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."
The British like Americans seem to be incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
...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...
I think we need to be objective here. Software both closed source and open source is created by human beings.
By nature, these human beings make mistakes.
The question then becomes: Which model of software development fixes security issues faster? We should collect statistics here and convince these Britons that OSS is still the best model around.
We should also remind the skeptics about OSS, that more than 80% of internet traffic is handled by OSS systems, so if OSS were that insecure, it would show...fast.
What a credible argument against OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our own research, however, has concluded that open source software exposes users to significant and unnecessary business risk, as the security is often overlooked, making users more vulnerable to security breaches," said Fortify vice president, Richard Kirk.
US outfit Fortify Software has come up with research to prove it.
Uh, wow, a US company that sells software doesn't want the British government to switch to open source software? What a radical position to take! Of course, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that its hard to price gouge a rich government for security software if they're not running propriatary crap. I'm sure if they had their way the Brits would all be running Vista and MS Office.
Doesn't make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
...it's unusual for a party to be criticised like this before it comes to office.
How is it unusual? It happens all the time. And anyway, the whole summary doesn't make sense.
The UK government has been criticised by the opposition Conservative (Tory) party for its lack of support for open-source software.
And, then:
a security company that has examined the Tory plans has come out against the use of open source software
So, the security company agrees with the current government? How is this news?
An indication? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's an indication of how IT is going to be a battleground in the future general election."
Not really. Politicians will grasp at anything to make sensational claims about their opponents. Doesn't matter if it involves IT, their sex lives or what they eat for breakfast.
American here, maybe politics are better in the UK. (but I doubt it)
Missing step ???? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Identify greatest long term threat to my industry
2. Conduct "Research" on threat and publish to increase FUD.
3. Sell products to "fix" FUD issues.
4. Profit!
Subject: No ?????????
Filter error: Your subject looks too much like ascii art.
You saw him repressing me, didn't you?
Just another way to fight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics is about, "We would do things better than you do!", open source software is just an unfortunate, innocent bystander in this process. If Labour were open source advocates, the Tories would be saying exactly what the, presumably Labour funded, security company are saying right now.
Personally, I think the time has come for another interesting political scandal so they will leave the software industry alone.
For those of you not familiar with UK politics, it works a bit like this...
There are 2 main parties, plus a 3rd with a small but meaningful number of seats. Each of the two main parties elect a leader who becomes candidate for PM. Labour are historically the party for the working man, formed out of the unions, however, in recent years they have figured out that the working man is significantly less likely to invite you for a spin on their yacht, so have shifted their position a little.
The current opposition party, the conservatives (or 'Torys'), usually have MPs that come from the rich and privately educated set, such as the hilarious London mayor Boris Johnson (seriously, look this guy up, he is a laugh a minute). They stand for strong family values, but are actually quite likely to be found having a three-way homosexual romp in a public toilet while their wife is at home taking care of the kids.
Neither party gives the slightest toss about open source software (at least, not even close to the level that we do here), but they *do* care about scoring some points. If FOSS is the battlegroud-dujour so be it... tomorrow it will be the colour of the sky!
Incidentally, you have have detected a slight hint of British cynicism in my post, it is pretty common. When Obama got elected I was thinking, "Does this guy have a brother that can come and help us out?", then I found out he has a brother that has recently been charged with drug offenses in Kenya... but to be honest, I am still thinking... 'He'll do!'.
Anyone for TenDRA? (Score:5, Insightful)
The British Government, or at least, branches of it, used to be very open source friendly. Developing software and publishing it with a very permissive license attached to the source code.
Alas, since the Blair Regime started, that all seemed to come to an end... and the British people had to learn to put up with huge IT spending to private firms, usually affiliated with Fujitsu or Microsoft ... and those public IT projects would famously fall flat on their faces and be quietly shelved.
Just look at the recent hiccups with the UK Biometrics scheme... 'nuff said.
City of London and the BBC (Score:2, Insightful)
However, in both cases, anybody 'political' wouldn't actually dirty their hands with 'software' AND software engineers wouldn't dirty their hands with 'politics'.
