LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 13:21:43 +091800

French govt open source

Subject: Open source legislation in France.

For those of you who have not been following the
development of the legislation proposal in France for
the requirement of open source software for all
government departments, and if you do no read the very
worthy IT news source http://www.theregister.co.uk/ ,
you might like to take a look at this [poorly
formatted] news item:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/000428-000018.html

I quote:

------------------------------------------------------
In a discussion document on the principles for the new law, Jean-Yves Le Déaut, Christian Paul, and
  Pierre Cohen are very blunt about their reasons for introducing it. Without source code, they say, it is
  "impossible to fix bugs that the software publisher refuses to fix" and "to check that there is no security
  trap" such that "sensitive private information is communicated to foreign companies or organisations". 

  Microsoft was not mentioned specifically, but who else could be the guilty party? 

  Five lofty principles are trotted out in a supporting document: 

   Freedom 
   Access to public information 
   Retrievability of public data 
   National security and consumer security 
   interoperability 
------------------------------------------------------

<politics>
Of course, socialism is completely dead and/or comatose
in Australia. So we won't ever see this kind of legislation
here. The pro-capitalist parties believe in globalisation
(i.e. global domination by the US), and that means letting
MS do what they want.
</politics>

On the linux front, it's interesting to project forward and
see that maybe secret software code could be outlawed in future
as being a threat to security, which it is.
And this means that open software will no longer be a
"lifestyle option" as it is now, but a sine qua non for all
consumers.

<baloney>
So keep the faith, comrades!
Viva la revolucio'n!
</baloney>

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

PS.  Is anyone in the mood to start up a Linux Party for the
next election(s)? You get $1.50 for every first-preference vote.
Even a 1% showing at the ballot booth could buy a lot of pizza.
(That's why there are so many tiny parties.)

PPS. It turns out that MSI boards for ATX power supply do _not_
have a BIOS option to make them turn on when the mains power
comes back on. What a nuisance.
This means that ATX power supplies are incompatible with
the idea of a server that recovers after the power supply
is turned back on by whoever bought the power stations
from the capitalist running-dogs who flogged them off.

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