SF Gate on Open Source Government

Bruce Perens writes: "At the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, Hal Plotkin points to Sincere Choice as the right compromise for an IT renaissance in Government including both Open Source and proprietary software. The article is extremely flattering to yours truly, but a good push in the right direction from a well-respected commentator."

Re:so as I understand it...

[grumpygrodyguy]

The way this works is, you mandate formats, not applications

Sure, but how do you expect to do that? There seems be any number of commitees and agencies that regulate things like traffic laws, public safety, pollution, economic policy, etc, etc...but where are our representatives?

Lawyers and finance people regulate business and anti-trust laws(supposedly), the Fed hires economists with Phds to make economic policy etc...but can anyone name a single government appointed/empowered commitee of computer scientists?

The only way you can make a "standard format" mandate is if you have:

1) A commitee of qualified and un-biased experts making the decisions as to what should or should not be allowed.
2) That commitee has to be empowered to enforce thier determination.

As far as I can tell, and please someone correct me if I'm wrong, we have niether of these two things established in this country.

What's the point of people like Bruce Perens saying what makes sense to almost all of us...if there's no infrastructure in place to make it a reality? Do you really think the governent cares two cents about what the IEEE thinks is "the right thing to do"? How do you expect this stuff to happen without representation in government? ...sorry if I sound cynical, but I'm honestly asking can anyone give a concrete example to the contrary?

Re:so as I understand it...

[CrazyBrett]

I think it's stupid to mandate this at all. They should be able to use the best product/format whatever for the job.

In principle, you're right. However, the "job" in this case is very specific and very unique. The system must protect MY data, allow me full, unrestrained access to it (without having to purchase a license from some company first), its operation should be transparent to public scrutiny, and its maintainers must be accountable for these guarantees. These requirements significantly restrict the set of possible software systems that can even do the job, let alone do it well.

Right, ideally we wouldn't HAVE to mandate this. However, current governments have shown that they cannot and will not fulfill the requirements above without a legal kick in the ass. Hence, the proposed legislation.

I'm Not Just A Customer or A Consumer

[krmt]

Um... I'm not a customer of the government, I'm one of its bosses. That's what a republic is about. I pay taxes. I vote. "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" and all that stuff, you know? Thus, as one of the bosses and owners of the government, I get a say in how it's run.

Re:Terrific

[linuxwrangler]

I am all for this in spirit. A few comments:

Formats/protocols are most important where exchange of data or interconnections take place. I'm not sure that, say, Oracle would need to make its internal file formats public as long as the interface to the outside world was standard and any client programs developed/purchased adhered to that standard (SQL92 as an example). As long as you have the freedom to dump your data from one system to another you have the freedom to change at (relatively) low cost.

Similarly, the biggest problem with Word/Excel/etc. formats comes when the government expects you to purchase single-source vendor-specific products that support those proprietary formats as the cost of doing business with the state.

The public would be up in arms if the state decided to only allow General Motors cars into government office parking spaces. The effect of using proprietary formats and protocols is little different.

We know that vendors, especially Microsoft, will interpret things so the result is the complete opposite of whatever the government/courts intend so in addition to your comments on "completely specified" I would add a time frame - ie. "1 year following publication" or "following wide industry adoption" or possibly just limit formats those with an accepted RFC.

Also, the specs must be completely released for permanent, no-strings, royalty-free use. You don't want a format to become widely used and then have the "owner" retract permission to use it royalty free (see GIF, MP3, JPG, etc).

Re:I don't understand

[Bruce Perens]

Well, the W3C patent policy proposals have included a limitation of the scope of the patent grant to the task of implementing the standard. It's not a blanket grant. So, odds are that people who implement your principle might want to license it for use outside of the standard.

This is not to say that I approve of software patents. The optimum solution would be to make them go away entirely. Getting them out of standards is something we can achieve on a shorter term.

Bruce