Why Governments Must Use Free Software

Fab story here from Northxsouth (for background on this fascinating outfit, see my interview with its founder, Ryan Bagueros) about the very real perils of using proprietary software for national infrastructure:

Venezuela’s decision to move to free software happened after a disaster scenario like this actually took place. In 2002, the traditional, social elite-backed administrators of PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil company) decided that they didn’t agree with President Chávez’s policy decisions, which included re-directing profits from the oil company elites into social programs (including literacy and medical programs). These administrators were so adamant about their position, they illegally shut down the oil company, locked out the workers, and took control over the software that ran the corporation. Conveniently, that software had been contracted to a US company called SAIC, which has well-known relationships with the US Department of Defense and CIA. In response to the illegal lock-out and sabotage of oil production in Venezuela, federal authorities were sent to PDVSA’s headquarters to reclaim the facility.

The SAIC workers realized that they had committed an enormous crime and fled the country — after they had changed all the passwords that ran PDVSA’s computer systems and set themselves up with remote control of these systems. Since the software was proprietary, no one except the SAIC workers knew how the software worked internally and the oil facilities were literally held hostage by criminals who were now seeking refuge in the United States. Why US authorities did not take action and apprehend these criminals is up for the reader’s interpretation. If the SAIC workers had used their remote access to destroy the data, they would have effectively sabotaged oil production in Venezuela for months, if not years.

The Venezuelan government recruited some computer security experts who were able to reverse engineer SAIC’s software, cut off their remote control of the computer systems and return access to the legal administrators of PDVSA. After this startling information warfare scenario had played out in real life, threatening the entire economy of a sovereign state by a multinational software firm with strong ties to a foreign defense and intelligence agency, President Chávez fully embraced open source, free software and mandated that all government systems be migrated to this more secure solution.

As the article points out, if a national government doesn't have full control over the software that is running key elements of its country, it doesn't have full control. Free software puts the power back where it should be: with the user, not the manufacturer.

ISO's Day of Shame

So ISO has decided it wants to be irrelevant:

The two ISO and IEC technical boards have given the go-ahead to publish ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard after appeals by four national standards bodies against the approval of the document failed to garner sufficient support.

Oh, and why would that be?

None of the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela received the support for further processing of two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, as required by ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology.

Riiiight: so there was insufficient support among the technical boards for their dirty laundry to be aired in public. What a surprise. The fact that standards bodies representing the second- and fourth-most populous countries in the world were unhappy with the way the standardisation process was carried out doesn't matter, apparently.

Time for a new international standards body, methinks....

Open Enterprise Interview with Ryan Bagueros, North-by-South

On Open Enterprise blog.

I Came, ISO, I Didn't Conquer

The OOXML farce continues:

Four national standards body members of ISO and IEC – Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela – have submitted appeals against the recent approval of ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

...


According to the ISO/IEC rules, a document which is the subject of an appeal cannot be published as an ISO/IEC International Standard while the appeal is going on. Therefore, the decision to publish or not ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as an ISO/IEC International Standard cannot be taken until the outcome of the appeals is known.

Venezuela Gets It on Eye-Pea

Who doesn't want intellectual prosperity?

The term “intellectual property” is a new-speak propaganda word. First, the topic it covers varies from copyright, patents, trade secrets and trademarks to a variety of other things, all of which are very different and unrelated. Second, it is based on the premise that you can give someone something intangible and yet control it as if it or they were your physical property, even the ideas they may have in their mind.

The consequences of treating ideas as if they are tangible property are the very destruction of science and education, and the elimination of individual rights and freedoms.

The consequences of treating ideas as if they are tangible property are the very destruction of science and education, and the elimination of individual rights and freedoms. Science is in part built upon the idea that new knowledge is created by incrementally improving ideas.

Education is based on the idea that one can learn from existing things and then use that knowledge to create new works. The idea behind “intellectual property” is barbarism, and could well lead to a new dark ages, where only a privileged few are allowed to learn, under the exclusive control of greedy intellectual monopolies.

SAPI, the Independent Service ministry of Propiedad Intellectual, was the ministry that used to define Venezuela’s so called “Intellectual Property” laws. The current Director General of SAPI has very different ideas for the purpose of SAPI. Rather than creating new intellectual restrictions, the Director General proposes that the mission of SAPI should instead become that of promoting “intellectual prosperity” by creating laws and services that promote the ability to share knowledge as the common heritage of all mankind, rather than hoard it to make a few people wealthier.

Let's Hear It for Hugo

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez may be barking or worse (his totalitarian tendencies keep peeping out), but he's certainly innovative:

The Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez announced the launch of their "Bolivarian Computers" last week, consisting of four different models produced in Venezuela with Chinese technology. The new computers will run the open-source Linux operating system and will first be used inside the government "missions" and state companies and institutions but eventually are expected to be sold across Venezuela and Latin America.

This will make Venezuela an interesting laboratory for the wider sale and use of GNU/Linux-based PCs within a country. (Via Slashdot.)

Godless Commies Choose Godless Commie OS

Given the number of times free software has been mischaracterised as communist, this seems rather appropriate:

Cuba's communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire _ Microsoft Corp. _ by joining with socialist Venezuela in converting its computers to open-source software.

Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft's proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.

"It's basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology," said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.