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UK Government Breaks Open Source Promises
judgecorp writes "The UK government has promised to favour open source systems in its procurement (and made those promises repeatedly). However, freedom of information requests have shown it is doing nothing of the sort. It is giving contracts to the same large suppliers as before."
Sadly, this is not that surprising. We are talking about the Government of the United Kingdom, or Her Majesty's Government as it is officially known. If you were a queen (who in the 21st century still won't enter the House of Commons and only talk with the House of Lords) then who would you rather listen to: him or him? We in the open-source movement have a problem with image. The sad truth is that the very people thanks to whom that movement was started don't really care about they appearance, the arguments that would get to the Upper Class. They think that just because they are Right - which they are, no doubt about that - everyone will automatically recognize that and make decision based on what would be the best for the humanity. Sadly we live in the world of politicians, lobbies, parties, Kings and Queens. We have to recognize that and work on our appearance if we ever want to go main stream.
Calling for open source in government is calling for discounts (along with more kickbacks).
I mean, who else is gonna subsidize their already good salary? Surely not those open source hicks /sarcasm
The linked-to article cites a BBC FOI request as the source, but doesn't link to the BBC's own article on the subject, as far as I can tell.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well it's basic stuff and it happens in every country.
The politicians are running the places and they are running them to their own advantage. The only question on any one of their mind is this:
"Does this make ME more money?"
The flow chart is then very simple:
1. No? Forget about it.
2. Yes? Let's do it.
You can't handle the truth.
...saying one thing to the public and then proceeding to do something different? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I say!
Most of the parties are happy to go back on their own manifesto policies so this really shouldn't surprise anyone.
Reading between the lines here. If an entity known for manipulating the facts is "promising" something, seems to me it is basically telling you it won't do it. If the intent was to actually do it, it would be a "contract", "law", "regulation". Or at least a "decision", "commitment" perhaps. It would come with firm numbers - percentages, dates, amounts, numbers of contracts. If the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, Pinocchio or Gaddafi said "I promise", what would you count on happenning?
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It can't be bad as all that. If it really were, people would just stop using that supplier and go with a competing service.
Monopolies are prohibited, right?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The commitment was for open STANDARDS, not open source. Open Standards are also a good thing, but they are not the same as open source.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
It used to be "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.".
The moral for today in my industry (semigovernmental in CIO strategy) is all about corporate brand names. i.e. if there is no corporate big brand name attached it has no chance. If there is a corporate big brand name then by definition it's OK and let into the starting gate.
IBM is still in the arena but there's a bunch other names at least in the US: Oracle, Microsoft, Computer Associates, (don't get me started on CA and their bleed-the-customer-dry strategy) or any of the major government/defense contractors.
I've been fiendish a couple of times since Oracle bought MySQL, and the only way I got MySQL into the solution (and the solution did not need any fancy pants database features!) was by arguing that since Oracle owns it, it'll be OK to do it that way.
... and discovering that it won't work for them, for whatever reason.
They didn't say "We'll move to 50% OSS in the next year," they said "We'll look at it favorably." If they look at it and discover that, despite the costs involved in their existing software, they can't actually afford to move their data to an open source equivalent, it's not going to happen. And if it turns out there ISN'T an open source equivalent, it's really not going to happen.
While I'm not saying OSS is always more expensive -- it usually is a lot cheaper, in my experience -- there can be times when it's cheaper to stick with what you've got. Think about it. If all your data is in a proprietary system in a non-standard format, and you don't have anyone on staff who can update it, it's going to be expensive to make the switch. That one time cost may be a lot more than you have in your budget for the yearly licensing fees of that proprietary system. After all, that's WHY that proprietary system uses its own unique data format....
I'm not sure how the UK does it, but many of the US gov selection processes I've been involved in use a weighted assessment for picking a technical solution. A bunch of desired features are given point values and are weighted on importance. So on a 100 point scale, having a question like "Is it open source?" worth 1 point is actually favoring open source (all else being equal, open source will win).
The summary appears to be deliberately misleading, saying the government "promised to favour open source" whereas the BBC article you cite merely says that open source should be considered "on a level playing field".
That's not favouring. That's the opposite of favouring; it's a goal to stop favouring non-open source projects just because they're open source.
Exactly. There is a lot of very poor quality alternatives to commercial software, and a few high quality ones. Also Open Source has a tendency towards "I am going to put features in the code that I wan't" not "I am going to put features that most of my users want", Much the same concept that ended up hurting Novel. Novel was an Engineering based company and it put in a lot of cool features, but most of them their customers didn't really want at the time, so they slowly migrated off of Novel to Windows, Because Microsoft gave them features that the customers wanted.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Neither the article linked nor the BBC article cited near the top of the thread even included the word "favour". One included the phrase "level playing field" suggesting that, rather than favoring one thing or another, all were to compete fairly. The other mentions open standards, not open source, which is not the same thing at all.