As for the 'report' it's basically self-promotion by the company in order to peddle its wares.
Re:The British like Americans seem to be incompete (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there's nothing more objective than deciding what conclusion you want to convince people of before collecting the statistics! (You don't happen to work for Gartner, do you?)
" will certainly be the next British government " (Score:5, Insightful)
In case I missed something there are multiple parties in the UK who will contest the next election - there are no certainties. Whilst the Tories may have a strong lead now in the polls anything could happen between now and the election.
Re:Just another way to fight... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What a credible argument against OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely shoddy, backwards arguments, too:
any flaws on commercial applications tend to get patched a lot faster than on open source, as the vendors producing the software have a lot more to lose than an open source programmer
This ignores the "many eyes" factor, and the additional effect that anyone who finds a security vulnerability can also patch it, and can inform people of the patch at the same time as the vulnerability. Contrast this to proprietary software, where anyone who does find a breach will also find that the best they can do is report it to the vendor and hope for the best -- and when some of them take many months to be patched, it may be worthwhile for them to start exploiting it, if for no other reason than to get Microsoft to take them seriously.
All of those have been argued to death... Let's assume I'm completely wrong. There's still the fact that there are many corporations which support open source. If an IBM, or a RedHat, or a Canonical ships an insecure product, they have every bit as much to lose as a proprietary vendor -- often moreso, as they tend to have quite a lot more competition.
All of which has very little to do with the supposed counterargument:
We need to move in the direction of what are known as 'open standards' - in effect, creating a common language for government IT. This technical change is crucial because it allows different types of software and systems to work side by side in government.
Microsoft aside, there is plenty of proprietary software that not only supports open standards, but actually revels in them. Unless the argument about security implied that there's an inherent insecurity in ODF itself, I don't see what the relevance is.
However, this article unfortunately presents it as an argument of security against hot new stuff. I don't think anyone is urging the government to become less secure.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as you might be right, it doesn't change the fact that it works. It's a little bit like the wikipedia problem - it can cite 100 sources that all use information lifted off wikipedia, it just seems reliable and independently confirmed even though there's really only one source. In this you got one piece of FUD "confirming" another piece of FUD and to the general public it will look like "massive independent confirmation" instead of "whole lot of FUD being passed aorund in their own FUD-circle". A lie doesn't become less of a lie if you keep repeating it, but it does become more credible unfortunately.
Re:" will certainly be the next British government (Score:1, Insightful)
Whilst the Tories may have a strong lead now in the polls anything could happen between now and the election.
They barely even have that, it's been down to four points within the last quarter. Extraordinary, given the pig's ear the present lot have made of it, but people still don't trust the Tories.
Re:Conflict of interest? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you need a big anti-OSS conspiracy for this one. If you asked them "So if we went with closed source, we wouldn't need your products?" you can damn well bet they'd say you need their product to "enhance" your security then as well. It's just another piece of "If you do this, you need us. If you do that, you really need us. And if you do THAT, you REALLY need us." product placement to sell their own products and make a buck. That the board of a software company is full of people from other software companies is hardly surprising.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:3, Insightful)
such security fixes could dry up overnight on a OSS project. that's the whole point i'm trying to get through to people, start thinking like you've got 100 million dollar projects relying on this stuff. who are you going to trust this to, some guy called bob on sourceforge, or a multi billion dollar company with resources to get you out of the shit?
Fortify cited there own research (Score:3, Insightful)
Showing that a statistically insignificant number of Java applications failed a test by a proprietary system which nobody is allowed to decompile so they can reproduce the results.
Hmm. Perhaps I am being a crotchety old science traditionalist, but the definition of the word 'research' seems to have changed of late.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd trust my own employees with access to the sourcecode, or lacking employees competent in the area, consultants with the same source code access. With the consultants I'd also have the added bonus of being able to replace them, where they not able to fix my problems :)
You know, you _do_ have to pay for support, FOSS or closed source. But you do get what you pay for. And with FOSS, that includes the ability to switch vendor without switching the software.
