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UK Government Solicits Advice On Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you-have-til-march dept.

Imran Ghory writes: "The UK government has put out a consultation paper on the use of open source software in government,background research into OSS commisioned by the government is also available, including a comparision of OSS office suites." Check out the formats in which the document is available.

6 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. On a lesser scale, I am also investigating this. by Patrick+Bateman · · Score: 0, Interesting
    One of my relatives is responsible for IT spending for a rural county in California. I am looking at Linux as an alternative to Windows on the desktop, and I have suggested StarOffice as an alternative to MS-Office. SO6 should be available by the time the county makes its decision.

    One thing I am interested in is a directory services solution for Linux. Novell has Linux binaries for their excellent NDS/eDirectory product, but I'm worried about Novell's viability as a company. Also, I would prefer to use an open source solution, but the only OSS directory services software that I am aware of is OpenLDAP, and it just doesn't seem mature enough yet for production use. The county has about 1500 client systems.

    --

    Thank you.

  2. Insightful or useless banter? by cscx · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Excuse me, sir.

    I invite you to surf to Adobe's site. There is a free (as in no money involved) program available called "Acrobat Reader," which will allow you to read the file quite simply. It's available for every version of Windows, Mac, Linux, a slew of Unices, and even PalmOS. Now please explain your preoccupation with whether it is not open source or not.

    Does it really matter? PDF is a copyrighted format (i.e., Adobe owns it). Releasing the source code to it would be absurd --- Acrobat is theirs, why should they not capalitize on it? Capitalism is the foundation on which the American economy is built. Remember our friend Dimitry? He was arrested because he violated that copyright for another Adobe software. Rights are treasured in American society... if we treasure our rights for the ability MP3s (ones we rip from discs we legitimately own, of course), etc... why should Adobe be denied that same right for their own software?

    Are you saying that they should be forced to release all their documents in TXT format just because some poor slob can use /usr/local/bin/pico to view it? PDF is an Internet (dare I say industry) standard nowadays.

    Should you choose to protest the PDF format, my friend, you can choose to do so. However, the fact that Adobe hasn't placed their company secrets (read: treasured source code) on the dinner table, is hardly a legitimate reason to release useless whining bullshit about Acrobat not being open source.

    Grow up. Closed source software sells because it's a valuable, solid product. Otherwise, no one would buy it.

  3. Re:Okay... by tmark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    PDF is well understood but PDF now has form input widgets and scripting.

    There isn't an open source viewer that can render these.

    Though you intended your post as a knock on the British government, your post stands as a stronger indictment of open source. If open source can't provide people with a viewer that can render one of the world's most widely used formats, then there is something seriously wrong with the blind faith that the open source world is going to provide the tools that everyone else needs to work.

  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Blair's Love affair with Microsoft by dunstan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Guys, reality check here. This is a consultation document written by a civil servant. At the same time we have Tony Blair schmoozing with Bill Gates in order to look good. Hell, the National Health Service recently announced a huge (hundred of millions IIRC) deal with Microsoft for a "unified buying scheme", and one of the sweeteners was that Gates would come and address a conference on IT in the NHS. You have to remember that the UK government is motivated largely by vanity, and that a lot of excellent civil servants have been sidelined because they upset that vanity.

    During the last election campaign Blair paid a visit to Gates, who was in the UK promoting XP. It was very hard to see who was exploiting who for their own purposes.

    Although this is a significant bit of consultation from within the government's paid service, there are much weightier reasons why we might end up with a government here which embraces free software - like Gates forgetting Blair's birthday or something. While govenment agencies require submissions to be in "industry standard" formats (i.e. Word or Excel documents) we've got an awfully long way to go.

    Obligatory disclaimer - I'm a British Conservative, which influences my view on Blair's Britain a smidge.

    Dunstan

    --
    The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
    1. Re:Blair's Love affair with Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      In my experience, the UK is some sort of weird MS only compound. They are more obsessed with producing an MS monoculture than even in WA, USA.

      I work for an Internet company that uses several data providers. The US ones always have a Linux, Solaris, or Java option for their products. When you ask a UK guy if they have a Solaris version they act like you are some sort of wacko, like you asking them to port their code to Amiga or something. (Here come the flames :-))