[Bradford] Monday’s meeting

[Mike Goodman]

On 10/11/15 10:04, Robert Burrell Donkin wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Mike Goodman <mike.goodman at zen.co.uk> wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I've been tryin g to get HMRC's "Payroll Basic Tools" working on Arch. It's
>> in a tarball which claims to be the Linux version and they reckon it works
>> on Ubuntu.
>
> Still frustrates me that HMRC and most civil servants are clueless
> about licensing. Copyright protects source code in the same way as
> binaries.
>
> Just shipping the source under a suitable closed, viral license would
> allow people to compile on whatever *nix-ish platform they most
> favour...
>
> Robert
>
Hi Robert,

I totally agree. I rang them to see if they had any idea. They didn't 
and admitted as much. Although it does seem they are aware of the 
Cabinet Office promise that they must supply appropriate software and 
the EU law which tells even the tories they can't hand everything IT to, 
in this instance foreign, proprietary system licensors.

I tried pointing out that they must release in a format to which all 
have access. I got the impression they knew that but had no idea how to 
implement it.

Cheers,

Mike