Open Vote
Open Vote
Dear Linux Magazine Reader,
Some issues facing the open source community are difficult to explain to outsiders, but some are problems the whole world faces. One issue most people care about is the right to vote. What does the right to vote have to do with open source software?
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a group of experts devoted to ensuring that electronic voting systems remain auditable and open in future elections. This mission is actually quite consistent with the open source movement's focus on alerting the world to the problem of private companies controlling critical segments of the economy through proprietary software. In the case of the voting machine business, a few companies control a large portion of the industry, and no one really knows if their software has problems or not, since it isn't freely available for public review. And, as is often the case within the closed circles of closed source, proprietary hardware requires proprietary software, perpetuating a cycle of dependence that keeps the vendor in control.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia