Governments, Beyond the Open Source Hype 180
An anonymous reader writes "ForeignPolicy.com takes a look at Open Source as it applies to governments and some of the reasons that a governing body may or may not like OSS. From the article: 'Governments around the world are enchanted by open-source software. Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...] Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric, and assertions about some of the technical benefits of open source fail to tell the whole story.'"
Its the money, first and foremost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:1)
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:2)
They will either pay someone like Red Hat to have a support contract, or spend hundreds of thousands hiring in-house techs. Tax money will still go on software, it will just be a less obscure licencing system (How many versions does Vista and Office 2007 come in?) and a nice warm fuzzy feeling from using OSS. Notice the lack of F/
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:2)
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:2)
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:2)
If it really works in the long run, which I believe that it would, it probably would boost business and it probably would put people to work in the long run as well. There are already many people employed to support the software that the government use
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, not only is it cheaper, but the money that is spent on it goes back into the local economy rather than straight into the pockets of a foreign company, because the government have the option of hiring any local firms willing to do the work instead of simply whoever holds the copyright.
Most big "foreign" software vendors are US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Most big "foreign" software vendors are US (Score:2, Insightful)
Erm, yes. What's your point? You do realise that most people live outside the USA? And that when the article talks about governments around the world, they aren't just referring to the USA?
I don't see why. I identified an advantage that open-source has for most governments. If the advantage does not apply to a particu
Re:Most big "foreign" software vendors are US (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's clear the terminology up. I understand "national" companies to be companies that are partly controlled by the state. Given that we are talking about trade between countries, I used the word "local" to talk about companies owned by citizens of the country in question. I am not differentiating between different areas of the same country.
I'm saying that, all other things being equal, open-source software allows governments to get softwar
Penny-wise and future foolish. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Penny-wise and future foolish. (Score:2)
It's a nightmare and one mistake can trigger an audit.
It's better not to ha
Re:Penny-wise and future foolish. (Score:2)
"Mr Big, I presume?"
Re:Penny-wise and future foolish. (Score:2)
If you have a perfectly competitive market (ie no lock-in), there is very little room for profit, and hence for investment in research and development.
Backwards.
That seems to imply that the reason for research and development is to be a fair way to apply some of the profits from your locked-in customers. I doubt that companies even start out that way. It would be nearly impossible to stay that way.
Margins are th
Because it works (Score:5, Informative)
"Enterprise" software has never really impressed me. A great deal of the time, the guy on the other end of support is no more knowledgable than me of the product. That is when you are lucky enough to get someone who speaks english natively. So what's the point for lackluster support? (Hardware is the exception. Many service plans can guarantee you a new server in less than 4 hours).
Highly specialized software generally has an unreasonable amount of bugs. We have one dept that has "enterprise level software", that I'm in the process of rewriting its so buggy. It's almost as if this company has no regression testing procedures in place.
And it's always a lot of fun paying 2,000k a pop for marginal glue code between applications. God-forbid that gluecode break one side. You'll get thorwn into a fun blame game of each company blaming the other. You need complex glue code? That'll be $10,000 and 6 months. You'll also recieve a windows front end in tk with extremely complex install directions. Minor versions are incompatible. You can never patch that box because xp sp2 will break the very customized non-standard registry settings.
People can spread all the FUD they want about open source, but I use it on a daily basis whenever I can. I have control over it and things just work. It's comical to see some of the rediculous things that go on in the closed source community. I like being able to change the ip address of a server if I have to. I don't need a license holding me back from doing that.
Re:Because it works (Score:2)
I've had plenty of instances where an IP address can certain by changed... as long as you don't want the software that runs on that machine to keep running. This is mostly due to licenseing, not a lack of source code, but I dislike asking 5 different companies if it's OK to change the IP address of a license server.
Re:Because it works (Score:2)
You can spin anything (Score:2)
It is *not* the money, at least not at first (Score:3, Interesting)
The initial cost of free software is usually higher, as a vendor of proprietary software can sell the product below production cost, with the expectation of making the money back later in support and manitanence.
