Getting Open Source Right
In his rationalization about why government-mandated open source software deployment is not a good idea, Microsoft's Director of Standards made some assumptions about what the real value of open source software (OSS) is for governments.
Like most assumptions about open source from Microsoft, a big piece of the overall picture is conveniently left out.
The context of Matusow's blog entry is a trip he recently took to South Africa where he had talks about interoperability and open source issues. As noted in a Tectonic article, Matusow's visit fell around the same time the South African government was approving the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for government use. (Funny...)
Matusow argues that the mandate of any one IT methodology is really not a good idea, because it tends to lock-in governments to only one way of doing things. Mandate only open source, he argues, and then you leave out all of the other nifty tools you can use for your government.
Which, on the surface, does seem to contradict the whole notion of freedom that OSS advocates cherish. But if you dig just a little deeper, you can see there's some shaky assumptions propping this argument up.
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