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:3, Insightful)
If security fixes dry up on OSS, the UK government can just get the source code and pay *anyone* to fix it. How is this better than relying on just one company, especially when that one company is a well-known scofflaw that has incurred the biggest fines in the history of EU law?
Re:Missing step ???? (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree, OSS is an opportunity to Fortify. The implication is that the Tories didn't include ensuring the security of OSS in their plans. What Fortify should want is
Gov use OSS
Gov need security assurance
Gov purchase Fortify s/w.
Gov Fortify against the source code - something they can only do with OSS.
Given that you can't outsource accountability, any org that wants to ensure security of OSS must buy the Fortify product.
This is when OS shines (Score:5, Insightful)
such security fixes could dry up overnight on a OSS project...start thinking like you've got 100 million dollar projects relying on this stuff.
This situation is PRECISELY when open source shows its strength. Take the massive annual license fee that you would need to pay MS to provide such support and hire your own, competent IT staff to maintain the code you want. First this means that you are creating jobs in the UK rather than paying some foreign company which should be a very important consideration for the UK government especially in the current climate. Secondly you now have your own local experts to provide support, implement the features that you want, provide support etc. etc. This puts you in a far better position than having to ring up MS. You own guys will be familiar with your usage and can give advice based on what they know the code does rather than on black-box trial and error experience. Finally you are contributing any changes and code back to the community helping those people that pay the taxes in the first place. Since this may also encourage other firms to invest in local expertise rather than ship money abroad this can help the local economy.
Bit of a Yorkshire bias?. (Score:3, Insightful)
ok I am just having a laugh cos I know you were teasing too on the old north/south divide, we're all southern softies and you're hard as nails with ferrets down your trousers... but most of London doesn't vote Conservative. More like a split between Labour/Lib/Tory.
I lived in Hackney for ten years and that's hardly a rich place, there's not a lot of love for Thatcher and now Cameron there. Reckon there's probably more Cameron voters in the posh end of Sheffield than in Hackney or Brixton...
But yeah we probably got the Tories coming, very depressing. It's feeling more and more like the 30s every day, the BNP will probably get a lot of votes in the white working class heartlands as well, I think that's something we've got to worry about, when socialist voters turn national socialist....
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to think so, I just hope the media most people have been consuming isn't the Daily Mail! ;)
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem we have in the UK isn't just football team mentality, it's the bizarre way our "representatives" are elected. Well, the way some of them are elected, anyway. It is disturbing that the so-called "upper house" was, until recently, a group of people who hold office only because a distant ancestor was rich or because they hold a high office in a particular religion (yes, really). These days, they are almost all appointed, though I think the 92 hereditary peers who survived Labour's initial reforms are still there, and the Lords conveniently overturned a strong vote in the Commons for a 100% appointed upper house, arguing for 100% appointed (and therefore their own jobs) instead. In any case, members of the upper house still retain office regardless of trivia like criminal convictions and accepting bribes to "do the right thing" with certain laws. Perhaps we should just go back to the fifteenth century and let the church run the show? At least 5% of the population are practising Christians, which gives them more moral authority than our upper house today!
Meanwhile, the first-past-the-post voting system ensures that the Commons alternates between the two dominant parties with a huge majority each, even though that is in no way representative of the strength of support the party in power actually carries among the population at the time. Don't even get me started on European government, which is a fantastic excuse for political parties to push through legislation their electorate don't want because "Europe told me to, mummy!", while conveniently overlooking the way that Europe only considered the issue because the unelected representatives of the country asked them to.
