Saturday, March 10, 2007

Open source Tories

(Via David Berry) The Conservative Party has turned open source, according to their website:

"Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has promised that an incoming Conservative government would create a level playing field for open source software in the UK, in a move which could save taxpayers more than £600 million a year.
In a speech at the Royal Society of Arts, he also announced the appointment of Mark Thompson, of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, to advise the Party on how to make Britain the open source leader in Europe.
Mr Osborne reckoned that opening up the market in software would enable the Government to slash 5 per cent off Whitehall's annual IT bill, because open software allows users to read, change and improve its code, in contrast to proprietary software where a company controls the source code."
While my initial thought was to type ZOMG!1, many people in the CC-Community list have pointed out that a lot of open source ideals and philosophies come from the right. Eric Raymond is a vocal libertarian, check out his page on firearms.

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