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.gov.au Guide to Open Source Software
kieronb writes "The Australian Government Information Management Office has recently released
"A Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies". Surprisingly, it actually appears to have been written by someone with a clue, and provides quite a balanced overview of what F/OSS is and how it differs to proprietary software. Choice quotes: "Sourcing OSS solutions is a new and less understood area for Government Agencies. As a recult, it often seems to involve higher risk. As open source solutions become more mainstream and agencies gain expertise in evaluating and deploying them, this perception of risk should subside."; "Access to source code is, however, valuable to agencies by virtue of the economic flow-on effects that accrue when multiple vendors offer competing products based on the same technology. Access to source code also reduces the risk of vendor lock-in.""
Personally, I don't see how any government can in good conscience spend money on a solution, when there is a free, standards based alternative.
Go Away! Not for Sale
I think that at some point, an organization as big as a country's government should consider itself in a good position not to accept vendor lock-in, where the cost savings are just part of the equation. So yes, it will probably catch on. This demand is already being recognized by vendors, considering MS' shared-source program.
see a Text Widget
Support is not free. User training is not free. IT training is not free. Making all your other applications play nice, integrate into websites, case management, workflow management, document management and so on isn't. Exchange and integration with other departments, end-users and subcontractors isn't. Custom development isn't. And by that I mean everything from huge internal applications to simple VBA macros.
Maybe there's money to be saved in the long run. But in the short run, the current solutions are cheaper, and those money can be spent right now to improve social security, public schools, public healthcare, public roads, tax relief or whatever else you consider a "good cause". Yes, it is sort of counterproductive, like how I see some public schools decay much too fast due to missing maintenance budget (and they end up building new and more expensive ones instead) but they are like the rest of society. Long term is what the stock price is next quarter.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Whoever called this a balanced view wasn't too careful in reading the article. Later on, it just reads like MS FUD.
"... however, liability in open source is still a glaring issue in comparison to proprietary counterparts, with most licenses including the popular GPL explicitly disclaiming any warranty and liability on behalf of the authors."
I'm certainly an OSS advocate, however, I consider open data formats to be even more important, in particular for government use.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
What I'd really love is if the Australian Government would make more grants available to its local software industry.
There's a lot of adverts on TV and in the paper about the government caring about "small businesses" (hahaha, sorry, I'm laughing already) and wanting local "innovation" - I say it's a load of bollocks. I've approached several different government departments about getting grants/loans/funding/support for extending my existing software business (of which over 90% of its income is exports!) and all they ever end up doing is either dissapearing in the night or saying "sorry, you're too small" or "sorry, you're too successful".
Paul.
While I do agree with the sentiments of the very first post...
:-o).
... ... but I can ring Microsoft 24/7 and talk to someone who will sort me out with basically anything on Windows, Office, the Internet... ... (ellipses are cool) ...
As a programmer and hardware salesman/repairman I've seen and dealt with open source as well as MS solutions in both the home and office, long and short term.
I will say that the price of Microsoft software is pretty outrageous, almost the same as the hardware if you want the whole shebang. (Then again, try buying enough MYOB functionality to run a shop, that will set you back a pretty penny
Some free software is fantastic, in fact in many cases the free stuff is superior in various ways.
Some users will NEVER get the hang of Open Office. "It's just all too differenty to Word".
It's good to see a worldwide push towards this sort of software model because it will drive prices down and functionality up.
The question still remains whether or not these government departments (or anyone) will benefit in the long term. One thing I can tell you is that in Australia getting some guy to fix your XP box will cost about $35/hr whereas a really hopeless Linux administrator will cost about $75. In a 'regional' area like Newcastle you'll have a hard time finding a guy who can install Debian.
("Debbie who?")
I think it will depend on what these people are doing, and how often they normally have to call the 'computer guy' (me).
this.mod(-2, "RAMBLING");
Aaron.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Yes, because America is so free of their own criminal descendants, being a former penal colony of England itself. You people have just had 200 more years and a crapload more immigrants from other countries to hide it with.
ash
For those who haven't worked in an Australian government IT section before, it's a different world to the private industry. The budgets are generally higher and paperwork / justification required is usually higher than the "real" world.
This is where this document will help, there's now an "official" reference point that can be used to justify the use of F/OSS solutions.
Where the promotion of most F/OSS systems fail is that they focus on the cost as the most important factor. This isn't the biggest gain, especially for departments where the budget makes it an insignificant factor. Freedom from proprietary file formats and the ease of customisation I think are the biggest benefits and this needs to be the focus.
One thing that I can't see addressed properly is a government scheme to donate funding to a lot of the smaller open source development projects. For the government to pay anyone (in most instances) they want an invoice and a product to be delivered.
It would be great to be able to submit a recommendation to a government organisation that can then distribute small amounts of funding to the developers. This would allow the smaller projects (eg a simple php calendar app used on a government intraweb) to get some recognition and possibly allow them to develop their software further.
Does such a scheme exist?
www.techwatch.com.au