eGovOS 3 Announced

A reader writes:"German Minister Otto Schily and at least 2 other ministers will be keynoting at EGOVOS 3: Open Standards and Libre Software in Government conference in Paris, France on November 24-26, 2003. EGOVOS 3 will bring together the largest number ever of high level government officials working in Open Source and Free Software. In addition to the national ministers, 15 senior politicians, government IT officials and representatives from the European Commission, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama and the US will being making presentations." You will find general registration is open - free, but limited seating. Additionally, press registration is open as well. I normally don't post many conference announcements, but this one should have significant impact on governmental decisions around Free/Libre/Open/Whatever Software.

Comments

Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

How can software be free if its use is mandated by a government?

Re:Paradox

[LarsWestergren]

How can software be free if its use is mandated by a government?

As long as they follow the GPL, why should this be a problem? They are only using it same as everybody else, they are not assuming control of it.

You might as well ask, How can air be free if its use is mandated by a government?

Re:Paradox

[LarsWestergren]

This is a problem because while the software may be "free", the people are not. Nobody likes to be told what they can or cannot use from some bureucrat.

I think you will find that in Germany and other places were they are pushing for the use of free software, they are not forcing the PEOPLE to use anything, they are mandating that employees in goverment departments should use Open and Free Software. There is a big difference.

Also, since they are choosing open protocols and standards, the people have more choice now than when they used a proprietary format such as Word for communication.

And since the GPL isn't even the "free-est" license (the BSD is), how is this freedom at all?

So 99% more freedom than before isn't freedom at all in you mind?? Wow, you have some tough standards.

For the record, I work in the public sector in Sweden. I am working on a project dealing with digital books for dyslectics and blind people, it is licenced under BSD. If another goverment wants to use it for their people, fine. If a company use our code to make a vastly superior product and start to use it commercially, fine.

In the end, it benifits those we exist to serve, visually impared, dyslectics or others who are prevented an any way from reading normal books.

Governments key to the desktop

[pork_spies]

Governments have the power and resources to train thousands of admins to hack free software systems, and they could save millions by not buying you-know-who's licences. So, I hope this goes well.

Open goverment from the people who know...

[MosesJones]

Previous sponsors of EGOVOS have included UNDP, the World Bank, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Red Hat, and Dell as well as government associations and universities.

Remember folks, when people talk about Open Software and standards they are not talking about employing a bunch of bearded hackers with l33t Linux skills. They are talking about hiring the big boys, who in many ways just happen to be supporting this movement because it fits their business and selling models.

This is great to see, but lets not pretend that it isn't the big boys who are making sure the goverments play with Open Source toys.

Re:Open goverment from the people who know...

[bhima]

Does it really matter if a "A bearded hacker with l33t Linux skills" or a non-US citizen or for that matter a highly paid professional employed by a fortune 50 corporation, create the code; as long as it's open and free (as in speech).

Addressing another comment:

Does it matter what the motives are (i.e. political) that create open and free software as long as it is truly free?

K.V.: Sorry about the Semicolon...

Microsoft reps going?

[192939495969798999]

Anyone know if Microsoft reps will be on hand to provide a counter-argument? I wouldn't be surprised -- while this group is all for free software, some scare tactics to try to sell licenses would be likely, considering the group ultimately decides what millions of users will run.

Re:Microsoft reps going?

[Jesus_666]

What's more interestimg to me is Microsofts opinion on all major (and some smaller) German parties announcing to switch all government computers to Linux in they are elected (as seen in the 2002 elections).

Heh, maybe they'll just make all MS products Europe incompatible.
The document you are trying to open is from Europe. Word does not support European documents. If you need to open this document, ask the document's creator to move to the USA and save the document again.

in the context of SW-Patents

[blindcoder]

So, OTOH german politicians want SW-Patents, but OTOH they talk at Free Software Conferences... hmm...

Government involvement is a double edged sword

[Dancin_Santa]

I have no doubt that the proliferation of Free Software as a result of government promotion of it will result in a virtual awakening of people's minds to the problems that face everyone. The essential human trait is desire for liberty. Second to this is desire for security. Unfortunately these two desires are often mutually exclusive.

They complement each other when one realizes the in Freedom lies the ability to protect ones self. To build a wall of security, if you will. However, this is difficult and treacherous as one person's wall of security is hardly a match for the evils wanting to penetrate it.

