Lobbyists Urge South Australia To Drop Open Source Bill

Red Wolf writes "The Age reports that South Australia has caused eyebrows at the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) to be raised in concern, with the organisation writing to Premier Mike Rann over a proposed Open Source software bill. The ISC, by its own definition, is a "global coalition of large and small companies committed to advancing the concept that multiple competing software markets should be allowed to develop and flourish unimpeded by government preference or mandate"."

Comments

Re:Initiative for Software Choice?

[mhifoe]

Whilst I haven't done any background checking on the Initiative for Software Choice I think what they seem to be saying is that the best tool for any particular job should be picked.

The lobby group consists of these people.

It's the usual suspects (MS included). A bill which requires Open Source to be considered will harm their business model. Therefore it must be stopped. Note that the bill doesn't prevent the use of proprietary software, it merely requires people who procure software for the public sector to consider open source. That sounds like software choice to me.

Text of the proposed bill / legislation

[HardcoreGamer]

''The article doesn't detail the intricacies of the law...''

No need to guess about the bill - here's the text of the proposed legislation. See the bold text for the important part:

[BIL148-A.LCA]

[Advance (1)]

South Australia

[Prepared by the Parliamentary Counsel on the instructions of the Hon. I. Gilfillan, M.L.C.]

STATE SUPPLY (PROCUREMENT OF SOFTWARE) AMENDMENT
BILL 2003

A BILL FOR
An Act to amend the State Supply Act 1985.

[OPC-LC]

Contents

Part 1â"Preliminary
1. Short title
2. Amendment provisions

Part 2â"Amendment of State Supply Act 1985
3. Insertion of Part 3A
Part 3Aâ"Special provisions relating to supply operations of public authorities
17A. Principle applying to the procurement of computer software

The Parliament of South Australia enacts as follows:

Part 1â"Preliminary

Short title
1. This Act may be cited as the State Supply (Procurement of Software) Amendment Act 2003.

Amendment provisions
2. In this Act, a provision under a heading referring to the amendment of a specified Act amends the Act so specified.

Part 2â"Amendment of State Supply Act 1985

Insertion of Part 3A
3. After Part 3 insert:

Part 3Aâ"Special provisions relating to supply operations of public authorities

Principle applying to the procurement of computer software
17A. (1) A public authority must, in making a decision about the procurement of computer software for its operations, have regard to the principle that, wherever practicable, a public authority should use open source software in preference to proprietary software.

(2) In this sectionâ"
"distribute" means distribute for free or on payment of the reasonable costs of distribution;
"open source software" means computer software the subject of a licence granting a person a rightâ"
(a) without any limitation or restriction, to use the software for any purpose; and
(b) without any limitation or restriction, to make copies of the software for any purpose; and
(c) without any limitation or restriction, to access or modify the source code of the software for any purpose; and
(d) without payment of a royalty or other fee, to distribute copies ofâ"
(i) the software (including as a component of an aggregate distribution containing computer software from several different sources); or
(ii) a derived or modified form of the software, (whether in compiled form or in the form of source code), under the same terms as the licence applying to the software;
"proprietary software" means computer software that is not open source software.

PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE GOVERNMENT PRINTER

Re:I wonder

[uroshnor]

Whilst MS is probably a player in this, keep in mind that the South Australian State Government's IT is almost totally outsourced to EDS ( who are a ISC member, and a MS solution parter at a very big way ).

EDS's revenues in the SA State Government Cotnract would be impacted by an open source direction , as EDS derives revenue both from selling software and hardware to the government, as well as supporting the systems.

As EDS is a major sized player, one of the ways they derive revenue is by screwing commercial developers down on price, and then selling to their customers at as high a price they can get away with.

Extensive use of OSS/Free software would impact this because they would have reduced capability to pad their revenue.