UK Conservatives Slammed Over Open Source Stance 281
Golygydd Max writes "The UK government has been criticised by the opposition Conservative (Tory) party for its lack of support for open-source software. Now, according to Techworld, a security company that has examined the Tory plans has come out against the use of open source software, citing the number of security problems inherent in the software. This is a sensitive issue for the UK government, still smarting from the loss of 7m family records from HM Revenue and Customs in 2007. What makes this criticism interesting is that this is an attack on the policies of what will certainly be the next British government — it's unusual for a party to be criticised like this before it comes to office. It's an indication of how IT is going to be a battleground in the future general election."
Re:Doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention its an American company with a product to sell, and that product's utility is strongly diminished by using open source software.
Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete (Score:5, Informative)
We should collect statistics here and convince these Britons that OSS is still the best model around.
Yeah, maybe we look here https://opensource.fortify.com/ [fortify.com] They scanned 103 projects with a total of 24668646 loc and found a total of 403 error which makes for 1 error in 61212 loc or 4 errors per projects. Not too bad I'd say. Oh, btw of those 403 errors found 383 are already fixed.
"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:5, Informative)
A simple Google Search [google.com] shows rather more than just being a vendor of some random proprietary software. Fortify is a Microsoft partner which has indulged in joint product launches with them [microsoft.com] and this isn't even mentioned in the original article.
This is yet another example of a Microsoft inspired campaign of lies. This group never changes and they and their software should be automatically excluded from all state contracts for ethical violations.
Re:Just another way to fight... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, a slightly less blinded-by-the-cynicism round-up.
Labour used to be dominated by the unions, but then realised this was making them almost unelectable as anybody who isn't in a union really doesn't like other people's unions very much. They've tried to become centrist.
Conservatives used to be very much for "small government", turning everything free market and cutting taxes as far as possible. They've been realising that times have changed since the 80s and a social conscience is generally seen as a good thing. So, both the main parties have been chasing "the middle ground", or at least marketing themselves that way.
The Liberal Democrats formed from an amalgam of a breakaway party from Labour (the SDP) and one of the old British political parties (the Liberals). They tend to have a socially progressive set of policies, often highlighting just one or two policies that sound populist or radical (eg, local income taxes) because they struggle to keep their profile up in the media.
Things are complicated further because while the Lib Dems have far too few seats ever to form a government, they have much more evenly spread support than the two main parties -- so northern seats are often Labour vs Lib Dem battles, while southern seats are often Conservative vs Lib Dem battles, making British politics a very odd fight: it's not a straight fight between Labour and Conservatives, but also a question of which of them can fight the Lib Dems at a local level more convincingly.
Also, although the Conservatives have a lead in the polls, the original headline is wrong to say that the Conservatives are "certainly going to be the next government", because of the way constituency borders are at the moment. The large lead in the vote could very easily turn into a small loss in numbers of seats, or a "hung parliament" (which in practice would probably mean a Labour minority government, as on economic issues the Lib Dems vote with Labour more often than with the Conservatives)
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:5, Informative)
Um.. Microsoft's EULA basically says the same thing.
Re:Conflict of interest? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, I wouldn't go so far to label it a conspiracy, just an obvious conflict of interest.
The fact that they themselves sell software that benefits from the results of a study that they themselves conduct just degenerates the whole thing into the realm of the ludicrous.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:3, Informative)
OSS lacks QA - show me a OSS project that government is likely to use that has any quality assurances. the big font stating "use at own risk" is a massive turn off for government and rightly so.
Um.. Microsoft's EULA basically says the same thing.
Not only that, but with OSS you can actually do a risk assesment by inspecting the source code. In the case of proprietary software that gives no warantee, how can I asses my risk?
What I find interesting is that in most cases you really want to "use at your own risk", after having assessed that risk properly. Because, if I buy a piece of software from Mario's Super Software company for $100, but it blows up in my face for $10 million.... my $100 refund isn't going to comfort me all that much...
Re:Just another way to fight... (Score:3, Informative)
What homophobia? He's claiming the tories are hypocrites - there is no value judgement on homosexuality in the post.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:5, Informative)
Well the US DoD seems to be trusting to OSS with forge.mil [slashdot.org]. I know the company I work for does a variety of UK government contracts as well and we're using more and more open source (mainly Eclipse and its plugins, Protege and OWL in my area of work).
Besides, what's the real difference between relying on an OSS project with no license fee for five years then (possibly) having to migrate and learn something new but similar versus being charged year on year for Office 2003 then having to migrate to 2007 and all its new UI and still being charged year on year?
No, not homophobia (Score:3, Informative)
Read the guy again
The Conservatives have usually portrayed themselves as the family of family values, Married, 2.4 kids, stable etc
But in real life enough Tory MPs were seen to be living a life other than they preached. One even died during a bout of erotic asphyxiation
So it is Hypocrisy he is against, not same sex relationships
Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:4, Informative)
like the OSS crowd, i'm sure they merely sourced their data to fit their own agenda.
Yes like FUD.
OSS lacks QA - show me a OSS project that government is likely to use that has any quality assurances.
Really I guess you have not looked at Redhat or Novel support.
OSS takes control away from the customer as to who supplies their patches
Now that trolling. If you don't like the software then you can always write your own. Of course if you like the software you can post bug reports or even fix it yourself and if you don't have the expertise you can hire someone to do that. Try doing that with closed source or proprietary software. As for the people who supply patches all you need to do is look at the "Help" or even the source to get the name of the people who are maintaining the package.
these are merely the security concerns. yes there is the usual stupid argument of being able to see the source code - but here is a clue for you - that's hellish expensive and blows the OSS is cheap myth out of the water.
Sigh! If you have done a cost benefit analysis then you would clearly see that a "supported" open source operating system is much more cheaper and reliable than a proprietary solution. You honestly don't think that just because you install a Linux distribution that everything is going to work forever, you need an administrator and depending on how much you value your data you will need some level of vendor support which is normally much cheaper than a proprietary solution.
The grammar Nazi in me states you should always start a sentence with a capital letter as is a stand alone "I". After all that is very basic English.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think anyone would propose that a government just take a random FOSS project from freshmeat.net and put it into production, least of all with anything resembling sensitive data.
However, both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server have both achieved Common Criteria [wikipedia.org] EAL4+ assurance, making them equivalent to Solaris, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP in the eyes of the evaluation bodies and therefore suitable for many roles within government IT systems.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Informative)
most of London will vote Conservatives
Er, is this a different London to this one [bbc.co.uk]? Or this one [wikipedia.org]?
The South East and South tend to vote Tory. London is pretty mixed.
Don't be so negative (Score:3, Informative)
And yes, during the 80s and 90s I helped lobby Parliament on the value of the British electronics and software industries, served on DTI committees, talked to our MP and Euro MP. I didn't say "oh nasty Conservatives, don't get involved." That's pointless.
Re:Next gov't? (Score:4, Informative)
The Westminster government *is* the British government, regardless of who occupies the Scottish parliament.
Re:Next gov't? (Score:2, Informative)
To people who don't know about UK politics this post might imply that Scotland is not governed by the British (Westminster) government. Scotland still is, though many powers have been devolved to the Scottish parliament.
If the Conservatives form the next British government, Scotland will still be affected.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/devolved.cfm [parliament.uk]
Re:See to believe.... (Score:3, Informative)