Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Open Code in Public Procurement

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the golden-hammer dept.

mpawlo writes: "I wrote something on public procurement and open code that you might want to share with your readers. In my opinion, it is time that public bodies and governments look over their public procurement policies to warrant competition. I don't think free software or open source should be the only choice when it comes to public computer programs, but as of today, public bodies all over the world designs their requirements in a way that rules out all Free Software and Open Source alternatives already at the drawing table. May the best computer program and license win! That's the only way to get an effective allocation of public money when it comes to public computer programs. Maybe a good topic for discussion among Slashdotters?"

5 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. They Won't Change Soon by Rebel+Patriot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Government doesn't have a reason to change, therefor, they won't. One of our biggest clients is a government body. They've been ingrained for a long time with Microsoft and just aren't going to switch from MS Office to say, Staroffice. Reasons for this are actually valid.

    1) They are comfrotable and familiar with Word and Excell.
    2) Some of their Access documents would be hard to render properly in Staroffice.
    3) They've invested a ton of money into several Visual Basic programs that use Access as a back end.

    As long as government agencies, departments, etc need things like that (which they've spent alot of money on to impliment), they are loath to switch.

    --
    Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
  2. Re:Why doesn't the gov't insist on open code? by quantaman · · Score: 2, Informative

    One reason I can see is public confidence. The public probably thinks that open source means hackers , knowing how the system works, could easily break into the system and steal whatever they want. Open source simply does not have the reputation of reliability that most proprietary systems do simply to the fact that most people automatically assume that anything "professionally" designed by a company for the purpose of making money will by automatically better than something made by people in their spare time.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  3. Re:Open Source isn't accepted by base3 · · Score: 2, Informative
    I'm on your side on this, and I work for a state university facing a budget crisis, like most of us are. I agree that we're throwing away seven figures on MS license fees.

    However, Microsoft has the administrators convinced that the "total cost of ownership" for the MS products is less than it would be for a pure open source solution.

    Perhaps proposing a departmental pilot of a package including Linux and Star Office for about twenty or so people, and determining how true the training deficiency theory is, might be the way to go. However, to get the full experience, someone's going to have to port the VBscript worms to Linux first.

    --
    One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  4. It used to be the rule by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    All non-classified custom development for the US federal government used to be open source. If you could locate the agency that had the source and pay the cost of reproduction and shipping, you could get a copy of the source of any federal-government-paid-for program. This included a bunch of defense-related simulations, military pensions, military hospitals, atomic number crunching, and all kinds of miscellaneous programs too miscellaneous to describe.


    Now, the more interesting provisions in government purchasing usually read like this (1) you have to certify that you never have and never will sell it to anyone else for less than you charge the government, (2) it has to be accessible to users with various handicaps (eg visually impaired, carpal tunnel victims, etc).

  5. UK policy appears to be what you want. by Bazzargh · · Score: 3, Informative
    You can find the draft UK procurement policy on open source here: (all versions) (direct link to html version)

    This has been driven by the EU recommendation to consider open source mentioned in the past on Slashdot.

    Main body are these recommendations:

    • UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis.
    • UK Government will only use products for interoperability that support open standards and specifications in all future IT developments.
    • UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services.
    • UK Government will obtain full rights to bespoke software code that it procures and all customisations of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) packages that it uses wherever this achieves value for money.
    • UK Government will explore further the possibilities of using OSS as the default exploitation route for Government funded R&D software by academic research institutes
    ... which all seems pretty laudable.

    BTW: PLEASE DON'T SEND COMMENTS TO GOVTALK if you are just going to say 'me too'. The 7 comments that are there are all pro-open source and we dont want to sound like fanatics, do we? Remember how a lot of the comments to the EU on patent law were essentially ignored for this reason - don't duplicate the arguments of others.

    Disclaimer: I don't work for the UK government, but I write software that gets sold to them. Which includes a lot of open source stuff. I just happened to be reading that policy today before I read /. ...

    Cheers, Baz