Which again is why we shoul
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in a non-US government department. Our government has its own policy on Open Source (developed by another dept), which is non-committal but non-inhibiting, and little more than a document that describes the main issues with using open source. The public and politicians don't know whether we use OSS or not, and I doubt they care. (Except for one politic
Re:Its the money, first and foremost (Score:2)
No no no, it is not about the money, you see, that is what made the Icaza's e-Mexico project fail, because he tried to sell "open source" as a cheaper alternative.
The real benefits for open source software is in the freedom and openess, you see, with closed source, the taxes that people are paying can go directly to developers of OpenSource from the country OR the
Written by an ex-Microsoft employee. (Score:5, Informative)
And if we look her up, we find... [washington.edu] ...as her only listed non-media job on at least one version of her bio.
Just saying.
Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Policy and Strategy Group
Ya know, I knew something like that was coming before I clicked into this article. The summary alone smelled of astroturf. But they do it because they realize while we will spot the paid 'independent scholarship' almost instantly the intended audience either won't.
The sweet smell of plastic grass (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The sweet smell of plastic grass (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's a good one. "There's no evidence that our product, having more flaws than their product, is actually any worse."
Oh puh-lease.
Re:The sweet smell of plastic grass (Score:2)
It seems to me that this may be all the evidence we need of astroturfing. While I don't really know for sure if this statement is true...
It's not, at least for the classes of bugs that can be automatically detected.
Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee. (Score:2)
Even with an obvious example like FOSS being easy to localize to one's local language it was asserted that "Microsoft makes a living out of making its software customizable while still closely guarding its source code". Sure it can but it doesn't, at least not until it's profitable. Which is understandable, but with FOSS speakers of unpopular languages d
Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee. (Score:2, Insightful)
I write proprietary software; and I write it primarily for government organizations (and maybe some private companies, but they have yet to express an interest). No, I'm not willing to ID myself here, hence the coward bit.
Here's some more FUD for you: the article author makes an association between For-Profit Corporations and proprietary software, on the one hand, and no-corporation amateurs and F/OSS on the other.
I see this association all the time, and it annoys the hell out
Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee. (Score:4, Insightful)
Good one.
Governments could very well profit from Open source software, as well as the programmers hired to make it.
Just because it is Open Source, it doesn't mean that the work the programmers put in is free.
What it does mean is that:
But because of the omnipresent FUD, very few people in governments worldwide have any idea whatsoever about these things.
P.S.
5. ???
6. Profit!
Just Astroturfing, don't Bother to Click (Score:1, Interesting)
"Caroline Benner is a fellow at the University of Washington's Institute for International Policy. From 2001 to 2003, Ms. Benner was a consultant with the geopolitical policy and strategy group at Microsoft."
Re:Not necessarily. Decide for *yourselves* (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not insecurity. It's not wanting people to be misled by non-facts.
Re: sorry if I flinch after being hit 19 times. (Score:2)
Nah... after almost (or is it over?) 20 years of this crap (DOS aint' done til Lotus won't run...), there is no longer any doubt to give the benefit of.
Your average computer user (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Your average computer user (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
Unless computers are your hobby or your profession, there is really very little incentive to try Linux, from a user point of view. The equation may be different for a government or corporate IT department. For Linux' sake, I hope so.
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
The least demanding possible user will need to install and office suite and anti-virus.
A lot of people will want some or all of: a good web browser, anti spyware, anti-adware, p2p software, messaging clients, graphics package, CD ripper, CD/DVD burder, PDF reader, etc., etc.
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
... or download them! (Score:2)
Or you could just go to Dell's website, type in your computer's model and number, and just download them. But if you want to spend 4 hours hunting all over, be my guest.
Re:... or download them! (Score:2)
Re:... or download them! (Score:2)
Really digging at the bottom of the barrel to come up with a counter-argument, aren't you?
