By donchristie - Posted on December 11th, 2007
The MoJ have been working on an OSS strategy for some time. Barry Polley at the MOJ has released it today and given us permission to distribute its contents widely.
It is groundbreaking and I guarantee you will be pleased. Here are some pertinent quotes:
"The Ministry needs an explicit strategy to embrace the adoption and use of OSS."
"Knee-jerk prohibition of OSS is no longer feasible or cost-effective"
"government agencies have a much easier case justifying the use of OSS."
"OSS was once an extraordinary way of thinking, limited to academia and small guerilla projects in a
community of hackers. Increasingly, however, it's the norm."
Read the PDF version today and provide constructive feedback.
government agencies have a much easier case justifying the use of OSS." I love this one! meiner neuen onisac, ,
Great paper. I hope it provides a template for other government entities.
In addition to the South Africa reference it would be good to mention the recent news from the Netherlands - "The governmental guidelines from the departments of internal and economic affairs, titled 'The Netherlands open and connected,' forces the national government to adopt open standards by May 2008. It also has to favour open-source over proprietary software if a viable open-source option is available. Local governments have to follow by the end of 2008." http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/ ...
... 2E3F15FED06F91E2CC2573B1000BCA60? ... opendocument&utm_source=topnews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=topnews
The full article is well worth a read.
Update: and Norway ;-) "Norway's government has mandated that its websites must use Open Document Format (ODF) for files published for use by the Norwegian public." http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/20/ ...
... norway-mandates-government-odf
Re: Objection: Driven by ideology
I wouldn't overstate the current importance of this objection - as noted elsewhere, the mood has changed even in the last couple of years. It might be better to say that critics of OSS used to portray open source in that way but that this is much less common now that OSS has become mainstream.
Re: Objection: Legal risks
It might be worth noting the practical reason for confidence in the legal safety of OSS - the patent war chests held by IBM, Sun, Oracle etc, all of whom rely now on OSS for significant parts of their business.
Re: Responses to Objections
Probably best kept short and sweet but one of the main issues with the objections listed is that they are out-of-date.
Re: An OSS strategy
I wouldn't say OSS poses incredible challenges. The challenges are significant but manageable.
Re: Objection: Poor User Interfaces
Re Firefox adoption rate, I think it is markedly higher in some European countries e.g. > 30% in Germany, which removes any doubts about the user interface.
General comment - some of the great open source products are mentioned but it might pay to include more of the big ones e.g. MySQL, Pentaho, MuleSource, JBoss etc. These companies, and the professionalism of their websites and the services they offer, are the best rebuttal to some of the FUD OSS has received.
Re: vendor relationships it might be worth mentioning the availability of the large, brand name vendors as well as smaller consultancies.
Re: the use of the GPL, I wasn't sure what was meant by "but [the Ministry] can prohibit changes to any such [GPL] software, so as to remain in compliance with the GPL". I thought the GPL guaranteed you all four software freedoms as long as you didn't remove those from others. You can use, read, modify, and distribute freely as long as others are given the same rights. So as long as the Ministry is not trying to add additional restrictions (and as a government entity, why should it?) it can modify freely. It is one of the main things guaranteed by the GPL. Or have I missed something here? If I have, perhaps it could be expressed more clearly.
Re: risks, I agree that some OSS projects are architecturally unsound. It should be strongly noted, however, that this is true of many closed source products, including some market leaders. The difference is that it can be very difficult to look at the architecture of closed source products because the code is hidden. It is up to the vendor whether anyone can ever look at the underlying architecture or code, and on what terms they can do so.
Anyway, great work and all the best.
Dr Grant Paton-Simpson
Director, Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd
Excellent review of the past perceptions and current realities of OSS and the policies are sufficient and complete.
Open Source Software is a recognition that there are criteria that proprietary closed models don't provide well for. And you note the new costs that OSS can impose. Other than that, software is software with a diverse range of strengths and weaknesses.
Dividing the software universe in Open and Closed will end up with some unintended consequences, peculiar edge/corner cases, and be difficult to have accepted.
The current mantra around OSS from Government, particularly politicians, is "best for the job." What your strategy should aim for in my opinion is ensuring the advantages of OSS tick boxes in procurement criteria, rather than Policy 2, mild though "prefer" is.
Such an approach, where the criteria are consistent for any form of software, will be best for the Ministry and Open Source. It will not be enough to be open, you'll have to be good too. Yes, this is evaluated in your policies, but where there are two sets of criteria, how do you compare the outcomes?
It shouldn't be too hard to incorporate weightings into existing procurement criteria that OSS delivers well, and add as few unique ones as OSS requires.
Then you have the beloved level playing field, but with a few more beneficial criteria recognised and value attributed to them.
A much easier sell I think, and less easy to oppose by the incumbents, who have a lot of lobbying clout, versus the OSS world, which is much less financially equipped at this time.
Wouldn't I love to see an aggressive peering policy as a make/break criteria for Government ISP procurement selection.
Hamish MacEwan
Open ICT Consultant
027 253 4984
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http://del.icio.us/Hamish.MacEwan
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