Here are three pdf files that might be of interest, I just started to read them:
* New: "Use of Open Source Software in Firms and Public Institutions: Evidence from Germany, Sweden and UK", July 2002.
Can be downloaded here:
http://www.berlecon.de/studien/floss/index.html
The page is german but the files are english.
Was FSF-Europe involved in this somehow? Just curious.
Jan Wildeboer
On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 05:13:06PM +0200, Jan Wildeboer wrote:
Here are three pdf files that might be of interest, I just started to read them:
- New: "Use of Open Source Software in Firms and Public Institutions:
Evidence from Germany, Sweden and UK", July 2002.
Can be downloaded here:
http://www.berlecon.de/studien/floss/index.html
The page is german but the files are english.
Was FSF-Europe involved in this somehow?
AFAIK no.
Jan Wildeboer jan.wildeboer@gmx.de wrote:
- New: "Use of Open Source Software in Firms and Public Institutions:
Evidence from Germany, Sweden and UK", July 2002.
[...]
Was FSF-Europe involved in this somehow? Just curious.
I think this is from the same group that posted details of a survey of developers to this list earlier this year. Beyond that, I am not aware of any FSFE involvement in the project. Given their bad definition of the term "free software" as open source software that normally prohibits commercial sale, I doubt FSFE have been involved.
That claim is repeated on page 12 in part 3 of this report and following pages go even further, describing the GNU GPL as "not suited for use in commercial software development as they make license fee-based revenue models impossible" and repeating the bad "viral" allegation. It even says:
"The very strong "Copyleft" makes GPL not very business-friendly because any software company would have to reveal their software source code if they used parts of GPL software to develop it."
The bad assumptions here are rampant! It seems to present that software companies *should* hide their source from their customers; also, that if you merely *use* GPL code to develop your software, then you must GPL yours. Both of these are dubious to say the least.
This research has limited value, starting from bad axioms such as those above. It makes interesting reading for its qualitative data, but take its quantative results with a large dose of salt. Unfortunately, because EU funding is involved, they may carry weight. How does this group think we should try to seize the initiative?
Right, back to the code...
|| On Sun, 14 Jul 2002 22:24:11 GMT || MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
mr> Given their bad definition of the term "free software" as open mr> source software that normally prohibits commercial sale,
Do they really make such a horrible mistake? They seem to have close to zero knowledge about the matter then.
mr> I doubt FSFE have been involved.
The FSF Europe indeed has nothing to do with this study.
I seem to remember some discussion about this study on this list in the past and I believe the recommendation was to not participate in or refer to this study in any way because its basis was too flawed to expect anything useful coming out of it.
Regards, Georg