Re:... or download them! (Score:2)
Re:... or download them! (Score:2)
2) Dell computers, at least all the ones we've purchased recently, have come with a Windows XP CD and a separate Restore Disk. If you want to JUST install Windows with no drivers, you can use the XP CD. Then when you need drivers, you can put in the Restore Disk and install only the drivers you need from it. Or, you can eschew the Restore Disk and just
Your average government (Score:2)
For one, its more likely to use a piece of software for decades and want to avoid concerns about the vendor end-of-lifing it, and have the resources (provided it has access to the source) to arrange its own support, so it has a lot more to gain than a consumer from OSS -- which, btw, is more than just Linux. While desktop Linux may not work "out of the box" as well as Windows (a debate for another time and place), plenty of OSS software does work out of the box as well as i
Re:Your average computer user (Score:2)
If my HD dies right, then I can't just go to the store, buy a new HD, and re-install, because Sony just installed a hidden partition on my HD, and didn'
If I were a foreign government (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so your military doesn't run windows. Our military runs (or at least used to) Solaris and HP-UX... but those are closed source, too, and owned by a foreign entity.
In the end, open source provides me -- as a sovereign nation -- the ability to control the critical pieces of my own infrastructure.
That's how I (as a person) see it, anyway. Whether or not foreign governments agree, I don't know.
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Sun has been providing OS sources to third parties for forever and a day. I realize it's BSD-derived but even I have access to the SunOS4 sources. Someone actually using SunOS5, especially a government defense entity, should have little trouble.
Hire your own people. (Score:3, Interesting)
With any closed source software not written in your country, you're importing it and sending your money to another country.
If you pour some cash into your education system and train up your own programmers to modify the Open Source code to suit your needs, you're investing in your own people. The money stays in your country. Those programmers pay taxes to you on that money.
And you've got to realize that this is going to be a very important field in the futur
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
I for one would rather have a closed source product, where people could be held accountable for their mistakes.
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
However, they can still examine the source to find bugs with it. Hard to spot Buffer-Overflow soon turns into a nuclear missile launch. Hyperbole, sure, but it shows the point.
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
The government would make it, if I had my way. There would be no EULA. There'd be none. Therefore, whoever coded the area that had a problem could be held accountable.
Remember, this is in theory, not 'reality'. It doesn't matter if "both of [my] points" are diametrically o
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
Many, many companies need software that doesn't provide a special competitive advantage, it just keeps them going. As such, it behooves them to share development costs. This can either be done via proprietary software or OSS; in-house means you foot the entire bill.
Would you rather pay someone to fix a few issues you have with OpenOffice.org, or w
Re:If I were a foreign government (Score:2)
The difference is that you can. When was the last time you found a bug in MS Office and actually managed to pay MS to fix it? Unless you are buying millions of units, they won't even listen to you.
Author background. (Score:1)
To put it another way... M$ shill!!
OSS isn't everything (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how it's always going to be as well. Example: People don't move to Firefox because it's open source. They move to it because they're told it's better than IE, and they then stick with it because it's demonstrably better.
At the end of the day ideology is irrelevant to most people.
Re:OSS isn't everything (Score:2)
You were talking about Open Source
Open Source isn't an ideology. If Open Source isn't (as you say) demonstrably better for you (yes, in part because of freedom), then you shouldn't use it. We won't think the worse of you, either.
and this article says what exactly? (Score:1)
Open Source isn't about cost. It's about soverign (Score:2)
Curiously contradictory article summary? (Score:4, Informative)
"Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric"
While at the same time giving us a splendidly succinct piece of rhetoric:
Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...]
And an Uncertain Argument of Uncertainty ... (Score:2)
From the article: "Software, with its millions of lines of code, is so complicated that experts don't know for sure that open source has fewer bugs, nor can they say with certainty that having fewer bugs makes open source more secure."
That argument proves too much. If it is impossible to be certain that any software is bug-free and/or in other ways insecure, it is all the more important that one be able to examine the source code.
Poorer Countries (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Poorer Countries (Score:2)
Immediately yes, in as much as there's a zero purchasing cost, so they can immediately obtain software, where they may not have been able to afford a proprietary equivalent.
However, the real benefits of open source come with the ability to modify it to your own needs. Poorer countries are unlikely to have either the skilled developers nor the wage money to be able to make any concerted effort in this area. More affluent nat
Re:Poorer Countries (Score:2)
There are more things in heaven and earth.... (Score:2)
Use the best tool for the job, regardless of philosophical ideal.
Which isn't to say that access to an application or platforms source code isn't a consideration when looking for whats best. Likewise budget is also a concern. But do not avoid a good solution, just because you feel that all software should be "free".
