[FYI] (Fwd) FC: CEI blasts Linux as unsuitable for government, business use

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 19 Sep 2002 14:36:03 -0700
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: CEI blasts Linux as unsuitable for government, business use
Copies to:      	rmorrison@cei.org, jdelong@cei.org
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

CEI is a free-market think tank in Washington. It may be best known
for its work on environmental issues, where it has pointed out
government reliance on junk science.

Jim Delong, who wrote the below message, is an occasional contributor
to Politech. Jim wrote a piece over the summer supporting the general
approach of the Berman anti-P2P bill:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03711.html

CEI received a small-to-moderate amount of money from Microsoft during
the antitrust trial days, but based on my knowledge of CEI, I'd say
I'm positive that Jim's views are his and his alone (he's an
economist, and it can't be helped). :)

Jim is responding to this New York Times editorial yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/opinion/18WED2.html

-Declan

---

Subject: CEI's Weekly Commentary:  Software Wars
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 17:13:37 -0400
From: "Richard Morrison" <rmorrison@cei.org>

CEI C:\SPIN

This issue:  Software Wars:  Open Source and the N. Y. Times


This week's c:\spin, is by James V. DeLong, Senior Fellow, Project on
Technology and Innovation, CEI, September 19July 19, 2002.


The New York Times recently editorialized about Linux and open source
software, exuberant that an operating system written and updated by
volunteer programmers in a communitarian spirit, and available for
free might challenge Microsoft s Windows and result in major savings
in computer costs.


The paper also exulted that governments such as Germany and China are
pushing Linux, and it urged everyone, including U.S. agencies, to join
them so as to foster competition.


The NYT view has some gold.  Competition is always good.  And the
Linux backers have hold of an important truth, which is that
persuading a lot of smart people each to devote a small part of their
time to an effort can produce impressive results.  They are also right
to think that opening up computer code to the eyes of the whole
programming community can be extremely productive.  Microsoft itself
sees increasing virtue in this idea, and is developing shared source
to open up code to scrutiny while the company keeps firm hold of the
pen.


But the NYT misses in some ways.  First, none of this is free.  
Software is a complicated industrial product requiring continuing
re-creation and support, and money to support it must come from
somewhere.  Linux programmers are not street people who sleep on steam
grates so as to indulge their passion.  They are supported, often
handsomely, by universities and IT companies.  Even this support is
not sufficient to keep Linux going, and hardware companies, notably
IBM, are now pouring billions into it.  There is nothing wrong with
this; IBM has good competitive reasons in that it wants to dish Sun
and Microsoft.  But the movement is not the folk song army depicted in
the NYT.


If  IT companies, universities, and IBM want to donate the fruits of
their labor  to computer purchasers, including governments, that is
their privilege.  But we have just gone through a half a decade in
which the business model was give it away, and it did not work.  In
the end, software might be bundled with hardware, or vendors might
give away software tied to a services contract both are increasingly
common -- but the code writers will want pay for producing it, which
means money must ultimately come from the users somehow.


A second problem is the creation of applications for Linux. The
General Public License that controls the program s distribution can be
paraphrased as thou shalt not charge for this program and its source
code shall be public.   This license is also viral; if you write an ap
for Linux, and incorporate any code covered by the GPL, then your ap
is also subject to the GPL, and it too becomes open source and free.


True open source believers think that this is just fine -- all aps
should be open and free.  But it is not clear that the freeware
spirit, or the IT/university willingness to subsidize, runs deep
enough to provide anything approaching the number of aps available for
Windows, where good old reliable greed creates an incentive for
developers.  The Linux community is moving toward proprietary aps, but
it is chancy.  Writing aps without incorporating some operating system
code is difficult, and those who want to engraft proprietary aps onto
Linux are taking a legal risk.


Finally, governments should not treat this as an arena for industrial
policy.  The incentives fueling the Linux movement are not necessarily
those required for long-term production of software suited for the
public as well as the nerds.  Governments, which are as naïve as
editorial writers, should keep their hands off.




  C:\SPIN is produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.





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