FOSS Almighty

FOSS is dressed in a cheap polyester suit with a beige pocket protector and thick black horn-rimmed glasses. The President of Ueberstan is wearing his customary hand-embroidered black silk sherwani.

Pres: So the Free and Open Source Software community thinks our government is unfair: A far-off giant, called FUD, spreads lies and disinformation, colludes with your enemies, and buys off weak ministers and educators. Then as soon as some department’s or agency’s Web servers are converted to Linux, poof in the smoke of bureaucratic reorganization, they all change back to their proprietary incarnations. You are barred from fair competition on government tenders. Many in the government use you but give you no credit and no rights…

FOSS: Yes, and it is worse than that. Even you are being damaged by this great criminal activity. Your treasury is being emptied by royalties paid to a distant plutocracy, our national wealth of software engineers is being brain-drained, we have become a land of software users not creators, your security is compromised by slowly leaking all your secrets through hidden backdoors…

Pres: My secrets? My security? Compromised? Hmmm… OK, OK, I feel your pain…

Tell you what I’ll do. For three eras, three procurement cycles, you can sit in my place, take my job. Go ahead, run the government, make the rules and regulations. Have a go at it. See how well you do. But at the end of the three cycles all will return to the way it was.

Lights flash, thunder roars, the exchange is made. There stands the President in the polyester suit with pocket protector and thick glasses. FOSS is now sitting on the “seat of government”, elegantly dressed in the black silk sherwani.

ERA 1

Open source mandates are enacted, freedom directives are issued, great projects are lead and supported. Some months later… (An audience with the leader of the alliance for Preserving the Rights of Property (PRoP).)

FOSS: So the PRoP alliance is complaining that business can no longer be profitably sustained and that you must terminate infrastructure is collapsing in anarchy. Each agency has a different band of programmers, a different team of supporters. Even the ministry of Defense has forked. We’ve gone from the tiered and unresponsive support of the proprietary era to complete chaos. Everybody’s a programmer, everyone’s an open source engineer. There is no control.

ERA 2

Controls are instituted. Projects develop clear lines of authority and are coordinated among all ministries. Forking is allowed only after careful review and approval. Certification of Open Source practitioners and engineers is mandated. Some months later…

FOSS: I see that Ueberstan is healthy and wealthy. E-government runs smoothly and completely meets the needs of all our citizens. Free and Open Source Software has automated our government and businesses and has eased every aspect of our daily lives. Our people are happy. I am happy.

Suddenly the lights go out, sirens wail, a great trembling of the earth is felt. Some months later…

ERA 3

FOSS: The few of us who were fortunate to have survived the wrath of the giant FUD now come together in small support cells, trying to reinvent the spirit of innovation and empowerment that Free and Open Source Software once promised. But without an infrastructure, without steady power, without a network or even the most modest equipment, progress can only slowly be made. The ProP quickly found new accommodations in the well-protected, far-off land of FUD. Perhaps we should have learned to compromise and to include everyone in our Utopian dream. Open Source is about partnerships and collaboration after all partnerships with government, with private enterprise, with users, and equally among all collaborators. Perhaps Mono is not such a bad idea…

Lights flash, thunder roars, the final exchange is made. There sits the President restored to the “seat of government” dressed in his dazzling black silk sherwani without a crease, without a ruffle. FOSS is returned to his polyester suit with pocket protector and is struggling to look through his horn-rimmed glasses at the daunting figure of the President. The last thing he can remember is the vague pondering of the President about lost secrets, but this memory too is quickly fading.

Pres: I am sorry, there is nothing I can do to help you.