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French Senator Proposes Requiring Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the best-national-government-idea-in-a-long-time dept.

We've had a lot of submissions lately about a proposal within the French Government to require use of Open Source software wherever possible, as well making the government more electronically accessible. Thus far however, either we've had material in French, or unsubstantiated - but thanks to one of our French-speaking readers who has translated the Senator's comments (above link) into English, you can click below to read the Senator's comments. This has to be one of the best ideas a national government has had in a long time - my hat (beret?) is off to the French.Update: 10/28 11:10 by H :Thanks to Julien Roussea who's sent over a translation of the legal proposal to require Open Source. As well, read his open letter regarding the issue.

Translation of comments by French Senator Pierre Laffitte to postings on the French Senat e-forum to his proposed law for making government services electronically accessible and mandating the use of open source software (I hope I did better than BabelFish).

Message from Senator Pierre Laffitte - email: p.laffitte@senat.fr Sent : 28 Oct 1999 09:37:59

Subject: Comments on the state of the forum on 27 Oct 1999

The success of the forum opened by the Senat shows the interest in the proposed law. More than 400 messages are awaiting me when I get back from Stockholm & Tunis in six days.

Some of them are very potent and enthusiastic; in particular, I'm thinking of those from Jeff Thompson and Xavier Giannapoulos on the 26th October. Of course we wish that the European Countries and others will follow. I add that the approach matches the strategies of a number of global information technology Companies. It's by way of services adapted to the customers rather than by selling proprietary software that money should be made. IBM and SUN are of this opinion and MICROSOFT seems to me ready to follow this path.

I thank you in the name of my colleagues and myself for the many positive responses.

I note that few of the comments touch on the use of electronic messaging in government departments. At the moment the legal control services of regional government oppose their use between local groups, which explains Article 1.

Few comments concerning the billions of savings that would result from public services and companies using email for calls for offers (Article 2). Nobody has brought up the very strong incentive for modernisation that this example by public services would provoke.

Most of the messages focus on open source, hence these remarks above. (Articles (4 & 5)

The objective of this forum is to collect suggestions, these will all be analyzed and weighed, in particular by the sponsor in charge of proposing the law. It will be no doubt examined as extension of the the proposed law presented by Ms. E GUIGOU giving legal status to digital signatures.

As is customary in the Senat, this will be completed by auditions and everything will be examined with a sense of responsibility, rigorousness and analysis of the various consequences. This conforms the tradition of the role to the Senat at the heart of the French Parliament.

Sénateur Pierre LAFFITTE

4 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. US Government by ajs · · Score: 4
    I could see an Open Source initiative for the US government, but we have some oddities that would require special casing. Here's my thought:
    1. A general policy (executive order, sense of congress?) which states that the use of Open Source software is acceptable in any situation where the resulting software is not to be constrained by national security. BSD and MIT/X style software would still be fine in those situations, but GPL would be right out, unless the FSF was willing to make a general exception in writing for government projects thus constrained. The key, here, is that right now, most government contractors "feel" (and sometimes are told) that the government will not accept projects based on Open Source.
    2. Require that for every contract bid over X number of dollars, an Executive Office of Open Source be asked to review the Open Source world for existing solutions. This is sort of like requiring that there be an Open Source bid, but without there having to be a company to bid it. This office could be VERY small, and need not be a beaurecratic albetros around the bidding process' neck. OTOH, has that ever stopped the executive branch?
    3. Perhaps an ARPA-style grant could go out to research all non-classified government source code and determine what pieces would best be cleaned up and contributed back into the general Open Source pool (note, this would be as public domain software, as that is what ALL US government-owned software is by default, unless classified).

    Thoughts?
  2. Ah, I see you do not understand the French! by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4

    The French are great at coming up with ideas that at some level seem quite logical, yet at the end, when it is all well and done the result is chaos.

    The key phrase in the proposal is:

    The objective of this forum is to collect suggestions, these will all be analyzed and weighed, in particular by the sponsor in charge of proposing the law.

    This indicates that the idea is doomed from the start. Firstly all that is being proposed is collection and analysis of suggestions. Looks fine to an American, no? Let me tell you, with the French this could take centuries. The French have a tendency to analyze the shit out of everything before taking a move. Time in France is a very relative concept, and coupled with a fear of being wrong leads to analysis paralysis as a way of life.

    Not only is this trap obvious here, but the speaker is proposing that somebody else actually do the work! Well, I can tell you from my experience with the French that this is bloody unlikely! French organizations embody the very essence of siloing. Unless there is some damned good reason for this other fellow to do the work, it just is not going to happen, a) just because this other fellow suggested it, and b) NIH c) my boss didn't like it. d) even if my boss did like it he didn't think of it e) we are on strike this week f) it's August so everyone in in the Alps.

    If you ever plan to visit France it is very important to understand System D; that is how to weasel and worm out of French Bureaucrats the basic paperwork you need to live. And the French Buraucracy has been in place essentially unchanged since the time of Napolean! The very word Buraucracy was invented by the French to describe their system of goverment. It literaly mean tyranny of the desks!!!!

    As far as I can tell such a speach may in fact be a clever ploy by Microsoft to prevent Open Source from ever gaining a foothold in France!

    Of course the good news is that the Germans will take a look at the French and do exactly the opposite. My guess is by the end of next year all of Germany will be run on Open Source, and Microsoft will be more entrenched in France than ever!!!

  3. Not really surprising, though... by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5
    Recall, a few months back, that the French Government had a big hoopla about Linux in particular and Open Source in general; a lot of cash-strapped (but not smart-strapped) regional entities (local governments, universities, schools, gov. departments) have been putting-up internet presence, and it is natural that they'd do that with Linux. But that's not the point.

    Don't forget that, 20 years ago, the French spearheaded the personnal connectivity revolution with their Minitel terminals, which they supplied for free (as in beer). The ostensible reason was to substitute phone directories, but it sprouted-up a vast array of services, such as the famous "pink messaging", decades before raw.sex.com...

    In fact, the Minitel can be termed as the precursor of the widespread personnal "internet" that we are witnessing today, despite all it's flaws.

    But there is a deeper hidden reason, too. 30 years ago, France was one of the world leaders of software developpment (before it got eclipsed by the U.S.); perhaps they feel that Open Source, by spurring independent software developpment, will enable them to regain that status; let's not forget that the french culture puts an enormous emphasis on intellectual achievement, rather than accumulating wealth, like the anglo-saxons are so fond of (the movie "Ridicule" is a good example: one's standing in the king's court is dictated only by one's ability to generate witty answers on-the-fly. Even though the king has been dead for two centuries, the tradition endures). And computer programming is an extreme form of intellectual achievement, which (can) have practical applications as a side benefit...
    -- ----------------------------------------------
    Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!

  4. Re:developers rights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    Goverments (and large entities of any kind) have procurement guidelines. Obviously, if your product cannot meet the requirements you can't sell it to them. This is not a restriction of vendor freedom so long as the requirements are reasonable.

    So, the question seems to me to be whether Open Source is a reasonable procurement requirement. I think it makes a lot of sense for governments to use open source, especially if the vendors of the non-free software are in a foreign country that at some point may become hostile, or which may be engaged in industrial or political espionage.

    The flip side is whether specifying closed-source software is reasonable. It seems to me that you have three options with closed source. Either you grant one vendor an effective monopoly in certain areas of procurement, or you accept a potentially unmanageable mish-mash of software, or you insist that systems you acquire only use least common denominator protocols and interfaces (e.g. TCP/IP and Posix, but not DCOM or Win32). In the last case, it's hard to see why you would prefer a closed source solution.