[ossig] New Telephone Survey is in the works on Governments policies on OSS

[Yoon Kit Yong <yoonkit@xxxxxxxxx>]

I received a telephone call yesterday 
by "Central Force" (or something) regarding
a market research survey they are doing
regarding the state of Local Software Developers
and the Governments policies on promoting them.

I was initially reluctant to take the survey due to the fact
that it would be another 15 minutes of my life down the drain,
but since I have some interest in the local software scene,
I told the surveyor (?) Id try it out for 5 minutes and if its not
interesting, Im hanging up.

So the interview goes on like this:
Question: 
"How do you find the Governments policies on locally
developed software. Do you agree that they should have a preference to it?
1- Totally Agree, 2 Somewhat Agree, 3 Disagree, 4 Totally Disagree, 5 Other."

etc etc...

It only started getting interesting when this question appeard.

"Should the government have policies on what type of licensings
of the sofware they procure or should they let the market decide?"

The question may not have been 100% word for word as above,
but the confusing terms and different points were represented,
similar to that question above. 

So I took some time out to explain to the interviewer that
I dont understand the question, because its actually about two things,
1) licensing and 2) market forces.

I felt it was a loaded question, in the sense that users as us
would always choose the 'market decide' option, 
thus indicating that we are rejecting that license issue.
I also explained to the interviewer that the question is wrong
because with regards to the Govts policy to PREFER OSS,
The Government IS the Market. i.e. they have the right to chose
what license/product to procure.

At this point in time, I asked her Who this survey is for,
Who wrote the questions and Who is sponsoring it.
Surprise surprise, she said its being done for the "Business Software Alliance"

Ah...

There were about 15-20 questions, some were straightforward,
but the last few are real crackers! 

The Last One which got me was:

"Do you agree that having the sourcecode for the product
does not guarantee the security of a product as 
it is important that the administrator to install patches, bug fixes
and correctly secure the machine?"

I was silent on the phone for 20 seconds. 
I couldnt answer at all, because my mind was twisted trying to 
comprehend this hefty question. I quietly told the researcher
that this question is 'funny'. Its again, questioning two things,
1) availability of sourcecode doesnt provide security and 
2) security by patching.

So I asked if I can give two responses to this Question:
"Disagree" AND "Agree" respectively.

A less vigilant interviewee would pick up on the last segment
of the question "..important to install patches .. " and 
respond with a "Totally Agree".
The Less Scrupulous Researcher would take the 
"... having the sourcecode does not guarantee security ..."
and report that 85% of respondents INSIST that OpenSource 
is NOT Secure!

hahah... I asked the interviewer for a copy of the report when
its published. I really cant wait for it to appear.

If you do get a call from this 'researchers' please take the time
out and listen to their questions carefuly, answer carefully,
and post up any interesting ones here. Its quite entertaining ...

yk.


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