Government on Tony Andrew Meyer

Open source in government is not important

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:41:34 +1200

Labour’s “ICT” policy includes a statement on “Open software” in government, part of which is attempting to get two thirds of government agencies to use some sort of open-source software by 2015. This is basically what you expect from politicians when talking about “ICT” (or nearly anything, unfortunately) - they jump on whatever bandwagon/buzzwords are popular without any understanding of what should be done. Firstly, I would be shocked if more than two thirds of government agencies were not already using some form of open-source software already. For a start, it’s nearly impossible to use the Internet without accessing something running Linux or Apache. More importantly, it makes no sense at all to aim for governments to be using more open-source software. They should be using the software most suited to the job at hand, whether closed source or open source. What benefit is there in requiring open source? If they think it’s cheaper, then they should look more closely, because it’s often not. The same applies to being more secure. There are absolutely situations where the best choice is an open-source one - but there are absolutely situations where closed source is better. I don’t want government employees forced to use less than the best tools because of some ideological burden placed on them by someone wanting a cushy job for the next three years. They have a few other requirements: Software developed in-house will be made publicly available. A nice idea, but (a) I’m fairly sure that most of the in-house software is of no use to anyone else, (b) I suspect most of the software you’d assume was in-house was actually developed by non-government contractors, and, most significantly, (c) not all code is ready to be shared. If a government sysadmin writes a quick script to do a job, do we really want to add the pressure that it will be publicly available (and given that it’s the government, it’s reasonable to assume that someone will be looking at everything). As long as the software does the job, that’s good enough (in the “in-house” context). What would be worthwhile is ensuring that government agencies consider whether software should be released to the public - I’m sure that there is some that would be of general interest and where the quality is suitably high.

S92A, and other thoughts on the revised Copyright Act

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:35:53 +1200

There is quite a furore (e.g. #blackout) at the moment about the eminent arrival of the updated Copyright Act in NZ, pretty much all surrounding section 92A. 92A doesn’t appear in the official online copies (either HTML or PDF) - I don’t know if that is because it only takes effect from the end of the month, or because someone left it out. The Amendment does have the wording:

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers “(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer. “(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

Go raise your own children, please!

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:39:12 +1200

It really bugs me when I’m told how to raise my child, whether by the government, by people I know, or random people off the street. If you have children, then you get to decide how you raise them (I have no desire to interfere with that at all). If you don’t have children, then it’s nothing to do with you, and you don’t know anything about it anyway. For better or worse (and it does seem a lot like worse, these days), any man & woman can have a child, and if they make that decision (or a decision that leads to a child that wasn’t expected), then they are responsible for making sure that, to the best of their ability, the child is brought up appropriately. ‘Appropriately’, of course, is completely up to them (the things insane people do, like violence and abuse, don’t count - if you’re so badly disturbed that you can deliberately injure your own child, then you don’t belong in society). I have no problem with people offering advice, or asking for it. But that’s where it stops. I really don’t care in the slightest what you (where “you” covers everyone but my wife) think about how I am raising my child. It’s our business, not yours. When he’s my age, then he can make his own judgement about it as well (but while he’s a child, he doesn’t get to decide, either). That means the government shouldn’t interfere, past ensuring basic rights (preventing the aforementioned violence, requiring schooling, etc). That means that if you’re someone that knows me, you’re welcome to have any opinion you like about how we are doing it, but you can keep any non-constructive criticism and negative judgements to yourself. If you’re a random person on the street, then feel free to give me a passing compliment, but you can save anything else to discuss with your own friends, if you have any. I imagine it would be extremely annoying if grandparents did this (they’ve had their chance, it’s time to let the kids have their turn). Thankfully, my parents are great, and let us do things however we like, even if it differs from what they would do (or did), all the while supporting us as much as they can. One of the annoying things is that (as people who know me know) I really don’t care in general what people think about what I do. I act as I believe I should, and am happy to discuss things with people, but I’m going to do what I think is right, not what other people think I should do. So other people’s judgements wouldn’t bother me, except that it does bother my wife, and her opinion, of course, does count. So, please: if you’re someone that does this, stop. Next time you feel you’re going to criticise someone else’s parenting to them, remember that it’s their kid, and their decision, and save your comments for a water cooler discussion another day.