Re: [Fsfe-uk] Gnu/Linux and freedom (was Linux in Thailand.)

[Mark Preston]

Hi all,
FWIW I agree with what Nick Hill has written. Free software (FLOSS) can 
be modified and kept secret, it's just when you start to redistribute 
your modifications you are obliged to give the recipients the same 
rights as you received when you started using the software. Once you 
start interfering with this process signing away your rights by agreeing 
to proprietary software licenses you no longer have the security of 
knowing what is being done to the software you are using.
I wish I was as trusting and as capable as Chris Croughton, but I'm not.

Here is a practical example of how things appear to me to be going in 
practice as far as proprietary software is concerned. This is exactly 
what I believe Nick Park is alluding to in his posting. Legally the 
proprietary software licenses are becoming more restrictive to users, 
not less at the current time.

Problem:
 I am a [CompanyA program]  user and wish to export my clinical notes 
to another application. [CompanyB]  tell me they cannot do this as the 
notes are encoded using an algorithm, yet they can export the notes to 
[their program]. I want to have the freedom to chose my own software 
provider.  [CompanyB] could not even answer my question as to whether it 
would be possible to export from  [their program] to another application 
if I did not wish to stay with them is a few years time. Before 
[clinicians] commit their clinical notes to a computer system they 
should realise that they will become tied into it. If they move to a 
different company they may not be able to access their notes in a few 
years time and not from that software.  [CompanyA program] will not run 
on future windows sytems and windows 95 and 98 cannot be run on modern 
computers. Will your old PC stored in the attic fire up in 10 yrs time 
when you have a medico legal problem? Be warned!

My Analysis:
This may be a deliberate policy on the part of [CompanyB]. [CompanyC - 
formerly the company with the largest userbase] used to use Btrieve (now 
Pervasive) and as such the DBMS was available to any programmer/company. 
[CompanyB] who have taken over [CompanyC] uses it's own proprietary 
DBMS, I believe, and have presumably started converting their takeover 
customers to this. One of the best ways of increasing your market share 
as a "closed-source" software company is to make sure that you can 
import data from as many of your competitors databases, whilst at the 
same time making it as difficult as possible for your database data to 
be exported. Is this is what they mean by algorithm? If I'm mistaken 
about this then I hope someone in the know will correct me. As you state 
this leaves [clinicians] in a pretty poor position, essentially 
"locked-in" once they have signed to use the software.

Regards,
Mark Preston