Yes, OSS is better for stuff like libraries, frameworks, and products, where you can tolerate some rough edges, for lower costs, including better security from product death. Unfortunately OSS can be annoying/lacking in areas dominated by hackers (obsessive coders), who don't care/understand enough about making software intuitive, and easy to use, for other people.

Yes, our money maybe better spent on OSS, but only where the cost/benefits balance is better.

No, OSS is not Socialist, it was just a more collaborative, Scientific, way to develop software. Bill Gates may have helped to lower the cost of computers, but at the cost of corporate (psychopathic) stagnation and inferior hardware/software architecture e.g. the Amiga platform was far better, but was sabotaged by incompetent management.

Currently Windows is my prefered OS, but only because Linux, Solaris, and OS-X, offer inferior OS, application, and hardware support, for power users. Don't get me started on *nix-like installers complexities, and broken repositories!

A lot of the rest of the article seemed
preachy and pompous, thus boring!

Beer is socialist, too.

Everything you like is "socialism."

It's the new PR campaign.

Personally, I don't think these two events are related. The Public Sector wants Open Source no more than they want to solely dependent on Microsoft. They want to be able to use soemthing that works, allows them to collaborate with others, and offers the best value for money. Open Source is not the answer. A deal with Microsoft that unhooks the lock-in to that cash cow called Office is one answer, another is to mandate the use of Open Standards for interoperability, which affords opportunity for other vendors.
A core principle of good procurement is stimulation of competition. At the moment, nobody believes there is true competition on the desktop. An Open Source policy is not going to provide it. What OGC should be doing is tendering for a set of collaborative tools that will work in a multi-supplier environment, rather than that offered by Microsoft that is tightly integrated with the implicit aim of tying the customer in to its technology stack.

thanks for cheering me up again, you are easily the best, funniest and most original tech site ever.

No! Open source software is about implementing one of the aims of capitalism: an efficient market.
When the price of a product drops to well below the price of selling it its better for the market to have it for free.
A lot of companies who want the market to remain inefficient and 'own' parts of it may try and convince you otherwise.
Remember the industrial revolution was oiled by standard parts and cheap mass production. Those who oppose open source want the opposite.
We live in an age of capitalist luddites.

First, Open Source is in no way "socialistic" -- socialism is a system in which GOVERNMENT FORCE is used to impose altruist morality and egalitarianism. Open Source is a perfectly legitimate form of cooperative association based on the protection of property rights and the rights of individuals to copyright their work and then share it with others. "Shareware" is as old as software itself, and is not a recent phenomena. I am further right than Thatcher and Rand put together, yet I am also a staunch advocate of OS *when* it is a benefit to those involved (not merely as a religious end in itself.)
Second, there is a second shoe to alleged monopolies, namely the potential for a cartel or association of BUYERS -- why don't all the buyers of MS software, esp governments simply form an association and deal with MS jointly, to get the best deal? 95% of the hysteria over monopolies (which are actually rare and hard to keep even when they arise) would be invalidated if we would also repeal the laws against forming such associations. A single supplier has no more power if there is only one buyer...

not something slow, long and a bit dull.

I think that whole piece could have been edited down into something more punchy. It was different to The Inq style I usually like.

The writer probably has a point, but I got a bit lost. I'm guessing it's that the UK govt and MS are struggling to reach an agreement, and that open source is the hand that the govt are using to bargain the price down.

MS are probably saying, sure go for the OS route, retrain all your employees, rewrite all your applications and spend the next 5-10 years sorting out a huge mess, and see how the electorate like it.

Has Drashek got a job writing articles for you? ;-)

@thagen: Since when is socialism a form of government? It's a socio-economic system, like capitalism and communism (no that's not a form of government either). And if by "form of government" you meant political ideology, well that's not correct in the strictest sense either.

brilliant article. Congratulations to the Inquirer, and to Mark Ballard in particular.

The internet needs more essays like this.

+5 Discursive.

With thanks,
Ben

Wow... Do you guys proof read your articles prior to posting them? Because this one is atrocious.

OSS is neo-socialist?!? That's nonsense, socialism is a form of government, to be a socialist is to support said form of government. To freely give something of value to others is called CHARITY. Socialism is forced giving, OSS is most definitely not forced.