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 COLUMN
We, the open people AT THE RECENT LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, open source made headlines when a group of protesters, including Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann, marched to city hall. The cause? To promote open-source software in government.
You don't need a Harvard Ph.D. to realize that techies are rarely natural politicians. They didn't come into monikers such as "geek" and "nerd" by being the most popular people in the class. And many are far more comfortable writing code than writing their congressman. Why, then, would these folks take to the streets against their most basic nature? Because they perceive they have little choice. And they are correct. Open source has proven itself disruptive to the process of creating and distributing software -- so disruptive that its most ardent opponents have resorted to new tactics to stem its onslaught. Foes of open source have found it difficult to compete with something that drives prices to the ground. Likewise, they have found it painful to fight on the field of features with a community that often swarms over needed features like bees over a honeycomb. So, some of those who resist open source have taken the fight to the halls of the lawmakers. Many of these corporations have been busily promoting legislation to stop the spread of open source through force of law rather than the force of competition. The alphabet soup of bills including the SSSCA ( Security Systems Standards and Certification Act), CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act), DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act) all have provisions that threaten the growth of open source. Fierce lobbying efforts actually seek to prohibit governments from even considering open-source alternatives. Published reports indicate that lobbying may have even forced the National Security Agency to discontinue developing a highly secure Linux kernel. It seems that some in government have swallowed the sour pablum, claiming that security through obscurity is essential, even when history has shown it to be woefully inadequate. The situation is so bad that prominent Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox announced that he would no longer travel to the United States because the DMCA allows for imprisonment of foreign programmers. This was clearly illustrated when visiting Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was jailed for the high crime of demonstrating that Adobe's eBook protection schema was nowhere near as effective as advertised. Writing code legally in other countries can now cost a programmer 25 years in prison in the "land of the free." Is it any wonder that grassroots efforts are mobilizing open-source supporters? The community has learned how to produce good software -- even if it means taking political action. Contact Contributing Editor Russell Pavlicek at pavlicek@linuxprofessionalsolutions.com.  RELATED ARTICLES  New name, same smellHP's Linux icon chooses politics over paycheckUCITA, the undeadRELATED SUBJECTS Business NewsOperating SystemsDiscuss this article in our online forums Click here for all of Russell Pavlicek's past columns. SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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