Computerworld Hong Kong: Open Source Debate Heats Up at Conference

“Open source advocate Bruce Perens, who last month left
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) after announcing his desire to become more
active in promoting open source software, took an aggressive stand
Thursday against Computing Technology Industry Association’s
‘software choice’ campaign, saying it does not promote fairness, as
CompTIA claims, and would lock open source software out of the
government marketplace.

“CompTIA has ‘carefully crafted a message that appears to call
for fairness while actually supporting policy that would retain the
status quo of a strong bias toward proprietary software,’ Perens
said during a panel discussion at a conference here on the use of
open source software by governments. ‘They explicitly call for
public entities to blind themselves to the merits of one
intellectual property policy over another and they have the nerve
to call that fairness.’

“CompTIA’s Initiative for Software Choice is a lobbying effort
spearheaded by CompTIA, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, a
trade association with more than 8,000 computer and communications
companies, including numerous small businesses and several
prominent hardware and software developers such as Intel Corp. and
Microsoft Corp…”

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