So the person turns to government, an amalgamation of people dedicated to the mutual protection of each other. Security becomes an easier thing to maintain, but at the cost of individual Freedom. Enjoining any social contract means losing some Freedom.

So we have now governments interested in promoting Free Software. It is interesting because Free Software doesn't require promotion. All it requires is that it exist Freely and it will be shared with others who wish to use it.

So what sorts of benefits do the governments see in Free Software? No doubt they see the benefits that any user sees, Freedom to interact as an individual with a piece of Free Software. But from the point of view of Free Software, there are hazards.

The government is answerable to no one, especially inanimate objects like Free Software. There exists no method of redressing any violation of the Freedom of the Free Software. In essence, we are throwing the Software to the lions and hoping for the best.

I'm all for the proliferation of Free Software, but I think it is important to realize that government is the antithesis of Freedom. It exists only to usurp Freedom. Care must be taken to see that Free Software is not abused by governments.

Re:Government involvement is a double edged sword

[Gallenod]

On the other hand, "the government," at least as it has been involved previously in software development, was the original purveyor of "free software." Everything produced by the government that isn't classified is part of the public domain, freely available for use by everyone. Unfortunately, it has been available without any protection against being co-opted by proprietary interests, resulting in a lot of government code being buried in commercial products and never seeing free use again.

Maybe this is a chance for open source advocates within government to start embedding licenses like BSD or GPL in the software they produce. This is one of the chief threats to Microsoft and their brethren: that the free software they've been profiting from will no longer be their own private gravy train. Yeah, a lot of it gets produced because MS is willing to "partner" with government to develop systems on the public's dime. But others with a more open bent will step up and be willing to do the work.

Some good can come of this conference, even if it only plants the seed of openess in the government software development environment.

Advance only so far, then come to a speeding halt?

[Talthane]

disclaimer: UK-only view below, I do not speak for the rest of the EU

Government would be an ideal environment for open source development, because it's a highly collaborative world. Authorities get together all the time, online and off, to share information and work in partnerships. They're far, far better at collaboration than private companies - not least because of limited resources.

What stops government being open source entirely, in the UK at least, is that open source applications for government don't exist. Do a search for 'government' on SourceForge and you get back less than four active projects, mostly unsuitable for Europe. I know, I've looked. Authorities need systems that can do things like council tax, sundry debtor tracking, payroll, personnel, time recording, electoral registration, development control, building control, licensing, contract administration, GIS, records management, benefits claims, cost of works, invoicing, BACS, asset management, inventory management, architectural works, flexitime monitoring, enforcement notices recording, dog warden control, callout control, grant awarding and tracking, sampling storage and results monitoring and so on. That's an extract from one authority I worked for, and it only employs 300 people. Local government is hugely multifunctional.

The only OSS work I know in that list is in the area of GIS and it's not that advanced. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Believe it or not, authorities don't want x300 PHP/MySQL content management systems or yet another webserver, which is what SourceForge consists of on a bad day.

If open source does gain a bigger foothold in government, it'll only be on the desktop and in OpenOffice. Maybe Apache. But it'll never displace proprietary systems from government unless it expands beyond the developer-centric to include the kind of back office systems we use here. I think after that little list it'll come to a screeching halt due to lack of apps.

Oh, and in the UK we emphatically do not call it Libre Software. Methinks that's the French up to their linguistic nationalism again. It's continental Europe that doesn't call it free software - those of us from the country that gave the world English actually use the English word :-)

Open Standards

[ultraw]

I hope they put quite some stress and effort in the "open standard" parts. I don't care which software is being used. The government will have a good reason why they take it (and I hope this reason is a mixture of cost, support, easy to use, scalability, lifetime,...). If it possible using Open Source, why not. If a product and support from a company are better, sorry, but you have to be reasonable (and that is MY tax money they are using :)).

As long as the documents and data that are stored in the systems are stored in an easy accessible format, and not some closed standard, I'm a happy person. If the government want to switch software, they should be able to do so with little problems.

Also, it's quite disturbing to notice (again and again) that you can download all the documents you need do something administrative, but find out that it is in the latest crappy MS DOC format which is unreadable/badly formatted by my word processor... I even got auto-reply mail with only a doc file attached.

Re:Open Standards

[ultraw]

Well, if the software is build (designed, programmed, tested, debugged,...) by the government, with the aid of tax-money, then YES! OPEN SOFTWARE! NOW!. It was my money that made it happen...

