[ale] [OT] Insight into the Diebold Mess

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Wednesday 22 October 2003 09:11 am, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> I was looking over some of the leaked Diebold e-mails at
> http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/scdc/s/lists/announce.w3archive/200110/m
>sg00002.html and I saw something that, to me, serves as a perfect example of
> why you don't want to use closed-source software...well, period!

<snip>

> Isn't that interesting?  Note how a voting machine certification issue
> has its root cause buried inside WinCE, which, to them, is untouchable.
> This puts Microsoft in the driver's seat (it could be any vendor and my
> point would still be made, yes, but that it's
> twice-convicted-illegal-monopolist Microsoft just makes it worse).
> They're dependent on an if-when bug-fix situation and, to the extent
> that WinCE 3.0 is a legitimate unit version release (as opposed to a
> point release), that's an awful lot of new/changed code to incorporate
> just to get a fix of a single bug.
>
> Make it all Open Source and you can have your own hackers find and fix
> individual bugs.

I agree completely.  The more I work with outside software the more I 
understand the "not invented here" syndrome that IBM and other large shops 
are famous for.  If you didn't invent it yourself, how can you be sure it 
works right, or fix it if it doesn't?

With Open Source you get the best of both worlds.  You can use someone else's 
code, so you don't incur the expense of invention, but you still have the 
ability to look at the inner workings and fix any problems.

Notice how IBM is now a big fan of Open Source.  I think they have figure out 
that it provides an alternate solution to the "not invented here" problem.  
Clever of them.

Michael