[H-GEN] Legislation to support open source software.

[Anthony Towns]

Cc's dropped, because I'm digressing...

On Wed, Sep 17, 2003 at 03:00:45PM +1000, Arjen Lentz wrote:
> Those terms focus on the end result, what is important to the customer.
> Open Source may be one means to get there, but it do not preclude
> closed-source software per-se. A closed-source product, say a word
> processor, that utilises open file formats, would be equal.
> It would satisfy the format criteria, as well as being "future proof" -
> I.e. in many years time, can the customer still access today's
> documents, or will buying this software now create a problem later?

With regards to "future proof" software, one issue that crops up
occassionally is the ability to fix bugs in really old software. The
Y2k bug was an instance of this, eg. Porting old applications to new
operating systems is probably another.

Naturally, I'm segueing into my current fetish which is the copyright
review thing going on.

So, Australia currently deals with this by letting you reverse engineer
programs you have a legal copy of, and fix the bugs you need to, as long
as the copyright owner won't do that for you. One of the things that
the review raises is whether there is any "economic data" on whether
that actually works or whether there'd be any good as a result of a
"code repository" for proprietary vendors to store their source code
under escrow in case they go bust.

Does anyone have any verifiable numbers or statistics on how much harder
it is to fix bugs in code that you've reverse engineered, versus fixing
bugs in unfamiliar code when you have access to the source? Or does
anyone have any raw numbers on how much effort it takes to fix bugs in
decompiled code, or how much effort it takes to fix bugs in unfamiliar
code? (programmer-hours, salary/equipment costs that sort of thing?)

Do people think that such a source-code repository would be a good thing?
If it enabled companies/governments to fix bugs in old software and keep
using it, rather than being forced to upgrade? If it enabled competitors
to find out how a program writes its data formats, and write compatible
software (subject to patent laws)? If it enabled researchers to review
historical source code, and spot trends?

Thirteen days left...

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

Australian DMCA (the Digital Agenda Amendments) Under Review!
	-- http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/copyright/digitalagenda
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