[ILUG] email sent to potiticians about Mary Hannafin's decision not to use open source

[James McCarthy]

This is the email that I sent to a number of members of FineGael, the
Greens & to Labour
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Mary Hannafin has decided not to use open source software
(software in which anyone can look at the code)
she has decided to use what is called open standards
(in short she has decided to stay using MicroSoft products)
This is incredibly short sighted for a number of reasons.

The first reason is that Europe as a whole is standardising its I.T.
system using open source software, so eventually we will have to use
open source in the near fututure(within the next 5 years).

The second reason is that Open source is a long term advantage, giving
the freedom to control when & what upgrades are done,so we no longer
rely  on one single vendor or company.
This is an issue of control, in that whoever uses open source software
has the control, those who dont have the source code dont have the
control.

The final reason is for security & reliability.
Open Source software is extremly reliable, compare windows & linux for
example, every week windows has a new & very serious threat from the
latest virus, which people have to protect themselves from or face the
consequences.Linux, although it does have viruses its simply not as bad
as windows.And Linux users really dont have to worry about them.
This is because Linux is open source.
Open Source software is more secure, because of the way its designed
more security holes are found and repaired, and they can be repaird very
quickly, sometimes in a matter of just a few hours.

I believe Mary Hannafin's report is very flawed, there are a number of
very large holes in her arguments.The government is making the same
mistakes on avoiding the use of open source as it made with electonic
voting.
And it will result in serious economic & technical difficulties in the
near future.

Some coutries that have decided to use Open Source.
China, France, Germany, Britian, Japan ,Korea, Peru, Brazill,& Parts of
the USA.

Most of the internet runs on Open Source.
More than 60% of websites use Apache(opensource).
Google uses Linux on its 10,000+ servers.

Open Source is supported by HP, Sun, IBM, Novell and many others.

This subject needs to be debated seriously, before it costs the Irish
taxpayer hundreds of millions of what will be wasted Euro's.
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