[Gllug] DTI/Government Open Source Software consultation

Richard Jones rich at annexia.org
Thu May 8 08:34:42 UTC 2003


On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 08:39:56AM +0100, James de Lurker wrote:
> That factor is probably the biggest risk to the interests of Open Source
> in government, by this perspective. The GPL ( and other Open Source 
> variants ) must be perceived as an entity that requires fair representation 
> to compete with proprietary IP owned solutions. Who is the "owner" exactly?
> How will they be commercially disadvantaged by lack of representation?
> 
> That is possibly the line of any counter arguments that must be made.
> Their duty of care towards public funds demands a proper hearing.

There's two points here.

Firstly Red Hat, SUSE and others are quite happy to accept contracts
to carry out specific work, and they (Red Hat anyhow) will release the
results under a GPL or GPL-compatible license. However, that's just
work for hire with a twist.

The second, broader point, is I have absolutely no problem with
Microsoft picking up all the big government contracts, **provided**
that they are forced to release their work under a GPL license. The
reason for this is that I as a taxpayer should be getting best value
for money, and the best interests of the government/taxpayer are had
by having software which doesn't have proprietary lock-ins, and which
can be maintained by any software company in the future.

Does the MoD buy tanks with secret designs and the bonnets[1] welded
shut? Or does it insist on getting the designs and having their own
people able to maintain them, both at base and in the field?

Rich.

[1] Actually I have no idea if tanks have bonnets, but you get the
idea.

-- 
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London) and Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
PTHRLIB is a library for writing small, efficient and fast servers in C.
HTTP, CGI, DBI, lightweight threads: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/pthrlib/


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug




More information about the GLLUG mailing list