Re:There are more things in heaven and earth.... (Score:2)
Bzzzt, wrong.
Governments are based on ideals. Such as democracy, freedom, equality, whatever.
A tool that blatantly violates these should not be used by a government, even if it is the best one. For example, many governments have strict quotes for minimum numbers of disabled employees even though they would probably "function" better without.
Free Software is important because it prevents data lock-in. One of the main reasons for Free Software b
Re:There are more things in heaven and earth.... (Score:2)
By being stored in a format I can not access without paying the MS tax.
You can easily take data from a word or excel document and move it to any format.
No, you can't. You can take the data, but it isn't easy. Yes, OO can open these document - thanks to endless hours of work by Free Software people who disliked the lock-in as much as I do. It's not Word exporting to OO format, remember? The ODF group came up with a Word ODF plugin, not MS. Aga
Re:There are more things in heaven and earth.... (Score:2)
Open Source has trouble making inroads into government because Open Source has no lobbying power. Certain large open source providers may have some lobbying power, but it pales in comparison to Microsoft's. You may see certain corners of the government using OSS in certain limited circu
Humans make tools to make tools to accomplish task (Score:2)
Anyway, this "Use the best tool for the job, regardless of philosophical ideal" sounds nice
BUT
It's only code. And governments have the money to hire the people to write the code that is the tools.
If there isn't an Open Source tool that will work for the project due nex
Re:There are more things in heaven and earth.... (Score:2)
You will understand that quote when you solve "what daddy is doing."
Too obscure?
Open Source is Really a Threat (Score:3, Insightful)
Make your own DemocraKey [travelingforever.com], and help spread the technology for free and anonymous access to all information.
not quite (Score:2)
Re:Open Source is Really a Threat (Score:2)
In a broader way I think it is part of a much wider process of social change. I am not a techie; I am capable of installing an OS if the installation holds my hand through the process, but that's about the limit of my capabilities (I read /. out of interest, not professional interest, if that's a useful distinction). But, as a dumb home-user/end-user, I think I would always choose the FOSS option over the proprietary option, and I encourage my students to do the same. Not because of technical superiority: h
"Better" has nothing to do with it (Score:2)
Re:"Better" has nothing to do with it (Score:2)
FUD (Score:2)
The story is pure FUD, full of trite generalities that are intended to create doubt in the reader's mind.
In fact, the situation is quite simple: we have two kinds of software, free and open source one, and for-pay and closed-source software. Without further information, free and
Re:FUD, FUDDER, FUDDEST (Score:3, Insightful)
From the Article... it is misleading to say that open source empowers people in ways proprietary software does not. Both open source and proprietary software allow you to change the behavior of a software program in significant ways without touching the program's source code
Those two sentences go beyond mere FUD to outright deception.
Re:FUD (Score:2)
You are describing how many irrational organizations work. I'm stating how rational organizations need to behave.
The fact is that linux is NOT ready for the desktop.
The fact is that you're full of shit. Linux is technically superior as a desktop OS to both Windows and Maci
Re:FUD (Score:2)
You mean, users can move or delete a doc without closing it; the 'button with the X-mark' has the same function in the file- and the http-browser instead of the contrary; you use multiple desktops to switch to another task instead of closing and reopening a bunch of doc's; clicking on an appointment in the diary selects the item instead of editing the name; security cannot be cheated by changing the extension of a filename; autocomplete is effect
...And the FUD-spreading site runs on what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Running a nmap -P0 -O foreignpolicy.com, you get among other things:
Device type: general purpose|media device
Running: Linux 2.4.X, Pace embedded
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.27, Pace digital cable TV receiver
Uptime 175.187 days (since Tue Dec 6 19:18:51 2005)
So it's open source, Linux, and running continuosly for 6 months. Ahh, the coherence.
Re:...And the FUD-spreading site runs on what? (Score:2)
Get the Facts, She's a Shill. (Score:3, Informative)
Caroline Benner is a fellow at the University of Washingtons Institute for International Policy. From 2001 to 2003, Ms. Benner was a consultant with the geopolitical policy and strategy group at Microsoft.
