www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/05/1081017093699.html
How independent is independent?
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Print this article Email to a friend By Leon Brooks Comment April 6, 2004 Following an increasingly common trend in what has been cynically dubbed pay per view, the Institute for Policy Innovation IPI has joined a long string of self-titled independent think tanks such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute in releasing a study strongly critical of Open Source outside of strictly limited fields within research and academia.
IPI and its principles The IPI website claims that IPIs focus is on approaches to governing that harness the strengths of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets: but their report sides with business practices guaranteeing individual liberty only to a very few, and what amounts to economic slavery for the very many.
The idea of a free market presupposes that the participants in the market follow a few de facto rules the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
If those rules arent followed, the free part completely breaks down as market participants became dominant and willing to sacrifice principle for profit as they evidently have in the computer software industry.
IPI is failing its constituency as it in turn inadequately assesses the situation and blindly, dogmatically pursues the one remaining plausible goal of limited government at the expense of all else.
Stacking irony upon irony, IPI has pursued too narrow a view of the term government and this has led it in fact, if not in intent, to rally behind private control of computer software markets at the same time as it vocally espouses uncontrolled markets.
Private governance of such a market is an economic and political tragedy because the powers involved are not even as accountable for their acts and principles as a public government would be.
Open Source and deregulation Open Source is the one light on the horizon in terms of true deregulation in the computer software industry.
It decentralises control to the point where unreasonable dominance of the market becomes effectively impossible.
Even cheating by leveraging a dominant position to control factors such as network protocols or hardware manufacturing policy becomes less effective as more market participants adopt technology which would be harmed by such distortions, and so refuse to accept them.
This manner of intrinsic regulation benefits not only the Open Source community but anyone who would enter and compete in a truly free market.
All we need to do to ensure this deregulation is provide the burgeoning Open Source industry with an incubation period similar to the original intent of short patent protection periods and other startup incentives in which to build up a critical mass of users on otherwise fair terms and unmolested by powerful incumbents, including convicted lawbreakers.
In the absence of a totally fair way of achieving this, the best that can be hoped for is some kind of counterweight to the immense political and marketing clout of the incumbents.
Open Source and individual liberty In this world, a small minority of the population owns as much as a second pair of shoes.
Open Source represents the single supportable mechanism for bootstrapping a very poor individuals capabilities to a point where he or she can realistically expect to participate in the information economy at all.
The cost of legally acquiring sufficient tools from closed-source suppliers is prohibitive, and the Open Source development model has been the only one which has broken the market stranglehold of merchants of software basics whose first concern is their pound of flesh and not the welfare of their customers.
The thumb on the scales The power of the incumbents was graphically demonstrated when South American nations like Peru and Argentina moved to protect their economies against them: the US government promptly threatened trade sanctions should those plans go ahead.
Blatant protectionism at its very worst!
And did IPI speak out against this protectionism?
Did The Heritage Organisation ?
Did The Independent Institute ?
Not a chirp, nary a whisper.
So why would IPI speak so strongly and at such length against Open Source, but not against international protectionism?
In AdTIs case, as in TIIs, the direct financial support of Microsoft was a fairly obvious clue.
Microsoft has since become more subtle, as demonstrated by its inducing Baystar to temporarily bail out The SCO Group in a plausibly deniable fashion.
This hints that though the links may be more tenuous than before, but they will still be there.
The unofficial rallying cry of a weblog devoted to making all sides of these issues public is follow the money, and that principle seems to work reliably.
A call to self-honesty Independent is just a claim, and non-profit doesnt mean non-greedy.
I call on IPI and other independent think-tanks to set their own moral houses in order before thinking about undermining others.
If you truly support free markets markets not governed by any one power then step aside and let us free them.
If on the other hand youve already taken sides, be honest about it.
Youll be caught out sooner or later anyway, we respect honesty, and were getting sick to death of pretenders.
Leon Brooks is director of the open source software firm CyberKnights.
This is an edited version of an article published on his website;
Copyright rests with the author.
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