Libertarian think tank slams Open Source

LinuxWorld.com, April 2, 2004

The Institute for Policy Innovation, a non-profit libertarian-leaning public policy organization, has put out a short four-page white paper questioning the ability of open source to meet the hurdles of the mass market.It says...

"Open source is not necessarily the best way to develop software. While it may fill a useful role in specialized computing environments, open source does not translate to the mass market for software. Proponents of open source are vested interests who have substituted myth for reality. Policy makers should not mistakenly assume that this essentially derivative process is any substitute for innovation."

The piece, called "Has Open Source Reached its Limits," claims the mass market "demands a much higher level of software engineering in order to provide the requisite ease of use, robustness and flexibility." Its author, Tony Healy, a research software engineer and policy researcher in Sydney, says most open source projects are poor in quality or unfinished, largely research output and certainly not comparable to the commercial model.

We didn't get a chance to ask him whether he's been talking to Microsoft lately, but the paper unquestionably favors the Microsoft Windows platform.

"In terms of arguing that open source is a better way to develop software, one popular rationale is that open source spares the developer from having to reinvent the wheel. But all modern software platforms provide this benefit. Microsoft platforms probably provide it better than open source, because they expose functionality via precisely defined hooks that continue to work in upgraded versions of the platform, allowing properly engineered third party applications to work seamlessly across all required versions of Windows, including future versions."

See - http://www.ipi.org

Maureen O'Gara is editor-in-chief of Maureen O'Gara's LinuxGram(TM) - published weekly by G2 Computer Intelligence Inc. and distributed by Linux Business Week