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Transparent and Accountable

These are the call words of the Obama administration and if you go their website – you will should be reasonably impressed with how much detail  the Obama government has opened up on the Web. Update:With resignation of 2 cabinet appointees, Obama is finding out how hard transparent and accountable can be. I would love that the Obama administration would extend this Openness to the IT world. No not forced Open Source code on software developers; but rather the banning of all provisions for no benchmarking of software or hardware in licensing agreements.

The software vendors in particular argue that the task of benchmarking is so difficult and subject to cheating that lies and statistical damn lies can be perptrated against their software – so they blitfully ban all benchmarks. However, software and hardware vendors have plenty of due recourse in the libel laws already on the books – and so suppression of benchmark in their licensing agreements should be outlawed. Then for example, the fiasco that was Vista might not have have been so easily foisted on the masses by Redmond Snake Doctors and a Compliant IT Press. Or the mysteries of browser performance would be less opaque as benchmarks shed light on exactly where the various browsers did well – or less then well.

Now Redmond is the chief but by no means the only party that hides behind “no benchmarks”  end user licenses. Unfortunately it is all over the IT industry. So Open, Transparent and Accountable should extend to the whole IT industry by forbidding “no benchmarking clauses” whatsoever. The current guise is you have to supplicate to Redmond or to San Francisco to get “permisso” to publish any benchmarks. Time for a dose of fully open and accountable. Get on to it  Obama Secretary of Commerce.

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