Peru Passes Free Software Law

wlan0 writes "Peru has passed a law favoring Open Source in the Government (translated using Google translator) after some time and some fights thanks to the help of Peruvian Congressman Villanueva and APESOL(Peruvian Free Software Association). OpenSource.org also provides the full text of the Bill."

Comments

Voting

[karvind]

From the translated article: With 61 votes to favor 0 in against and 5 abstentions from a total of 66 congressmen, ...

I say, GO PERU !! No against at all.

WOW

[zappepcs]

I'm continually amazed that MS has such traction that F/OSS has to fight to get anywhere. If MS and Linux were cars (never mind old jokes) people would be buying magazines to compare, taking test drives, and asking their buddies which one to buy... but with an OS, OMG, if you don't use MS, you must be one of those Linux geek nutjobs... and surely FREE software can't be as good as stuff you pay an arm and leg for... righ?

Why do we have to pass laws to compete with MS? That is the real story! I bet its an interesting read too... Shame that weather is the only thing that gets full coverage these days.

"Favoring" law?

[dada21]

Here's a complete waste of a politician's time -- laws that only make a statement, but don't actually change much. I see so many laws (daily) that don't actually do anything, they just say things:

H. RES. 99: Expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives to the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Madrid that occurred one year ago

H. RES. 59: Providing for consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 36) expressing the continued support of Congress for equal access of military recruiters to institutions of higher education.

Expressing? Providing? Favoring? What exactly are these public figures DOING?

I don't think this law is honestly going to create more open source usage by their government, nor is it really going to change much. Even laws requiring the use of open source are only as good as the government can enforce, which is probably nil. I did some consulting a dozen years ago for a government organization, and I couldn't get one office to settle on a single application -- everyone had favorites they wouldn't give up.

Good luck.

translation

[jzeejunk]

from TFA To present that TO COPY he is legal (if is free software of course)

shouldn't this be
To present that TO COPY him is legal (if he is free software of course) ;)
talking of google translation this is something a friend forwarded to me
Step 1: Go to http://www.google.com.my/language_tools?hl=en

Step 2: Enter the following line into the translate textbox:
Aishwarya's mom is nice and cool

Step 3: Translate from english to spanish.

Step 4: Copy the translated text, and translate it back from Spanish to English.

OpenSource.org shows the wrong bill

[crazybit]

The translation of the bill showed in Opensource.org is the translation of one of the first proposals that were passed to the Congress. The bill that has been approved i different from that (beta) version.

Re:The law says "Free Software", not "Open source"

[public transport]

Their definition of "Free Software" is in fact very close to that of the FSF due to the requirement that modified versions shall be redistributable under the original license (cf GPL). The subitter of the article was modest when translating it as Open Source, since Free Software is a stronger requirement.

Re:Read parts 4 and 7 of the law.

[dada21]

I see. It still doesn't mandate open software or free software.

I can't think of many hardware devices that force specific software anymore, although the ones that do are REALLY specific hardware devices. My brother owns a recording studio that uses very proprietary programs -- if a Peruvian government has its own recording studio, will they be limited to using OSS software? Eek, scary. How about large-scale accounting programs used by the State? Is there an inexpensive way for the State to transfer to an free software format in the short run, or will this just be more pork money for favored companies who can provide for this "free" transition?

And who is the local sanctioning authority? Another scary law, IMHO.

Re:This is not the way to do it

[SharpFang]

Yes. And they did.
The governments of several South American governments have realized this already, that software used for all the government purposes should follow these guidelines:
- Be transparent to the government. The government MUST have a way to verify if no malicious code, country-hostile elements, backdoors or other such insecurities exist. Without source - impossible.
- Be transparent to the citizens; any citizen of the country should be able to analyse and examine how the government handles the data, verify that no illegal activity is being performed using the software. Required: Access to sources, access to specifications.
- Countrywide Integration: Any citizen should be able to integrate systems used in government with systems they use privately, (e.g. in private business - taxes) to increase efficiency, removing need of manual conversion between two closed standards or such. Req: Open standards, access to hooks/API.
- Free access for citizens to the software. No need to sign NDAs, no fees to access the sources, freedom to use and examine the software at will. If they pay taxes to fund the software for government, they shouldn't be forced to pay again to use it themselves. Req: Free as a beer, no "don't copy" style licenses.
- Indepence from vendors. The country can't be held hostage by any vendor because they are the only entity that can implement/change/fix some essential feature. Any developer should be able to come along the way and continue the work, where the previous one left it. Req: Access to sources.
- Supporting local economy: Making development of software for government, easy for local businesses, no matter what their size. Because anyone can develop the software, the government isn't tied to a single corporation creating the subsystems and won't be locked with expanding underperforming system because cost of total replacement is too high and there's nobody else besides the corporation that could fix the software (and the corporation lacks skill/resources to do this). Req: Access to sources for everyone.

As for now, Open Source/Free Software fulfills all these requirements "out of the box". Getting them all from any commercial vendor would be near-impossible, or at least a true torment in the means of negotiations.
Also note it doesn't lock out any commercial vendors. It just changes what the government buys: They buy THE software (binaries+sources+specs+IP) and not just license to use the "borrowed" binaries which they wouldn't really own.
What the government does with the purchased software shouldn't be your concern, you got paid for selling all rights to it to them. Well, they open-source it. For the better of the nation.

Paradoxial

[marco13185]

Isn't the whole point of open source to encourage choice. When the government officially sponsers a certain part of the market, you once again start to see a monopoly, regardless of the cost of the product. If everyone uses opensource, then the same problem arises, innovation does not take place. A delicate balance in the market creates a competetive and innotive market.

Private derivatives: get it with free software.

[jbn-o]

The parent poster gets it exactly right, and the grandparent poster managed to give important and interesting evidence then reach the wrong conclusion.

To build on the parent's article, one specific example of a practical benefit free software gives us that open source software does not is the freedom to make private derivatives. Private derivatives are changed versions of programs one never distributes. The open source definition has nothing to allow users to make these, but the definition of free software requires that users have this right ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.").

This came up in the discussion around the early version of the Apple Public Source License. It was one reason that those versions of the APSL were not free software licenses, even though they qualified as open source licenses. The earlier revisions of the APSL required notifying a central authority—Apple—of any "deployed" APSL program.

As a result, the GNU Project commented on what Apple had picked up from the then year-old "open source" movement:

Aside from this, we must remember that only part of MacOS is being released under the APSL. Even if the fatal flaws and practical problems of the APSL were fixed, even if it were changed into a very good free software license, that would do no good for the other parts of MacOS whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do.

Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.

Apple has grasped perfectly the concept with which "open source" is promoted, which is "show users the source and they will help you fix bugs". What Apple has not grasped--or has dismissed--is the spirit of free software, which is that we form a community to cooperate on the commons of software.

I found the commentary to be apropos then and still find it to be informative and helpful today.

Re:Misses the point completely.

[geekboy642]

I mean, you find tons of pirated software in government computers.

Source please. I work entirely with government computers, and we have very strict policies about the acquisition of ANY piece of software to ensure all licenseing requirements are met, in addition to verifying that it will be safe in a secure environment. In fact, those same policies have been hampering the uptake of OSS, as some of the requirements are impossible for a "bazaar"-style release to meet.