The OSI Categorically Rejects IIPA’s special pleadings against Open Source

“Moore’s Law, Disk Law, and Fiber Law have created an economic
engine for growth, promising exponentially improving computing,
storage, and networking performance for the foreseeable future. And
yet according to a 2003 UNCTAD report, “there has been no Moore’s
Law for software,” and indeed it is because of software that
computer systems have become more expensive, more complex, and less
reliable. The global economy spent $3.4T USD on Information and
Communication Technologies in 2008, of which we estimate $1T USD
was wasted on “bad software”. And reconfirming the 2003 report and
our own numbers updated for 2010, others have estimated losses of
at least $500B and as much as $6T USD (meaning that for every
dollar spent on ICT, that dollar and almost one more went down the
drain). Whether the annual loss number is $500B, $1T, or $6T, all
represent an unsustainable cost and undeniable evidence that
something in the dominant design of the proprietary software
industry is deeply flawed. (See OSS-2010.pdf for complete
references to all of the above.)

“Open source software is an alternative approach to software
development that allows, rather than prohibits, users and
developers to collaborate and innovate together. It encourages,
rather than threatens, transparency and accountability. It rewards
meritorious behavior and it routes around bottlenecks caused by
concentration of power and control. Open source software was the
catalyst that helped effect the revolution of the World Wide Web,
where for the first time in history, the promise of the freedom of
the press was available to anybody with a computer and an Internet
connection. Indeed, open source software was, and remains, the
technology of the whole Internet itself.”

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