In any case, none of this helps me: I have fairly moderate, well-considered, and (I think) consistent political views, yet none of the parties with even a chance of getting a seat in Parliament represents my views. Labour are a complete waste of space, even if you're one of the "hard-working families" they were formed to look out for, and the current administration has no democratic mandate anyway. The Tories don't know what their policies are, though they keep trying to sound really convinced about what they believe this week, and they're certainly still on the draconian side when it comes to state power and even worse when it comes to allowing businesses to become the most powerful players in the game. (They're in favour of copyright term extension too, BTW, despite an overwhelming majority — for once the over-used term is justified — of respondents to the government's Gowers Review criticising such a move.) Cameron all but washed his hands of one of the few guys he had with the guts to stand up for what he believed in. The Lib Dems seem to think an arbitrarily high level of tax on people who earn more than average is "fair", probably because very few such people will ever vote for them anyway, and their policies on things like the environment and transport are the kind of thing you can only say if you're never going to achieve office because they conveniently overlook trivia like keeping the lights on and getting people to work. The one guy they had with any sort of clue was leader only briefly, and then stepped aside for another guy with all the depth of a two-dimensional object. Then, in England at least, you're into minor parties like the Greens (whose one issue got stolen by everyone else), the BNP (who do a disturbingly good job of sounding reasonable on some topics, until you realise what they really mean), the UKIP (who also might sound plausible on those sorts of issues, but have no credibility after pulling stunts like letting Kilroy-Silk's ego run the show for a while), and so on.
So who does that leave for me, and a heavy majority of friends I've talked to on political subjects, who believe in things like individual rights and freedoms, in exchange for individual responsibility; strong laws, but due process to enforce them; small, weak government; low taxes; healthy European relationships for tr
Self-contradictory (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know exactly where your coming from and I think it's another reason that politics should be taught in school, I think if it was then we would have a much better variety of political parties to represent our views.
Also I think the Lords problem would be solved if we could solve the commons problem, the commons has the power to eventually remove control from the Lords and so I think the Lords issue would be resolved as a side effect of fixing the commons.
Personally, I'll probably vote Lib dems next election because I think although they don't fully represent my views, they come the closest. David Davis is about the only guy in the Conservatives I trust and as you mention, he's not even part of the core team anymore.
Regarding the Lib Dems though, I think some of the things they say that sound impossible are actually quite reasonable, one strikes me in particular as I can confirm it's validity. The Lib Dems have mentioned that they would make savings in public sector of around £20bn if I recall, I've encountered many people say that's a joke, there's nothing to save but having worked in public sector for a few years I can confirm that it is quite a valid claim to make and in fact, I think they're underestimating the amount that could be saved. I worked in local government and saw potential for millions to be saved in a single local government department alone, extrapolated across all public sector departments, across the whole country I think their claim is quite valid. My real concern is that Labour and to a lesser extent, the Conservatives seem quite ignorant about how much really could be saved.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why ye should pull thy kids out of government schools (whose sole purpose is to keep the voters ignorant & easily malleable), and send them to a private school or homeschool.
BACK to topic:
Speaking as an outsider, I don't understand how Open source software can be secure. If the virus makers have access to the source, doesn't that make it easier to examine and locate flaws in the program?
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:3, Insightful)
Who are you going to trust this to, some guy called bob on sourceforge, or a multi billion dollar company with resources to get you out of the shit?
I'm not going to trust a multi billion dollar company to get me out of shit if its track record clearly shows that it's not going to do what I need of it. If bob@sourceforge fails to be reliable too, with OSS I can at least hire anyone else; with proprietary software I can hire no one else.
(Deciding whether or not the track record shows that is left as an exercise to the reader.)
Re:"Sells software"? Microsoft Partner! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, you mean like Red Hat? Or maybe Novell? Or any of the other dozens of billion dollar companies that sell open source software/support?
The thing about Microsoft propaganda is that they always leave out key facts and details.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but it also makes it easier for those who use the software to locate and fix the flaws first ;)
To give a better explanation of why OSS is more secure though, think about this scenario. You have a web server on the wide open internet serving an important web page for your business or institution and any downtime will lose you thousands, maybe millions of pounds of profit (think how much Amazon would lose if it's site goes down for example). If you run an open source web server and an exploit is uncovered by security researchers that allows an attacker to take over your web server then you can edit the source code to fix it immediately, or at least put a quick fix in place to block the attack and have very little, perhaps even no downtime.
If however you rely on a propriatary vendor, say Microsoft, to fix it and it takes them 2 weeks to release a patch, what do you do in the meantime? Do you keep your web server up and risk having your web server hijacked or do you take it down and lose millions in business?
