Companies who make proprietary products do not like open source alternatives to those products. They view open source products as a threat. Partly because they're free, but mainly because they have more potential.
So if the voting machine lobby published a report called "Open Source: Understanding its Application in the Voting Industry," (540K PDF) how much understanding do you think it would impart upon the reader? Either this document seeks to confuse, or its authors are confused themselves. The report is clearly targeted at those who make decisions regarding elections:
Legislators who adopt policies that require open source products, or offer incentives to open source providers, will likely fall victim to a perception of instituting unfair market practices.
I believe that a competitive market is usually the best way to get something done. But when it comes to securing and bug-proofing software, open source code will always be better. Incentivizing a better way is the government's job. They incentivize more efficient energy sources. Why not more transparent elections as well? (Plus, if there were one thing left alone by the marketplace, shouldn't it be a vote counter?)
The report devotes several pages to explaining how open source works. The assumption is that the reader is unfamiliar with open source, and they probably are: they are election officials, not developers or software lawyers. So the report does its best to portray open source products as leaderless and unmaintained:
It is likely that an open source project...would lack the structure to support products as they are fielded by local election officials. In addition to software support, the issue of accountability in such an open source environment remains an area for further research.
They ignore the fact that some companies' entire revenue models revolve around integrating, modifying and supporting open source software. Red Hat's market cap is twice that of Diebold's. I'm sure they can support your election.
The report also has a chart that compares the download statistics of a few open source election projects with some of the more popular file sharing programs. First, it's very dishonest to equate low usage with low quality. These numbers speak to demand, not quality. Free music is popular. Installing an electronic voting machine in your garage isn't. Even if the whole world adopted a standard open source election system, it would not be downloaded as often as a tool that lets you get free media.
Are the listed software products good? I don't know. But I do know that programmers seldom donate their time to software that people don't want. The more people clamor for something, the more time volunteers will devote to it. Because of the unique nature of election software--the average person has no use for it--the people with the power to adopt it are going to have to speak up in order for developers to commit themselves to it. If any people with such power are reading this, the ETC is trying to pull one over on you. They're trying to convince you that your own lack of demand for open source election software is the very reason you don't want it.
In any case, these download statistics make false argument. Nobody I know is saying we should abolish proprietary systems tomorrow and switch to an existing open source product. We're saying open source election software deserves attention and support, and effort to create a kick-ass system must be marshaled. When programmers donate their time, they do it for causes that they know people will benefit from. If they aren't making open source voting software, it's because the users (secretaries of state, county clerks, and the FEC) aren't asking for it. So please, do what the ETC is begging you not to do: start talking about open source voting software, and offer incentives to those who might make it.
No comments:
Post a Comment