Wired has an article in which they report about Bill Gates’ comments on Opensource.
One thing Gates won’t be leaving behind in retirement is his distaste for open source software. After one scientist asked if Gates would consider open source uses in health research, the man who built his $280 billion company on the power of intellectual property bristled.
"There’s free software and then there’s open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with."
Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we’re aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."
The funny part about the whole episode, aside from his ignorance on the matter, is that he is saying to scientists that their approach in academia, which was responsible for propelling the world to the current advanced state, is nonsense. It is time for him to realize that opensource itself was inspired by the scientists in academia. Bill Gates joins Jaron Lanier in his ignorance about science.
Craig Balding raises the following issues related to security cloud computing. Since some of the issues concern to the theme of this blog, opensource, open standards and open web, I thought I will link the concerns here. Some of the issues highlight the need to have a cloud computing infrastructure without any proprietary software infrastructure.
Multiple cloud storage providers for a single app, raises some issues.
* Is ISV obligated to tell you they are migrating to a cheaper cloud storage provider? (think cross border data transfer issues). * What security ‘certification’ will take place of the new provider and what visibility will you have of that? * How much notification do you get before the switchover? * If you don’t want to go with the new provider, but that is the only supported option, what happens to all your data? Even if we *assume* an export function is provided you still need to find an alternate ISV that has coded a compatibility layer to access your existing data. If you can’t, where do you export the data too? Will we have ‘frozen clouds‘? * What integrity checks take place to ensure data was properly migrated over? * When the migration happens, what clean-up happens at the source? (can anyone say forensic wiping?). What about any backup tapes or off-line copies? Who is responsible for making sure those are wiped/destroyed?
Reuven Lerner makes an excellent case against OOXML at OStatic
Unfortunately, yesterday’s adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard fails on all three counts. To begin with, it seems that the OOXML standard was poorly defined, leaving a huge number of ambiguities and undefined terms. That’s not surprising, given the fact that it is 6,000 — yes, six thousand — pages long, a size which makes it nearly impossible to ensure internal consistency. The large size also ensures that it will be difficult to create alternative implementations; would you like to be the programmer charged with checking that a particular program adheres to all 6,000 pages of the standard?
Moreover, parts of the standard require a programmer to deviate from many other, correct standards. For example, 1900 was not a leap year, as is the case with three out of every four “00″ years. (Thus, 1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was.) Microsoft got this point wrong when they first implemented Excel, and as a result, the OOXML standard requires that implementers make this same error, for the sake of consistency.
There are also serious questions regarding some Microsoft patents that any implementer will need to use. Microsoft has promised that it will not sue OOXML implementers for patent infringement, but the Groklaw site points out that this statement might be meaningless.
I wrote this post at a time when Readburner was crucified and before its current resurrection. In that post, I had suggested that companies entering deadpool should consider releasing their code under one of the opensource licenses. I made this argument to emphasize that it will build trust among the customers in this era of apps residing on the web rather than on the user’s computers. It was my argument that if the web app is also released as open source (as the in case of apps like wordpress and some wikis we have talked about in the previous posts), users will not be left in the lurch (in the event of a company shutting its doors).
Today Marshall posted about the AJAX based photo sharing site Zoto releasing its source code under an opensource license. There is no information about the company entering the deadpool. But, if it ever enters the deadpool, it won’t have any effect on their customers because they can simply take the source code and get it installed in their own servers. This is the kinda approach that will get people to trust the startups offering web apps. I just hope that the other startups follow Zoto in releasing their code under an opensource license. This ensures that the web app will live forever, irrespective of whether the company behind the app is part of the history or not.