Just what does a software company need a Geopolitical Policy and Strategy Group for anyway? Gobal FUD? Creepy, and she's got a long history of M$ apologies and FUD to her name [google.com]. Let's review,
Re:Get the Facts, She's a Shill. (Score:2)
I'll leave the bullet points that are not OS-specific as an exercise to the (unfortunate) reader. But I couldn't let this one go without rebuttal.
Wow, that's a lot of links, twitter. But where's the smoking gun that directly links Microsoft to the blackout? Oh, yeah. That's right. It doesn't exist. [slashdot.org] For the second time
Thanks, but that's wrong. (Score:2)
This NCS analysis supports the SWG's finding that viruses and worms prevalent across the Internet at the time of the outage did not have any significant impact on power generation and delivery systems.
Their definition of "significant" should be examined, but that's not the conclusion I was quoting. It was entirely possible that the systems were overloaded by network traffic and that's what caused them to not trigger miss alarms. That's why the issue was investigated. Whether or
Re:...And the FUD-spreading site runs on what? (Score:2)
Now, there are some very valid points in the closed-source-versus-OSS debate, but Ms Benner raises none of them. All that she says is that software is more complex than you can imagine, so in all this grey area, you'd better stick to paid effort, rather than apparently part-time hobby-ist effort that OSS is.
Which, you'd think, is rather short-sighted and significantl
Heh. Take a look at the source. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah. Take a look at the source. I wonder if maybe she's still freelancing for them.
Really all the article does is point out that there's no silver bullet. She does so by pointing out that there are "claims" about open source. That's it. She doesn't dispute the claims. She just says they're claims. Unsurprisingly, she also doesn't point to the evidence of the claims.
FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." This may very well be a simple, subtle form of doubt-sewing. Nothing actually inaccurate in the article, that I saw, but also called into question some faily well-proven FOSS benefits (such as a lower cost of ownership).
About the worst I saw was:
Actually, most people I know don't consider "Total Cost of Ownership." That's a term made up by Microsoft in an attempt to make FOSS proponents look like they're narrow-minded and that their conclusions were incomplete and "irrelevant to business." Everybody I know looks at "cost" - period. "Cost", by definition, without any modifiers, *must* mean total cost. "Partial cost" or "license cost" may mean something other than Cost, capital C.
Likewise, relatively few people I know think Microsoft licensing is the main cost in a Microsoft shop; the legions of sysadmins and helpdesk staff, as well as the lost productivity and downtime cost quickly outweight the (relatively benign) up-front cost of Microsoft software. Take a look at Red Hat's licensing - it's actually more expensive than Microsoft on most fronts. You make it up tenfold in reduced operating expenses, however, and you can save even more in operating expenses if you go with a more technologically advanced flavour such as Debian GNU/Linux (you also reduce the up-front procurement costs as well).
Bah. I can't believe I wasted five minutes debunking this Microsoft-shill fluff piece.
Re:Heh. Take a look at the source. (Score:2)
The IT services department at the university where I work did consider precisely that, specifically and explicitly, using that exact phrase, and chomped on the MS bait -- hook, line, and sinker. And, purely by-the-by, now they specifically and explicitly refuse to support Linux or BSD. (Oh, they support OS X; that's somehow "OK" -- it's just Linux that's not "OK". I wonder what kind of dealing wen
The Article is NOT true (Linux excepted) (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, governments are starting to use Linux as the ONLY viable alternative to the hated Microsoft.
But that's it. While Linux is open source, open source is not defined by using Linux.
Much of the US government explicitly bans open source and I've supported 2 foreign government contracts that also had explicit anti-open source requirements. And they ban open source specifically because it is a potential security risk. In fact, it seems quite reasonable to question why the US (or European) countries would want to use open source code that may have been developed in China or even France (or others countries well known for their industrial espionage).
In any case, who the hell actually believes open source is MORE secure simply because they publish their millions of lines of code? Like ANY customer is actually going to look at the code.
Ok, before flaming, I agree some, well tested, well accepted, and well controlled open source with blessed versioning is more secure (probably MUCH more secure) because of exhaustive testing and support by real companies, but that's VERY different than arguing it's more secure governments can peek at the source code.
