[ale] Two awesome essays on open source and copyright

[Jeff Hubbs]

I read that Peruvian congressman's letter too, and I have to say, it's 
as though it were "laser-guided."  I don't know who actually wrote that 
- the guy himself or a staffer - but either way, someone down there in 
Peru understands the issues and is willing to stick to them.  And who 
would have thought...PERU??

In my next gig as an IT Manager (when it comes!) - I am going to at 
least try to move toward an MS-less operation at least on the server 
side, to the greatest extent I can - and I would hope to do away with IE 
and Outlook on the client side if said client side remains MS.  Some of 
my reasons for doing this (the ultimate goal being expunging all MS SW) 
- specifically, the reasons that are the hardest to sell to the 
uninformed masses - are the very things that Villanueva states - like 
"control at a distance."

Interestingly, I fought a similar battle some time ago when I worked for 
a Federal agency field office and learned that our primary site 
contractor was working up a Novell-based system that would leave even 
our own hard drive contents available for their inspection.  I fought 
hard to put a stop to it but was simply overwhelmed, however, after 
sticking to my guns for long enough, I was able to demonstrate the 
reality of the situation to enough people that even my Division Director 
acknowledged that some of our operations simply couldn't go forward with 
that kind of contractor access and that led to my implementing the first 
client-server infrastructure and software implementation in that field 
office in 1998.

Now, I picked up on the problem very early in the game because I had 
spent three years working totally with classified computing and 
therefore already had a tendency to think through things in terms of 1) 
what data gets stored and transmitted; 2) where all [does|can] that data 
go; 3) who all can see it given 2; 4) what are the implications of 3; 5) 
of the findings of 4, are any a "Bad Thing?"   In this case, my answers 
were 1) contract data, coordination of contractor oversight activity, 
etc. 2) contractor's network wiring, file servers, print spools, etc. 3) 
unspecified (and unspecifiable) contractor personnel - we would never 
know exactly who or how many 4) contractor having access to contract 
text pre-release, knowing ahead of time what areas Federal overseers 
were scrutinizing or were about to scrutinize, etc., 5) general loss of 
integrity of the oversight role and erosion of the public trust.

Many of these same issues and thought processes seems to have gone 
through the minds of the Peruvians.  Incredibly (to me, at least), 
right-thinking people appear to hold sway in Peru.  Their battle is 
similar to mine except for the identity of the players, but in this 
case, Microsoft has assumed many of the same threatening powers as that 
contractor of yore; specifically, exploiting a lack of competition, 
designing in and maintaining a high degree of follow-on surveillance 
capability, utilizing hidden closed-source processes and mechanisms as a 
normal part of routine operation.  And, I see the same naivete today in 
many IT workers' regard toward MS as I did back then among the agency 
officials who looked at me like I was nuts.

- Jeff

Michael D. Hirsch wrote:

> There are two really spectacular essays I've just been made away of.
> The first was also on slashdot yesterday, so you may have heard of it
> already, but if not, check it out.  Apparently Peru is trying to pass
> a bill requiring all government software purchases be free software.
> The local MS rep wrote a letter expaining the errors in the bill and
> Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, Congressman of the Republica of
> Perú, wrote back explaining in fine detail the error of his arguments.
> It is perhaps the finest reading of this sort I have ever read.  He
> maintained a polite veneer while totally destroying the MS arguments.
> A classic example of cutting someone down without ever uttering an
> objectionable sentence.
> 
> Dr. Villanueva's position is strengthened in that a government has
> additional responsibilities that a corporation doesn't; it must maintain
> records for arbitrarily long times.  Thus open source and open formats
> become essential.  Truly a wonderful read.  (See below for some nice
> excerpts.) 
> 
> Going back and reading the slashdot discussion of Villanueva's letter
> lead me to another impressive article on kuro5hin:
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/1345/03329 
> 
> This is a reprint of the seminal speech in English parliment about
> copyright law.  In it the author, Thomas Babbington Macaulay, explains
> the evils inherent in copyright extending long after death.  His
> speech is equally relevant today, over 150 years later, but given in
> a wonderfully literate style that you would never hear today in congress.
> 
> The person posting the article to Kuro5hin (jolly st nick) did a very
> nice job looking up many of the more obscure references.
> 
> --Michael
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Luigidigi <luigidigi at cwpanama.net>
> Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 14:58:44 
> To: farber at cis.upenn.edu
> Subject: Open Source programs for Peru's government
> 
> In a letter to the GM of Microsoft Peru, Peruvian congressman Dr Edgar 
> David Villanueva Nuñez trashes every argument and FUD the MS machine 
> throws at the Peruvian government, point by point.
> The original letter from MS Peru was with regards to a bill in the 
> Peruvian congress that aims at using Open Source programs for its 
> administrative government offices.
> Mr Villanueva explains knowleagebly and with details why the Open Source 
> programs are better for a country like Peru. Well worth the time to read 
> it, it should be obligatory reading at Washington DC.
> 
> Read the letter here
> <http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TvfSi6UFJpQC:www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html+&hl=en&lr=lang_en>
> or at:
> http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TvfSi6UFJpQC:www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html+&hl=en&lr=lang_en
> 
> A few excerpts, in no particular order:
> 
> "The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed 
> as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software 
> community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietry 
> software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of 
> Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty 
> of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of 
> intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your 
> firm commonly uses in its publicity)."
> 
> "To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is 
> indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow 
> control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to 
> third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public 
> are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the 
> citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the 
> world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the 
> source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*."
> 
> "In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion 
> that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary 
> software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in 
> this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that 
> is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidising the 
> proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were 
> true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area 
> it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this 
> improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, 
> it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, 
> considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money."
> 
> 
> Ehem, I need this guy to represent me. :)
> 
> 
> Luis Lima
> 
> ---
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