Re: CRIME Computers vulnerable at Oregon department

From: Seth Arnold (sarnold@private)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 14:05:12 PDT

  • Next message: MAGEE Rob: "RE: CRIME Computers vulnerable at Oregon department"

    On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 01:26:10PM -0700, Andrew Plato wrote:
    > Honestly Seth, I really don't think giving the state the source 
    > code would do much good?
    
    I can't argue for the state as a whole; I can argue based on my own
    experiences in IT, for a small-medium healthcare company, that we would
    have been far more efficient if we had the source code for our billing
    database.
    
    > Most organizations (particularly governments) barely have the
    > resources to keep their systems turned on, let alone
    > re-engineering their software. Even if these places got the source
    > code, they wouldn't know what to do with it.
    
    Sometimes. Sometimes not.
    
    Where I expect the usefulness would come in handy is contracting third
    parties to do the modifications. That would loosen the "you bought company
    X once, ten years ago, now you're stuck with their support" problem.
    
    > Second, no commercial firm in the WORLD is going to just hand over 
    > their intellectual assets to and organization so they can go about 
    > using it and expanding upon it and cutting out the maker. If this
    > were the case, I GUARANTEE you would see prices of commercial 
    > software skyrocket to utterly unobtainable prices. These costs
    > would be necessary to compensate for the numerous people who would
    > simply steal the source code and go off and make their own products
    > and sell them. 
    
    This is what copyright law is for. (Yes, it does have uses! :)
    
    Consider: If the state required open sources for their software, then
    vendors would have no choice: either supply the source, or lose out on
    potentially large (and lucrative :) government contracts. _Someone_
    would fill this void.
    
    > Furthermore, we already HAVE third parties supporting commercial products.
    > My firm sells about 50 different technologies from IDSs, firewalls, servers,
    > sniffers, etc. We support all those products (in addition to the support
    > the manufacturer provides.) And we don't have to own the source code.
    > Anitian signs a reseller agreement as part of that agreement we 
    > are licensed to help firms implement and use those technologies. Sometimes 
    > that means working directly with the engineering staff at our suppliers
    > And helping them improve the product based on our customer's input. 
    
    Having an inside line on the engineering department of a company would
    help; however, the problem this is suppose to solve is not being held to
    one, and only one, company for solutions.
    
    > And your friend, who works at Large Company, answered this question
    > perfectly - he already modifies everything, including MS products.
    > So why do we need to hand over source code to these people when only
    > a handful of people may benefit from it? Why would a firm hand over
    > its IP when it would immediately deflate the value of their products?
    
    Because business can be massively improved for those people who _can_
    get benefit out of modifying their software; I maintain that the state
    is probably one of those customers.
    
    -- 
    http://www.wirex.com/
    
    
    



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