[Wylug-discuss] HMRC want to see me. Can you help?

[Christopher Brown]

2008/4/24 Neil Wilson <neil at aldur.co.uk>:
> Hi,
>
>  This is my first post here so be gentle please!
>
>  I've been referrred by John Leach, who reckons you guys may be able to
>  help me. Essentially HMRC have asked me to go see them at the
>  beginning of May to talk about Free Software and Open Source.
>  Currently they have a policy goal of automating the submission of tax
>  records and to that end they have asked the software industry to
>  provide 'free' versions of their accounts software to allow smaller
>  operations to do their returns at no cost. This is in addition to the
>  current free CD and web tools that they offer. The note then
>  degenerated into a debate about how crippled these pieces of software
>  should be (including payroll software that can do the calculations but
>  can't print payslips!).
>
>  My response was to suggest to HMRC that they release their current
>  code under a Free Software licence or even Crown Copyright so that
>  those of us who write Free Software don't have to build yet another
>  payroll calculation engine from scratch and consider the needs of Free
>  Software when pursuing this policy. And the meeting was a response to
>  my suggestions.
>
>  Now this may very well be the normal civil service consultation
>  process where they listen to you earnestly while politely ignoring
>  you. Or it may be a way of getting HMRC to embrace the idea of Free
>  code as well as free tools. (I suspect it will be more about web
>  software and Linux servers than desktop.)
>
>  In the meantime have any of you any suggestions of how I should pitch
>  Free Software and Open Source at HMRC.? All help appreciated.

Please, please, please don't hammer on about how _all_ software should
be Free and open-source. Keep focused on what HMRC want from it and
put yourself in their shoes. I don't think they will be looking for
external development assistance, just the best way of making something
freely available for people to use at zero cost. So don't waste too
much time on how software is developed, rather the benefits of an open
source license and perhaps highlight the difference between a few.
E.g. BSD, GPL and maybe just public domain.

Cheers

-- 
Christopher Brown

http://www.chruz.com