As a side note, open STANDARDS are a completely different topic and all governments want, love, and support open standards. Unfortunately, Open Source and Open Standards are very often confused by governments and government contracts.
That said, some countries like open source because it providesa competative advantage. For instance, China is rapidly excelling in HW production so open source acts to undermine the competative advantages more developed countries have built up in their commercial software industries. (That, and open source allows the Chinese government to insert all sorts of filters in place, but that's a different story).
Re:The Article is NOT true (Linux excepted) (Score:2)
I'd say inserting code in open-source software for industrial espionage purposes would be very risky - you have no way of knowing who's looking through your code and might spot it and embarrass you by revealing it. On the other hand, doing the same thing with closed-source
Re:security of open source (Score:2)
Only if the eyeballs are any good and are actually interested in looking at the code.
It's a bit like the draftees vs professional soldiers situation.
A small, well trained group of code auditors will be far more effective at finding coding errors than a large group of amateurs - and they'll do it even in code they have no personal interest in.
OT: Story Tags (Score:2)
A response for the non-techie (Score:4, Informative)
Benner's article states:
'In a 2002 letter to Microsoft, Peruvian Congressman Edgar David Villanueva Núñez noted that, "Relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains 'errors' or 'bugs' (in programmers' slang). But it is also well-known that the bugs in free software are fewer." Yet, ask computer security experts and they'll tell you that's not necessarily true. Software, with its millions of lines of code, is so complicated that experts don't know for sure that open source has fewer bugs, nor can they say with certainty that having fewer bugs makes open source more secure.'
This statement is true, as far as it goes. But it ignores something that's far more important than the opinion of a computer scientist: empirical evidence. No matter how you measure it, FOSS software is successfully exploited far less often than proprietary software. In many cases, the differences are striking. There are, for example, effectively no Linux viruses in the wild.
Even in cases where FOSS is the dominant application (like the Apache web server, for example) the number of successful attacks are so much lower that there is no effective competition from the alternatives.
So the key here is not whether software is provably secure (i.e. auditable) but that it's effectively secure. The difference here is subtle, especially to those who don't understand software. It's something crucially important, however.
There's another issue here that's at the core of the Free Software philosophy: process. The FOSS software development process is based entirely delivering quality software. In fact, development cycles and processes often sacrifice convenience for IT folks in favour of solid code. Proprietary software is almost always driven by business priorities which sometimes - but not always - put a low priority on software quality.
Another quotation from the article:
'There are really two reasons that it is very difficult to know whether software is secure [....] The first reason is that even the simplest software program consists of hundreds of thousands to millions of parts, and potentially all of these have to be correct, or the system may have security vulnerabilities. The second reason is that we have no technology for systematically checking that the parts are correct and fit together in a way that ensures security."'
Both of these points (that even simple software is hopelessly complex, and that there is no systematic way to test intereactions between software) are inaccurate. It's like saying that human bodies are composed of billions of cells, so we'll never be able to measure a person's health.
Unix-inspired systems usually use a 'toolkit' approach, in which a number of small, special-purpose tools are brought together to perform complex tasks. The result is that each individual part is very well understood and performs its task(s) in a clear fashion. So, while it may be true that it's hard to document every possible interaction between software elememts, that's not nearly the problem the writer makes it out to be.
The article concludes:'Software becomes more interesting--indeed, rhetoric-worthy--when it promises a better future. Open source may well deliver that promise, but computer science is too young a discipline, and there is too much we do not yet know about software to be so sure.'
This is a silly argument, especially in an article that claims to compare two alternative approaches to software. Computer science is not a young discipline, even if you compare it to physics and mathematics. The fundamentals of computing were understood even before we had computers to test with. The assertion that we just don't know enough is just plain wrong-headed.
Furthermore, even if it is true that we don't know enough, shouldn't that be an argument in favour of open source, where at least nothing is deliberately hidden?
Oh, good, the "It's so complex" argument (Score:2)
"auditing any source code in order to ensure there are no security vulnerabilities is nigh on impossible"
True, if the auditor is a government, even a large, well-funded government. If the auditor is the entire computing population of the earth, it's easier.
Which gets us full circle: the way you find faults an exceedingl
Re:Open is not Technical.. typical Microsoft FUD.. (Score:2)