This is just an example, you can mitigate the problem by having a firewall block attacks but this only works to a degree. I wasn't too sure about why OSS myself was more secure for a while, but it's one of those things that when you look into the reasoning behind such comments you'll see realise that yes, they're right, OSS really is fundamentally a more secure concept.
Of course, the other thing to realise is that binaries are themselves fairly trivial to interpret for people who have a strong computer science background such that it's not even particularly a massively difficult task to spot exploits in closed source software. It is however often much harder to fix faults in closed source software in the same way.
For fucks sakes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Get involved in the party closer to your heart and change things (it is what I did when I was in my country, a place far more dangerous than the UK for opposition politicians).
I frankly can't stand all this defeatist whining.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:0, Insightful)
And Obama said people in my state cling to guns and religion because we're scared and xenophobic. what's your point?
The main point is surely...... (Score:3, Insightful)
That this is the best evidence so far that Microsoft's new carey, sharey nice image is basically what many people have assumed it to be, i.e. bullshit.
The scenario is nothing new. Bring in a friendly company, get them to slate the competition and then brag about how an "independent" analyst has found something meaningful. Similarly, as usual, the people who don't care still won't care, the whole thing will be forgotten and FOSS will continue to gain ground as those who know its true value will continue to use and propagate it.
The important thing is to remember that we're still dealing with the same selfish, power hungry, lying, money grabbing, unethical, amoral, shower of shites that we were 5 years ago.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Could be worse.. half of america thinks Obama is the antichrist [fstdt.com].
--- and he other half thinks he IS Christ
Re:He's from Yorkshire (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bit of a Yorkshire bias?. (Score:3, Insightful)
I usually just vote for who the Doctor endorses and be done with it!
Voted for Harriet Jones first term, and against her second term, and against Harold Saxon.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or they are appointed and they will vote for whoever appointed them or who has the most money
This isn't what happens at the moment because the appointed individuals are still there for life. It doesn't matter to them if they vote against the person who appointed them because they can't be removed. This is quite a good system in general. If you pick people who have already achieved most of what they wanted to in life then sitting in the Lords is a nice retirement job for them. They'll only show up for issues they care (and, hopefully, know about) and can vote based on their experience and conscience rather than any party or constituency obligations.
When I watched the Commons and Lords debate, back around '99, it was right in the middle of the removal of the hereditary principle. I spent around an hour watching the debates in both houses and came away with the distinct impression that, if I had to choose between them, I'd vote to abolish the House of Commons.
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it does. That's why it is more secure. If there is anything wrong with the program, it is picked up much more quickly, and something is done about it.
Re:For fucks sakes. (Score:3, Insightful)
Get involved in the party closer to your heart and change things
That's great and all but lets take a look at US, and to a large extent (gleaned from to many UK political blogs) UK, politics.
To start with, most seats are going anywhere, there are no term limits for most offices, and party line voting means that elections are basically shams for many positions. There is only one national level office available in my state that is available to the party whose rhetoric (if not actions) mostly matches my ideals. It has been held by the same man for 8 years, until he actually loses the seat, I couldn't even run. And he's already selected his cronies, so I can't latch on to him.
Thats the *good* part of the political scene, on the far end one of our senators has been serving for 38 years, having one reelection a 7th time in a row, partly on the basis that having a senior senator means we get a bigger slice of the pie when the federal tax money is divided up, and partly on the basis that he is the correct party for the state.
Locally, the scene is even worse, since district lines are redrawn every year in order to ensure that as many incumbents as possible stay in office (this is a true non partisan effort, both parties participate in undermining democracy whenever they can). Ultimately, the only time its possible to move people out of office is when the die or retire, in which case a carefully selected patsy usually runs in their place, almost always this person will have gone to Yale, Harvard, or maybe Cambridge, where they studied brown nosing and selling out. Every now and then someone like Obama shakes things up, in which case they *still* go after the same cronies as the old regime, only now if you went to the University of Chicago, you have a shot as well.
All of this of course ignores that my sexuality and religion make me not just unelectable, but also ensure the political suicide of any politician known to associate with me.
TL; DR version: There is nobody for me to attach myself to, and no way for me to seriously run for office.