Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft

• From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
• Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:24:52 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Felix Stalder wrote:

It strikes me that the issue is a bit more complex, and interesting. After 
all, IBM is investing quite a bit in developing Open Source Software, 
including stuff that will later be included in every version of Linux (hence 
the attack by SCO) such as the new kernel. From IBM's point of view, I don't 
think the main, or only issue, is costs. Also important is the fact that they 
can tweak the code in any way they like, something that just couldn't do with 
MS code, not even with the gratis IE.

In the same vein, what the 'public' gets back is not just a free product 
available as long as the company supplies it, but a based on which other 
communities, say Debian, can organize themselves that are entirely 
independent from IBM.

So, perhaps, IBM wants to eat Microsoft's lunch, but from a social point of 
view, because Free Software is involved, it's quite a bit more interesting 
than the Netscape/IE battles back in the day, which, really, only mattered to 
investors.

But those competitive elements are still there.

One element is clearly trying to take the government bureaucracy market 
from Microsoft. Governments are mostly (with the odd exception, like the 
UK :-( susceptible to arguments about transparency, accountability, 
savings, long-term data storage, etc. all of which push in the direction
of free software. At the same time they have a large population of..
ahem.. bureaucrats, who are scared to death of any model they're not 
familiar with. Getting free software from IBM is the ideal compromise for
them. Munich springs to mind.

Another element is undermining Sun by producing free java implementations.
 
The 2nd element isn't very interesting (to me anyway); the first suggests
that the 'free versus doubly free' distinction needs to be re-examined
for relevance to state/government functions. 

The argument on local job creation might also be relevant, but that whole
topic shades off really easily into nationalism. 

Graham

_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/

• References:
  • Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft
    • From: Felix Stalder

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