Software Libre
See also: The Open Source Revolution not so radical, June 2006.Imagine if your car came with conditions.
You can only fill up from the company you bought it off - at 10 times the normal price. The bonnet is padlocked and only the company has the key. The car has a black box that could record your entire car use history, including conversations you have in it, and could transmit this information to the company. In addition, you pay an annual administration fee to the company, you're not allowed to use parts from any other company, you're not allowed in certain suburbs at the risk of your car shutting down, the locks are relatively easy to break and representatives from the company can pull you over at any point and search your car.
Sound like a bargain?
If you're a Microsoft user these are similar to the kinds of conditions you sign up to when you purchase one of their operating systems.
There are alternatives. There is growing interest in non-proprietary, open source (OS) systems - the most well known being Linux. What's the difference? Well according to the open source society, one you pay large amounts for, one you pay little or nothing for. It all comes down to the source code or the programming recipe used for creating the operating systems. With proprietary software such as Microsoft you don't buy the code, just the right to use it. With non-proprietary software you get both.
The reason they do is largely the same reason that people used to do science. Galileo, Newton, Rutherford were not trying to patent an intellectual property right but were driven by the pursuit of knowledge and a desire to add to the sum of human knowledge. The commercialisation of science has distorted its direction towards technologies that facilitate corporate control and profit rather than the well being of humanity as a whole (GE, armaments, botox).
In the same way the domination of the desktop (and mainframe) by closed source operating systems has meant that IT development is more about maintaining user dependence, and profit, than supplying stable products to informed users. Like public good science, OS is the original. The Internet, for example, is still run on OS.
So why doesn't the Government support OS, which can save money, facilitate local software development and expertise and offer greater security control? That is a question the Green Party is asking. There is a global shift towards Linux, especially at a government level. Unfortunately our Government doesn't seem to be too clued up. When I ask them about it the answer is usually "um, we think it's good but we keep forgetting to consider it when we upgrade".
One concern at the moment is the Microsoft Government Security Programme (GSP). In order to alleviate unease about system security, Microsoft has an agreement with our Government to allow analysis of the Microsoft source code. However there is little information about what we have given Microsoft in exchange or how much this is going to cost us.
A new development in this area is that one of the OS distribution groups has reached international security standard certification equal to Microsoft's. The US Federal Government has approved the use of this system for Pentagon and American banking systems, so any concerns about security can be reassured. In any case, most virus writers design viruses to attack Microsoft and not Linux!
I believe that it is in our best interests to move towards OS software, for financial, ethical and practical reasons. Because the programs are usually more streamlined they can be run on smaller hard drives, making then more affordable at a hardware as well as software level.
NB Nandor runs his laptop on Mandrake 9.0
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