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

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Christopher Brown
<snecklifter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

public domain has major issues these days and is definitely no longer
recommended

"open source licensing" by rosen is worth reading

- robert