[clug] What sort of OSS legislation would you like to see

Sam Couter sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Mon Aug 11 18:42:10 EST 2003


Carl Jackson <carl at videohost.com.au> wrote:
> a)Absolutes OSS mandates (actually the most common)

And probably most counter-productive, even if passing such legislation
would suit our purposes.

> b)Coercive OSS language (eg. you must use OSS whenever possible)

Not useful when the purchaser gets to define what "possible" means.

> c)OSS Equity (eg. in all buying decisions OSS options must be given fair
> and equal consideration)

Weak as American beer. "Yep, we considered it. No good." In theory OSS
is already given fair and equal consideration, along with every other
possible solution.

As you say, OSS is competing in a very hostile environment.

> 1) To apply coercive  pressure to Microsoft.   In the case of Peru MS
> gave the school system free software in perpetuity to get them NOT to
> pass OSS legislation.  Microsoft has demonstrated a range of more
> agreeable behaviour to its government clients in the face of OSS
> legislation.

And this is a very bad thing. I'd like to see government departments
forced to pay full list price for all software purchases, no discounts,
so they can see exactly how much they make the rest of the country pay
to remain compatible with them.

I consider the practise of giving free stuff to schools and/or
government as anti-competetive when being done by an abusive monopolist.
It shouldn't be allowed.

Of course, I understand the futility (and cost!) of such things coming
to pass.
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie at debian.org
                    |  jabber:sam at teknohaus.dyndns.org
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux/attachments/20030811/39c1f041/attachment.bin


More information about the linux mailing list