the sand. The rest of you can be proud remember the day, Monday July 21st 2003 when billmac with his ingenious foresight correctly predicted the beginning of end for Linux and the GPL based on the news that SCO registered their System V copyrights. gg: "In /any/ case. No one's seen the code, so give up using that argument as pro linux, pro sco, or whatever else you wanna try to use it in. YOUR ARGUMENT HAS NO CLOUT because NO ONE has presented any /proof/ of anything!" Thats exactly my point! billmac: "Agreed there is no money or value in Linux." And you're telling me i should keep my head in the sand? LOL Maybe for YOU personally there is no value..... This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 18:06. |
| #16 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 7/21/2003 6:10:07 PM |
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This is the silver bullet theory of government, that all we need to do is this one thing and everything will fall into place to make us successful. The fact is, there is no silver bullet, success depends on hard work.
For once I agree with Sodablue on something related to government! The beaurocrats are too worried about finding some magical 'silver bullet', as you say, that they completely ignore the huge white elephants standing in the middle of their parliment/congress houses. Gov't spending on software is the least of the concerns, in the US, at least. I don't know about Austrailia, but I'm sure it's the same there. Spending is out of control and the Congresspeople brag about how many $$ on the $1 they bring home to their consitutents, as if that's something to brag about. |
| #17 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 7/21/2003 6:15:12 PM |
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/me pops a cold one and watches all the "Linux is free" crowd writhe as SCO charges license fees to all those stupid companies who jumped on the Linux bandwagon.
I mean, the source is there, right? Why didn't these companies just read the source and determine that Linux has SystemV code copied right into it? I've heard the argument about Linux's source so long and I've always said it's BS because no one looks at the source and it seems that's the case this time. Oh, I'm sorry, at least one individual looked at the source: SCO and they found the violations. Good job Open Source! :) |
| #18 By 10896 (65.213.122.66) at 7/21/2003 6:17:35 PM |
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# 19
Many people have seen the code or at least potions of it. I dont think anyone who saw it said SCO's claims were frivolous or without merit. So how do you get away with saying that noone has seen it. |
| #19 By 7797 (64.244.109.161) at 7/21/2003 7:09:04 PM |
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billmac:
Some people (most of whom don't know how to code) have seen tiny portions of the alledegly stolen code under a very restrictive NDA. In other words .. noone has really seen the code! While I agree that they sisnt say SCO's case was frivulous they also didn't say the opposite. SCO simply didn't disclose enough information for anyone to see the whole picture and give an educated opinion one way or the other. Again in other words, noone has really seen the code! This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 19:15. |
| #20 By 10896 (24.25.182.11) at 7/21/2003 7:46:01 PM |
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#24
Now we have gone from "noone has seen the code" to "noone has really seen the code" , I guess the typical Linux arguements when they are confronted with facts. As I understand the law SCO is under no obligation to make their evidence public until the case is in the courtroom. So whether anybody has or has not seen it is irrelevant. Also today's announcement by SCO really had nothing with the IBM case which was under dispute when the code was looked at. Today SCO was claiming copyright infringement dating back to 1991 against Linux. |
| #21 By 7797 (64.244.109.161) at 7/21/2003 9:43:13 PM |
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billmac:
"Now we have gone from "noone has seen the code" to "noone has really seen the code" , I guess the typical Linux arguements when they are confronted with facts." Ok you are right people have seen the code; but that doesnt change gg's point and his point is what i agreed with in the first place. I'm curious why you would say "typical linux argument". I don't argue for Linux. I don't argue for Microsoft. I only speak up when people talk sh**. And thats what I think your statement about this being the beginning of the end for Linux and the GPL is! "Funny, I could have sworn a couple of them said the comments and syntax were exactly the same." Yep, there were, but those reviews didn't state that because of it SCO had a "solid case" or "shure win", just as other reviews also didn't state that SCO's case was entirely frivolus. This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 22:02. |
| #22 By 135 (208.186.90.91) at 7/21/2003 11:16:31 PM |
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daz - " Spending is out of control "
Absolutely agree. Let's get a balanced budget amendment pass at the federal level. Require a 2/3rds majority to pass any spending bill which puts us into deficit. It'll be funny to watch the borrow and spenders have to answer to that. |
| #23 By 135 (208.186.90.91) at 7/21/2003 11:18:25 PM |
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tgnb - Why don't we just wait for the court case to come out before worrying about what evidence SCO might or might not have?
It's not like you're going to learn anything here complaining about it, the evidence will only be given during a trial. It seems to me that defending the Linux position is probably a bit premature. |
| #24 By 7797 (64.244.109.161) at 7/21/2003 11:48:17 PM |
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sodablue:
"Why don't we just wait for the court case to come out before worrying about what evidence SCO might or might not have?" Agreed. Thats exactly the same reason why I take issue with the statement that today's news about the copyright registration "looks like the beginning of the end of Linux and the GPL". "It's not like you're going to learn anything here complaining about it, the evidence will only be given during a trial." Agreed, however i wasn't complaining. I stated my agreement over this with gg originally. "It seems to me that defending the Linux position is probably a bit premature." Agreed here as well. Thats why I take issue witht he statement that this "Looks like the beginning of the end of Linux and the GPL." This post was edited by tgnb on Monday, July 21, 2003 at 23:50. |
| #25 By 8589 (65.71.65.16) at 7/22/2003 8:56:22 AM |
| Australia has a Demoncrat party too? Tis a pity. From the writings of my Christian friends down under, I wouldn't have suspected it. I hope they can get rid of it, ASAP. |
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