Basque Country Gov't Decrees State-Produced Software Should Be Open Sourced

Posted by timothy on Friday June 1, 2012 @10:42PM from the if-they-can-why-can't-texas? dept.

New submitter lsatenstein writes with this snippet from The H:"The regional government of Spain's Basque Country has decreed that all software produced for Basque government agencies and public bodies should be open sourced. Joinup, the European Commission's open source web site, cites an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais [English translation], saying that the only exceptions will be software that directly affects state security and a handful of projects which are being conducted in conjunction with commercial software suppliers."

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Re:Europe, bad? by tepples · 2012-06-01 23:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Except this is already policy in the United States. All computer programs that are "works of the United States Government" enter the public domain upon publication. This includes the VistA electronic medical record system developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Plenty of hospitals use VistA, which is written in MUMPS, because that's better than not knowing whether a patient has had the shot for mumps.
google for "open basque" by Bazman · 2012-06-01 23:14 · Score: 5, Informative

Everyone do a google image search for "Open Basque"...
That's what I call open sauce.