> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Dennis R Redmond
>
> Hmm, seems that France is thinking of legislating open source software as
> the standard for the public sector (http://www.osslaw.org has the details
> en francais). Now that MS Outlook is being eaten alive by viruses, just
> like the OS community always said it would, it could be that the choice
> before the Webbed world is information socialism or a complete systems
> crash. What do fellow penguins on this list think? Is France on the right
> track, and if so, should local communities here in the US start doing
> something similar, i.e. adopting open source as their model?
Mexico and a number of third world countries have been moving in that direction based on the cost issue alone. If France and other developed nations move in that direction, creating a bit more state sector financial support for continuing development, open source will inevitably regain control over the core network functions of computing.
It is actually a truly foolish, essentially anti-economics delusion of modern computing that the commons of interoperability and system security can be maintained in a competitive marketplace. Aggressive profit-seeking destruction of the network commons or careless failures to police network security, both of which Microsoft is notoriously guilty of, is an inevitable tragedy of the commons.
Joel Klein and the antitrust division keep saying breaking up Microsoft is a non-instrusive way to combat this monopolistic exploitation of the commons, but given that their whole case is built on the overwhelming network effects and increasing returns of the networked economy, they should just have the intellectual honesty to declare operating systems and network standards to be natural monopolies and accept the government regulation that follows from that fact. Support for open source software is the best form that government regulation can take, since it will eliminate the need for measuring the "fair return" on capital that bedevils regulation of most state regulated private monopolies.
-- Nathan Newman