The summary is a bit of agenda-driven bile with no almost relation to the article it links to.
First up: Any government department that's got a significant investment in IT can't just go out and replace, say, Microsoft Office with LibreOffice overnight. There's a huge amount of testing to do, and when you hit upon things like Access databases and Excel spreadsheets that have become an entire department's IT system, it's very tempting to say "Stuff it. We'll stick with Office."
It's even more tempting when the F/OSS firm says "Yes, we can replace all those things - it'll cost £X hundred thousand, mind." The cost of a migration to a newer version of Office isn't seen by the higher-ups for the exact same reason that these databases and spreadsheets were able to become so widespread without anyone noticing - the people that maintain them won't make a big song and dance, they'll simply quietly beaver away tweaking their database so it works in the Latest Greatest Version. The cost of that isn't seen.
Second up: Something that a lot of people in IT don't realise unless/until they start their own business. Marketing something with any degree of success is remarkably hard - and it's as much an art as it is a science. At first, "make it free of charge" (or even "Make it remarkably cheap") sounds like an absolute corker of a strategy. How can anyone fail to sell a product when the cost is zero? Hell, you could probably throw up a website and have the world beating a path to your door inside a few days!
It doesn't work like that. If you're buying a product of any significance, the choice of product probably comes more from the salesman than from the product itself. As soon as you start saying things like "the software is free, but you'd have to pay for consulting to make it all work together" - you've got two huge problems. "The software is free" is the classic "sounds too good to be true" offer that will usually be regarded with extreme suspicion - and as soon as you say just one thing that makes your prospect suspicious of you, that's it. You've lost their trust and you won't get it back again. If you've ever watched Dragons' Den (I believe the US equivalent is called "Shark Tank"), you'll have seen exactly this happen.
The second problem is the "you'd have to pay for consulting" bit. The IT consulting industry doesn't exactly have a spotless reputation; anyone who's been in industry for any length of time can tell you all about the consultant they brought in at great expense who over-promised and under-delivered. At least with a COTS package there's the possibility of being able to evaluate it for some time before going ahead, that's greatly reduced when you're paying for one-off work.
Is there a windows-to-linux migration how-to somewhere that helps admins deal with the usual technical challenges in doing something like this? It's a tough challenge, in many ways. Technical, training, political. Retraining, application migration, data migration, dealing with non-portable applications, migration cost payback time calculations, etc. There should be more cooperation in helping make Linux more competitive on more front that the technical. Microsoft has entire strategies dedicated to only undercutting Linux wherever possible. The "Starter Edition" for Windows and Office have hugely reduced the numbers of machines with OpenOffice and Linux preinstalled.
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software is purchased by capability first
Is the kind of software that comes out of Accenture and other body shops - that usually win large government contracts - the more capable software? Your standards are probably way different than mine.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Because Microsoft gave them features that the customers wanted.
It's just a shame they didn't work very well.
Exactly. There is a lot of very poor quality alternatives to commercial software, and a few high quality ones. Also Open Source has a tendency towards "I am going to put features in the code that I wan't" not "I am going to put features that most of my users want"/quote>
But the prime difference between closed and open source is you can hire or contract someone and have the features you want added, regardless of what the software originator thinks, whereas with closed, you're at the mercy of the company making it.
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From reading the article, these are large contracts for large systems. While the UK might want to favor open source (which I doubt, but that is a different post), the companies bidding on the projects are pitching existing systems that are then modified. Raytheon, one of the bidders mentioned several times in the article probably doesn't have an open source alternative. Likewise for the other bidders.
So, even if the UK were wanting to encourage open source, if the major players don't offer any alternatives to their proprietary or custom offerings, what is the procurement office supposed to do?
That is a false dichotomy. Closed source software is not automatically locked from further development or customizations. To use MS as an example, SharePoint developers seem pretty common these days and I've worked with a few companies that contracted out the work of adding features to Microsoft Office. It adds costs on top of the cost of the software, but, if the software covers the majority of your needs and developers can quickly add features using some simple Visual Studio add-ons, then it could still end up being a better price overall than going with an open source software package.
That doesn't mean open source always costs more or anything, but when you factor in development and support costs, it doesn't often boil down to "Open Source is cheaper." It can turn out to be far more nuanced than that.
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Hmmm, unlikely that capabilities have much to do with it I'd say. I agree with you that software choice is similar to recruitment choice - mostly driven by image, prejudice, nepotism, and kickbacks, at least where governments are concerned.
Korma: Good
The numbers contain for example HAYS IT. I guess its refereing to http://www.hays.co.uk/ which do not sell any license only services. So they have hired some consultants from that company for doing whatever their job was. But they spend no money on licenses. I guess they still would need those people no matter if its Open Source Software or not.