If they just take a part of the tax-money (which was intended for the running of the government) and go out and buy some licenses to make them do their job better/faster/..., then it should not necessarly be open source software. If possible, they should give preference to open software, and to software made in the country/EU (support local economy, like that, tax money is re-entering the economic system of the country/region).

Re:Open Standards

[Koos Baster]

>support local economy, like that, tax money is re-entering the economic system of the country/region

I agree. However, a EU company is not forced (luckily) to invest the money it collects from IP into the EU or -- for that matter -- invest into innovation at all. If the company never "owned" the source code in the first place, a second company can pick up innovation where the first left off. This will benefit the product, make governments less reliable on a single vendor and benefit itself, its citizens as well as the rest of the world.

More importantly, governments will sponsor the innovation process rather than the end result of innovation.

--
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?

You get it wrong...

[imsabbel]

Politicans dont have any opinion on software patents here in Germany. But there is high unemployment and the (mostly american) software companies are making claims that software patens will help economy, create jobs, enlarge you penis,... (you get the idea).

So Politicians are in a situation where press and opposition grabs these claims and claim they arent doing anything against recession.

Until now, most simply choose to support the patents because they heard only voices supporting them. But the latest protest seem to have changed some opinions.

Re:Advance only so far, then come to a speeding ha

[gerddie]

Authorities need systems that can do things like council tax, sundry debtor tracking, payroll, personnel, ...
I'm not working in your field, but I expect that the software authorities need is so specialized, that it is usually developed on demand (I assume, most software is developed on demand or in house, anyway). Therefore, it would be possible for a government, to pay developers to develop the software under a free license. It's just a matter of how the request for software development is formulated. Unfortunately, we were taught for a long time, that software comes without source. Maybe such conference helps to open the eyes of some authorities that it is possible that a free software license can be made a requirement, if new software is developed on demand.

Re:"The government is answerable to no one"

[bhima]

Not even knowing where you live I think it's safe to say:"your government is corrupt, does not have your or lour loved ones best interest in mind, and most participants are engaged in a two pronged effort to be reelected and to move as much money as possible from the public trust to their or their cronies pockets." Statistically I'd have a more than even chance of being right!

Checks and balances exist to be broken

Democracy isn't necessarily the best form of government.

Re:Politic

[Frit Mock]

Americans tend to see themselves in the center of the world ... look, the earth is not the center of the universe, as americans are not the center of the world, at least not reagarding Linux development and not with Linux users! Look here where the developers come from: http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc.en.html and look here, where Linux users live (compared to the toatal population of the country) http://counter.li.org/reports/short.php?orderby=us erdensity#table

Re:Advance only so far, then come to a speeding ha

[Mikkeles]

'Do a search for 'government' on SourceForge and you get back less than four active projects, mostly unsuitable for Europe. I know, I've looked. Authorities need systems that can do things like council tax, sundry debtor tracking, payroll, personnel, time recording, electoral registration, development control, building control, licensing, contract administration, GIS, records management, benefits claims, cost of works, invoicing, BACS, asset management, inventory management, ....'

I agree that there is a definite lack of business orientation in (most of) the open source community. Most of these applications, however, are not available as shrinkwrapware from the proprietory software sector either. They are almost always constructed from the ground up by a service house to meet a specific set of requirements. After all, only the German government needs a tax tracking system that incorporates their rules and laws. Even something that appears as straightforward as an invoicing system usually has enough backend interconnections so as to make most of it special case.

Great, Err, Sort of

[4of12]

In addition to the national ministers, 15 senior politicians, government IT officials and representatives from the European Commission, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama and the US will being making presentations.

I like the sentiment of people coming together to agree upon free standards, free software.

But another side of me remains skeptical that such a large group of politicians can form a meaningful consensus in finite time.

Oh well, there's still probably some value in high level governmental IT people publicly expression support for this or that good free software feature. It will make it easier for their worker bees to openly justify that FOSS prototype project instead of hiding it in a dark corner of the server room.

Darn those French

[jtheory]

This title is a disgrace. Why can't we let the title be completely in English?

EGOVOS 3: Open Standards and Libre Software in Government

Darn those French. As an American, I demand that this title eschew the admittedly useful distinction between the french words "libre" and "gratuit". The proper title should be:

EGOVOS 3: Open Standards and Free (as in Speech, not as in Beer) Software in Government

Thank you.