New Peru GNU - how about you?
This is just extraordinary.
Thanks to my good friend Philippe for pointing me to this remarkable dispute between the Borg and the government of Peru.
The scoop: The Peruvian government has introduced legislation requiring government offices to go the open source route wherever possible. Microsoft is naturally tweaked by this and has fired in a complaint, via their country manager, crying foul.
The lengthy, cogent and simply remarkable response from a member of the Peruvian Congress is up online for all to see. The fundamental tenet of his argument is that it is simply out of the question for the government of a democratic republic to be tied to the use of closed proprietary software.
It’s a long but very worthwhile read which will have any proponent of the open source movement thumping the air with excitement. It strongly encourage you to read the whole piece yourself, but to whet your appetite, here’s some choice quotes:
“The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
- Free access to public information by the citizen.
- Permanence of public data.
- Security of the State and citizens.
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.”
Microsoft’s letter to the Peruvian government apparently accuses the republic of anti-competitive behaviour (hah!), stating: “The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies...”
To which point the Congressman responds, with admirable restraint, that:
“the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.”
And that:
“This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitvity is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.”
You can almost hear the grating of his clenched diplomatic teeth as he adds: “It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally)”.
This delicious and insightful communication concludes with one of the highest level, almost libertarian arguments in favour of open source I have yet come across. The articulate and rational congressman, Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, declares that the government’s bill is:
“...based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.”
This needs no further editorial from me. Go – read the piece. Tremendous stuff.
This is just extraordinary.
Thanks to my good friend Philippe for pointing me to this remarkable dispute between the Borg and the government of Peru.
The scoop: The Peruvian government has introduced legislation requiring government offices to go the open source route wherever possible. Microsoft is naturally tweaked by this and has fired in a complaint, via their country manager, crying foul.
The lengthy, cogent and simply remarkable response from a member of the Peruvian Congress is up online for all to see. The fundamental tenet of his argument is that it is simply out of the question for the government of a democratic republic to be tied to the use of closed proprietary software.
It’s a long but very worthwhile read which will have any proponent of the open source movement thumping the air with excitement. It strongly encourage you to read the whole piece yourself, but to whet your appetite, here’s some choice quotes:
“The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
- Free access to public information by the citizen.
- Permanence of public data.
- Security of the State and citizens.
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.”
Microsoft’s letter to the Peruvian government apparently accuses the republic of anti-competitive behaviour (hah!), stating: “The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies...”
To which point the Congressman responds, with admirable restraint, that:
“the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.”
And that:
“This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitvity is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.”
You can almost hear the grating of his clenched diplomatic teeth as he adds: “It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally)”.
This delicious and insightful communication concludes with one of the highest level, almost libertarian arguments in favour of open source I have yet come across. The articulate and rational congressman, Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, declares that the government’s bill is:
“...based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.”
This needs no further editorial from me. Go – read the piece. Tremendous stuff.
