Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: [discuss] Open source software News

[ian]

On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 07:32, Chris Sherlock wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > Then add, the civil service itself, defence, Inland Revenue, DSS etc and
> > I should think that as a whole it must be over £500m per year. And
> > that's just the public sector. Imagine if the Gov put £500m into free
> > software projects - I doubt there would be any applications of any
> > significance that would not have free software support within 2 to 3
> > years. Of course many small businesses would then adopt free software
> > lowering their costs and also stimulating that sector by increasing
> > business to business trade. After that reduce to £100m a year for
> > maintenance and save £400m a year. Use that £400m to recycle machines
> > and give them to kids in schools for home use that are on free meals and
> > haven't got a computer. Provide on-line support and encourage these kids
> > to take part in community software development projects. Government
> > environment policy, inclusion policy, improved IT education and
> > stimulation of the small business sector supported in one fell swoop
> > without costing the tax payer anything. Anyone vote for me at the next
> > general election :-)
> 
> OK, I'm going to don my flame-retardent fire-suit here, but isn't it the 
> function of industry/individuals/GNU to create software for the masses, 
> and NOT the government?
> 
> Yep, a brave thing to put forth on the OOo mailing list, but still - 
> interesting question, isn't it?

The government doesn't have to create the software it just has to
finance the creation as it currently does with licensed software. Take
education where the government spends £100m a year on E-learning credits
that schools have to spend on proprietary licensed software content. So
they are financing licensed software to 100m a year and spending nothing
on Free software development. They could easily put out tenders to open
source developers to bid to develop particular things on the condition
they are GPL. Government spends lots of money on a lot less sensible
things through the grants system. I'm getting a group together to
improve the database aspect of OO.o for schools and small businesses and
that will require funding. The pledges we have are all at the moment
from public sources and I should think that directly or indirectly if
the project works it will be off public sector finance. That is not to
say FLOSS development should be exclusively funded by public sources,
just that the investment from that source is currently heavily in favour
of proprietary licensed product so the playing field needs levelling.

The fundamental issue is that the license model is extremely
inefficient. It has resulted in a few very rich monopolies fleecing the
rest of the community. Most of the revenue goes into marketing and
fighting legal battles. MS Office makes 80% profit despite MS's fairly
lavish lifestyle, not because MS is a wonderfully efficient company but
because it has established a monopoly where the production costs of the
product are negligible compared to the cost of marketing and lawsuits
and these are negligible compared to the margin. To change this
situation requires a completely different way of thinking of the
commercial model for software development and government should be
providing leadership because a) it is on behalf of the tax payer getting
ripped off big time by software monopolies. b) A large enough software
user to make a significant impact on changing the parameters.

No, I'm not a socialist, I am in business and happen to believe
customers should be served by business not simply exploited by either
state or private monopolies. This is why Government should fund FLOSS
projects but insist they are GPL, not Crown copyright (UK).

-- 
ian <address@hidden>