LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  To  : Richard Russell <richard@yellowgoanna.com>
  Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 10:13:02 +1030

Re: Good news maybe ?? IT Minister

Richard Russell wrote:
> 
> 2) That major Government IT contracts are often exclusive, to the
> detriment of competition.

This isn't going to fly.  Government departments need to made
exclusive contracts for efficiency (eg: at the help desk, in
sysadmin, etc).

It would be better to simply make the Minister aware of
the potential of open source software to save significant
licensing fees.

> We request that the Government adopt a policy that all contracts are
> designed to foster competition, and encourage the best solution for
> the problem at hand to be used, as opposed to requiring a single
> solution for all classes of problems. Diversity should be encouraged
> in Government IT, for the dual purposes of fostering competition and
> developing a more resiliant infrastructure -- it is an accepted fact
> that while uniformity can bring some cost advantages, it accentuates
> any weaknesses to the point where a single weakness can allow one
> virus to cause so much damage in one hit.

Far too wordy and far too much jargon.  It's a new minister remmeber.

> 3) That Government software projects themselves are usually closed
> source. We believe that by encouraging the release of source code for
> Government-sponsored projects, not only will the community benefit
> from the use of this code, but the Government will benefit from the
> community's use of this code. This applies specifically in cases where
> the code being developed can have some wider application, but even in
> cases where it won't, there is no disadvantage in releasing the code.
> 
> We request that the Government adopt a policy that all new (and
> preferably old) software projects undertaken by the Government have
> their code released to the community under an open licence (GPL or
> BSD). This is a situation where the collaboration between Government,
> community, and even other Governments would result in a win-win-win
> situation.

This really isn't a major issue.  A lot of government-written
software has no potential for reuse.  Open sourcing a customs
application doesn't really help anyone.

The major issues are more to do with intellectual property law:
 - reverse engineering
 - software patents
 - circumvention devices
so you will also need to write to the new Attorney-General.

Can I suggest that we workshop the letter at the next
LinuxSA meeting?

Glen

-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised

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