Recently Ukraine government made another move toward an open source software. As anyone would expect Microsoft has something to say and something to offer.

I can’t help but translate some FUD by Microsoft Ukraine CEO Dmitry Shimkiv

Can you elaborate on Microsoft’s position on using open source software in state institutions?

No doubt a government should consider an open source software as one of the possibilities. We always support this as it helps to raise an intellectual potential of Ukraine and facilitates exchange of code between local and foreign developers. But there are many questions. For example, lets consider rewards for time spent on generating ideas and implementing them. Ukrainian laws have provisions about rewarding author for his work. When there is a community around open source software everyone will do his part. This means emerging product will be non-commercial because if you implement your ideas and someone make billions on them sooner or later you’ll be asking “Can I have my $5k?”. And those questions will be asked constantly. As Ukraine laws protect the author I can sue and win the case if the open source software contains some lines of code written by me. If I can’t sue here in Ukraine I’ll do it abroad and still win. Somehow these questions are left without discussion. Few understand what open source means. It’s like open society. Everyone talks about it but hardly someone understands.

Suppose the company A wins a tender. Suppose they hire ukrainian developers and build a Linux distribution signing all necessary papers to have a right to distribute product.

This won’t be an open source anymore. Just this company’s product.

But what if they use open source software to build it. For example, base it on distributions like Ubuntu or RedHat?

Okay, but let’s consider possibilities. Tomorrow there will emerge a boy from Israel, Germany or USA and he will sue Ukraine for using his intellectual property. Do you understand inherent risks? Bomb is planted and primed. You’re going to take code intended only for non-commercial use and start to sell it.

But we can sign papers to transfer rights with every developer and pay a reward for it. Let’s say we pay $100 and there will be no further claims.

I can’t see a clear business model in this. Okay we gave them money. But what are you going to do if something work not as intended?

But there will be a company to carry all such requests.

Their reply will most likely be “We didn’t do those modifications” as this is open source. There were situations like this before. Let’s don’t forget other companies. Like Sun who can call and tell you “We are sorry but there are lines of code in your product we own or have a patent covering them. And we want money”. What will you do? Are you going to cut parts of product code base?

But Brasil or China have managed to avoid these problems before.

So what? There are no countries at the moment where governments are using an open source software exclusively.

Don’t you think this move was intended to soften Microsoft position? This is not a first time this happens. Five years ago Microsoft had offered better deal in response to an open source wave.

Government had some arrangements but done nothing. As ukrainian I’m very sorry for them if cooperation with Microsoft will stay as it is now. Also suppose government will finance development of a national open source operating system. By some guesses it will take at least four years. And all these years Ukraine is going to use pirated software. We have right to demand to cease such practice. What will you do then?