Software Developer@OpenMeetings project
FOSS developers don't pay kickbacks. It's as simple as that.
...and frankly, I'm suprised that this is being talked about - I would have thought the press would have taken the Gov. to task for suggesting this a year ago, not complain now that (surprise suprise) it's not happening.
Why would the gov. go open source?
Just one example from the article -
>rather than seeking cheaper open source alternatives.
Which instantly exposes the issue of cost. Cheaper how? Do you really think the cost savings on a country-wide MS license are going to cover the years of contracts you'd need to pay engineers (no-one is going to do this work for standard gov. money) to combine multiple systems across the UK? Why do you think the majority of private enterprises aren't doing this? (Please, don't insist they are - when I see the ratio of linux/ MS contract jobs change, we'll talk).
So, in short this article will be ignored in the same way OpenOffice is ignored when their CEO uses 'downloaded' figures to suggest an existing userbase.
No, the commitment specifically referred to open source: "The Government are committed to using more open source solutions where possible." - Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister.
The question usually is more like "is this compatible with the microsoft products we have already, and that everyone else is using?"
Governments should require that whatever software they use make use of open-standard file formats. Specifying a proprietary file format is just giving away another monopoly, and tacitly accepting one is barely a notch less evil.
Is the OP suggesting that one or more politicans may have lied? That's unprecedented! I supposed next he'd have us believe that beer drinkers belch or that the whole notion of royalty is sadly dated and rather silly. ;-P
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No; he's far too rude for that.
It's simple. They shouldn't favor one over the other sight unseen. Hopefully (but not likely) they'd be considering all options equally and choosing the right tool for the job. Open-source won't always be the right tool.
Another of the reasons is the various government approval schemes like CAPS, EAL and FIPS... If your software is not approved, then it's not allowed to be used in certain government projects.
Now these approval schemes are utterly ridiculous for so many reasons...
Getting your product on these schemes is expensive, which means that only large vendors can afford to apply, and even those won't bother to certify all versions of their products.
The approval process is slow (plus not all versions are submitted for certification) meaning that the certified versions are usually out of date, and often have known security holes.
The evaluation process is often flawed, it will cover a limited scope thats defined by the vendor, and really just checks that features the vendor claims to have exist... There is no audit of the source code, no thorough evaluation of the software in a realistic environment, and no checks to make sure that the features the vendor claims to have actually work properly and can't be circumvented.
Incidentally, we should start a petition on the e-petitions site to get answers and draw political attention to this.
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A country-wide license will still cost a huge amount of money, whereas any development work has to be done once regardless of how many end users will use it.
Many systems are never "combined", there are hundreds of disparate systems out there already. That said, systems based on open standards with source code availability would actually be easier to connect together.
Also, paying local engineers to develop open source (that can be used across all government) is actually much better than paying money to a foreign corporation... If you pay engineers then you create jobs, decrease unemployment and the majority of what you pay them, you will receive back in the form of direct and indirect taxes.
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Who? Do you mean Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? If you're an anti-monarchist and don't want to dignify her with her correct style, go the whole way and call her Elizabeth Windsor.
Government says it will do one thing and then does the opposite!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Except that it doesn't just have to be done once, it has to be done once, and then it has to be maintained, and supported, and migrated to and tested with the new OS version. If it's a modification to an existing open source program then it has to be maintained and potentially rewritten from scratch every time there's any changes to the parts of the original program that they modified.
People who think that software is a one time sunk cost haven't ever written any.
>A country-wide license will still cost a huge amount of money, whereas any development work has to be done once regardless of how many end users will use it.
Indeed, but a lot *less* development needs to be done when using, say, sharepoint instead of writing your own system - and the ongoing support costs will be lower too. Now apply that to remote access, full-disk encryption, email...all the things that the likes of Active Directory give you as standard.
>That said, systems based on open standards with source code availability would actually be easier to connect together.
Maybe, but at the moment they don't exist - and if you rewrite all your SQL/ sharepoint/ etc. based products, you'll have already spent the money you were going to save down the line - and when you arrive down the line, you'll now have to pay more in engineers to maintain the system.
>Also, paying local engineers to develop open source (that can be used across all government) is actually much better than paying money to a foreign corporation...
I'm not sure how this is so - you'll be paying more money to the engineers who set up the system, and much more to the developers who write and maintain the software than runs on it.
>If you pay engineers then you create jobs, decrease unemployment and the majority of what you pay them, you will receive back in the form of direct and indirect taxes.
This sounds like the broken window fallacy - making more work (that you have to pay for) to create a custom system that any newcomers have to be trained on isn't going to be seen as an improvement - and you'll already be getting taxes from *any* engineers who work on the system (unless you farm the work out abroad)...