On Monday 08 November 2004 13:01, Laurie Miles wrote:

> Can you accept that there are those on these lists who wish to > continue
> with the non-OSS model of software provision?

I do think it is odd that there appear to be a very small minority (I'm not
sure I know more than one) who wish to prevent any source code used by us in
our work from being known to us or available for independent development and
analysis.

I'm interested in the psychology of this.

Lets go back a few years, on this list, to the construction of an all-NHS
email system.
We had some very clear arguments that X.400 which was the proper solution
available from the companies able to do the job was technically ideal and
must be adopted as a matter of policy, and that anyone who kept remarking on
the merits of adopting SMTP (a rival and by the way Open Source set of
standards and applications[1]) was wasting time and effort and annoying
people.  Oh yes, and making it less likely[3] their views would be adopted in
the end[2] the more they went on.

The NHS has a bad habit of trying to deal with technical stuff - engineering,
medicine etc - by political methods.  It may be that there is no practical
alternative that can be reached from where we are, but it serially fails.

Laurie may not have done the research to know that most of the reposts he
makes about Open Source or libre software are both wrong and generated as
part of a deliberate advertising/FUD campaign.
Being ignorant is fixable, as any academic will tell you, but this list
deserves and doctors should show more careful research - checking facts
before asserting.



[1] used by the NHS now, after ripping out the X.400 stuff
[3] the corollary is implicitly presented above, that if one shuts up and
doesn't tell anyone that an alternative way of going on is better, magically
everyone will adopt that... which is of course bollox, and pretty much ad
hominem bollox at that.  IE not honest debate or argument from truth.
You know... "politics".
[2] In context, the end was about 2000.


--
Adrian Midgley                   Open Source software is better
GP, Exeter                       http://www.defoam.net/