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Alan A Hodson ahodson at elp.rr.com
Wed Jun 2 18:45:07 UTC 2004


Hi gang
Feel free to forward the enclosed article to your local newspaper or 
wire feed - if you have any suggestions, please send them off list to 
ahodson at elp.rr.com
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Open Source Software and Linux - avoiding a lawsuit
by Alan A Hodson

In the not too distant future, when taxpayer groups decide to hold 
their school districts and Board of Trustees accountable for the 
senseless spending of hundreds of thousands of dollars in computer 
technology purchases, especially software, there will be court 
sessions where the Prosecutor will be grilling the district's Legal 
Counsel with questions similar to these:

P: Was the district aware of the existence of Open Source 
applications that involve no cost and no licensing fees to install in 
Mac and PC laptops?
LC: Yes, I am aware of at least one department that after purchasing 
laptops found that they had no money left for software, so they used 
StarOffice, an Open Source application that is equivalent to 
Microsoft's Office...
P: Are you saying that the district knows that there are software 
products that require no licensing, can be given to teachers and 
students to use, and still insist on paying hundreds of dollars per 
computer to provide basic functionality to desktops and laptops?
LC: I am told that "the real world" uses Microsoft, so the district 
buys the product the child is likely to see in the workplace when 
they graduate.
P: Please indulge me - what kind of car did you, madam, learn to drive on?
LC: It was a 64 Ford truck with standard transmission...
P: Did you learn to drive 64 Fords only, or were the skills learned 
transferable to any car, anywhere, at anytime?
LC: You saw me parallel park this morning, what do you think?
P: I frankly was impressed... very precise maneuvering. The point is, 
regardless of how you learn a skill, if you learn it well, you will 
be able to use it appropriately in the future, don't you agree?
LC: It seems reasonable to accept that statement.
P: So, if the skill of learning word processing, spreadsheet use and 
presentation software use is learned correctly, say using software 
that loads and saves in the "real world" formats, as Open Source 
software allows, then there is no need to spend all that money for 
proprietary products, is there?
LC: Looking at the results, you may have an argument. But I 
understand districts want uniformity and a vendor they can call when 
anything with the software goes wrong - Does Open Source provide that?
P: Because applications such as StarOffice or OpenOffice are Open 
Source, and programmers can look at the code that runs these 
applications, the international community is very quick in finding 
solutions to potential flaws and problems. They have an intellectual 
interest in making sure that the Open Source application stays 
problem free, so instead of an 800 number offering classical music 
you have the Internet with Special Interest Groups that are monitored 
24 hours a day, again for free. That being said, have you directed 
the district to adopt a policy of Open Records that applies to the 
software they use?
LC: I am not sure I follow...
P: Open Records can be interpreted not only as the transparency of 
the dealings of the district, but also as the use of proprietary 
formats that may change over time at the software maker's whim. Open 
Source software, on the other hand, uses standards and coding 
available to any programmer, so records become independent of the 
application that created them. In a sense, you exclude proprietary 
vendors from the record gathering or storage process. The question 
stands.
LC: Nobody has ever challenged the electronic access format of any of 
the district's records, but I suppose eventually someone will. How 
would recommending Open Source adoption change anything? The district 
would still have a file called FILENAME.DOC created via MS Word or 
Open Office.
P: The difference is that the district would not be spending tax 
money from Joe Taxpayer's payments - he's worked hard enough to earn 
them, and there should be a policy in place at the district level to 
make sure money is not being thrown away.
LC: You could make the same case for any government agency... We all 
use proprietary software.
P: There will be other lawsuits and motions to address that 
irregularity. I want to make sure Legal Council admits for the 
purpose of this trial that there has been no distinct effort on the 
part of the district to reduce the so called Digital Divide, by 
incorporating Open Source software installation and distribution as a 
priority in all computer desktops and laptops, and that in fact no 
serious studies have been made to use Linux as a desktop Operating 
System, replacing Window's propensity for infections by viruses and 
hackers.
LC: Linux as an operating system? What does that have to do with Open Source?
P: All Linux code is Open Source, all the applications we've been 
discussing are Open Source applications that run on Linux also. Under 
certain circumstances, you can have Mac and PC computers also running 
Linux, making it the one operating system that runs on all platforms. 
This is the one standard that the district could have, if they 
decided to protect the investment made in hardware.
LC: Protecting the investment? Are you talking about old equipment also?
P: Proper research and a willingness to change from the traditional 
solutions would point out that Linux is ideal for old equipment, and 
that for machines whose hard drive or CD player no longer functions, 
the district could turn them into diskless clients following the 
K12LTSP.org model, labs with one powerful server and PC diskless 
workstations of every make and model.
LC: You mentioned MS Office products - what other Open Source 
products would there be as an incentive for the district to start 
considering the "official" adoption of Open Source as a district 
standard?
P: Linux comes with hundreds of free applications, and can be 
installed on any PC as a dual boot system, to at least offer students 
that choice. For Macs and PCs, there are major applications such as 
GIMP, a Photoshop equivalent, Mozilla a powerful browser and HTML 
composer, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), TuxMath and TuxPaint, 
and many more. Almost every major application in the market has its 
Open Source equivalent.
LC: I would like to ask for a recess to meet with my client and 
propose a settlement. What major arguments would the Prosecutor 
suggest I put forth?
P: Open Source software has several distinct advantages over 
proprietary software. The widespread peer review process involved in 
open source development creates software which is more error-free and 
resource-efficient than proprietary software. In addition, Open 
Source is a must for security-critical applications- true security is 
never achieved by attempting to conceal any security defects that a 
program may have, but rather by allowing anyone interested to seek 
out these flaws and eliminate them. Open Source allows for that. In 
terms of who will survive, if resilience is an issue, the open-source 
culture will triumph not because cooperation is morally right or 
software "hoarding" is morally wrong, ...but simply because the 
closed-source world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with 
open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled 
time into a problem.
And so, Legal Counsel goes off to try and convince the district, that 
being accountable to the taxpayer's rights, and saving money by 
embracing Open Source alternatives are issues that must be addressed 
sooner, rather than later.
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