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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    [kde-promo] Re: [Important] When talking about Aegypten or Kroupware on fairs or to the press,...
From:       Marc Mutz <mutz () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-02-02 9:58:15
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On Saturday 01 February 2003 05:24, Andreas Pour wrote:
> Tim Jansen wrote:
> > On Friday 31 January 2003 23:26, Mark Bucciarelli wrote:
> > > Funding a Free Software project is not part of a free market?
> >
> > Depending on your point-of-view you could also say that funding a
> > free software project is subsidizing it, because you could also get
> > it for free... (even if it is not written yet, but sooner or later
> > somebody else will fund it)
>
> Purchasing proprietary software is, in that view, also subsidizing
> the proprietary software vendor.  Funding Open Source is subsidizing
> some competition.  Since the government has apent many many years
> subsidizing the proprietary software, I think the stronger argument
> is that it is *anti-competitive* *not* to fund free software, as its
> competitor has already been quite heavily funded.

The difference to make here is that, normally, the government is 
required to send out a public invitation to tender for the particular 
task at hand and then choose between the bids according to price and 
trustworthiness of the bidding party. So, in theory, every competitor 
has the same chances to get the contract, so the tendering procedure 
ensures that the government doesn't favour one competitor over the 
other. Again, that's in theory, of course.

OTOH, funding or sponsoring means giving money to a project without 
competitive tendering procedures. IOW, the government decides where the 
money goes and not the competitiors by themselves through mutual 
competition. In this sense, it's an interference with the free market, 
b/c the government misuses it's monopoly to foster a particular 
technology or development model.

Regardless of how desireable governmental funding of Free Software is 
and although _we_ agree that we see software as part of the 
infrastructure of modern society just as roads are and thus the 
government has not only the right, but the mandate to care for it. 
Regardless of that, it's (currently) not the way things are supposed to 
work according to law. You've seen in South America and India what 
happens if governments try to mandate the usage of Free Software for 
governmental use. MS goes there and spends _lots_ of money.

Power to those governments! May they stand up against the money flow 
from MS, but the German government is not one of those.

Indeed, while the GnuPP (sic!) (Win port of GnuPG and GPA) project was 
sponsored by the BMWF (ministry of commerce), the Aegypten project was 
done "properly", ie. with an open call for tenders. That the Aegypten 
consortium won the bid is just a coincidence. I've already said on 
core-devel that there _were_ other competitors, some of which had 
supposedly S/MIME-enabled KMail's ready "in their drawer". AFAIK, the 
call didn't include the requirement to integrate the result into the 
original Free Software project, and it didn't even mandate using KMail!

It basically was "write us an Sphinx-enabling extension of a popular 
Free Software mail client that can run on Linux".

With Kroupware, it already became better. The call was closed to a 
certain set of people and companies, and it mandated KMail and KDE and 
it required that the result be merged back into the mainline 
development. But that is also a risk, b/c it comes close to what is 
legally allowed in Germany. So if we want the BSI and other 
Governmental agencies to keep "funding" KDE and it's parts or indeed 
Free Software generally, we should take care to not speak lightly of 
"funding", but always explain that the "funding" was based on proper 
public or restricted calls for tenders and that the Aegypten and 
Kroupware consortiums properly won the bids.

In addition, esp. Intevation tends to care about the fact that Aegypten 
could have never happened and that just as well the German government 
could use a modified KMail which would never see the light of KDE CVS 
again[1]. And IMO (speaking as a KDE developer and apart from the fact 
that I'm currently employed by Intevation), they (and g10code and KDAB 
as well) should _really_ get the fame of having made sure that 
KMail/KDE gets back those governmental improvements and of having 
"helped" the BSI a tiny bit to write better (for Free Software 
projects) requirements.

I hope to have made my/our point clearer.

Marc

[1] Or of which we didn't even know a thing, b/c who of us watches the 
call for tenders of his government, not even speaking of their outcome?

-- 
It's one thing to accept a risk to your own data, but quite another to
standardize on something that imposes that risk on others, no matter
how unlikely you think it is that anything "really bad" will happen,
and no matter how desirable the outcome.  -- Bart Schaefer, on ietf-822

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