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City of Vancouver Adopts Open Standards
rbrander writes "Vancouver, Canada's third-largest city, has adopted a policy of 'open standards, interfaces and formats' for all public data. They will also consider open-source software on an even footing with proprietary for all new software purchases. Fifteen of the fifteen people who signed up to speak to city council on the topic spoke in favor. Their only criticism was, 'can't you do more?' with one advocating that free and open source software be given preference, not equal footing."
It's not so much thinking outside the box, as not forgetting what you put in it.
When you can't open documents from a decade and a half ago, because they were stored in some incompatible proprietary format, you can't help but get a bad taste in your mouth for the company that caused it.
Now if you can complete your required task by using free software instead, and you have a guarantee that format will always be supported... well, make the logical jump.
Even if it isn't always supported, you can save the sourcecode, and decades from now you just get some enterprising novice coder to create a plugin to load it, for some money and experience. ;)
Giving OSS preferred treatment means that it doesn't win because it's better but just because it got an "unfair" advantage. You'll end up with the same prejudice that many "affirmative action" projects face, claiming that they only got this or that position because of that "unfair" advantage, not on their own merit.
I'm convinced that OSS can "win" on its own. And nobody will be able to claim that the sole reason was preference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They will also consider open-source software on an even footing with proprietary for all new software purchases. [...] Their only criticism was, 'can't you do more?' with one advocating that free and open source software be given preference, not equal footing."
Indeed, it seems irrational that open source software isn't always considered on an even footing, not just in Vancouver but everywhere. Do governments assume that there is some inherent advantage to the source code being kept secret and copyrighted—security through obscurity, perhaps?
And it seems at least as irrational that open source isn't already given preferential treatment on account of its price, which is generally zero. You always hear about governments automatically going with the lowest bidder, even to their own detriment. Yet, when it comes to software, it almost goes without saying that they shell out money for Windows and Office.
A lot of your complaints would be solved by saving the rendering software in binary form which runs under an open-source virtual machine like VirtualBox.
This doesn't solve the problem of an activation server for the OS. You boot into your VM and it can't activate because the server is non-existent. Any problem you have with open source software is magnified 10X with closed source.
Just callin' it like I see it.