linux in australian government

[Howard Lowndes]

Mark Purcell said:
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 06:54:01AM +1100, Howard Lowndes wrote:
>> > I wonder what the MS speaker's gonna say.
>>
>> Exactly.  The seminar is specifically about OSS, an field of expertise
>> of which M$ are not, but they still manage to infiltrate one of their
>> _international_ VPs.  I wonder what her award in telivison has got to
>> do with OSS.
>
> Saw an article in yesterday's SMH stating that M$ are going to let
> governments have access to 95% of the source code in their products, in
> an effort to stem the tide of places who are pickup up OSS like Germany,
> China,  Peru and everyone else who thinks there are US Government
> backdoors in the  M$ products.

The problem is: you won't know what is in the 5% that is not going to be
open source.  You also have to consider how they intend releasing this
"open source" to governments, and whether governments will have the
resources, or the ability to access resources (you can bet on a highly
prescriptive NDA), to actually do anything with the source once they have
access to it.

>
> I suppose she will make a big fanfare and tell the Australian government
> that M$ can now be considered OSS for government use only...  Shudder..
>
> Mark


-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people <http://www.lannetlinux.com>
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