A new kind of roadmap
The Greens have long been supporters of open source software (you may have heard of the battle Nandor had to have Firefox installed on his Parliamentary Service PC), so were very interested in the State Services Commission report on the legal implications of open source software (OSS) which came out late last week.
The report was released on the eve of a conference of government IT specialists to discuss OSS and government computer systems, but would probably have had a pretty cold chilling effect on anyone thinking about using it, as this release of Nandor’s outlines.
The report (which was written by Chapman Tripp, a law firm which has done extensive work for Microsoft before), calls open source licenses “infectious” and talks about needing to “quarantine” them as though they are some kind of virus. To the layperson, such language is pretty emotive, and would probably have the general effect of turning people off the idea of using OSS.
This is a real shame, because OSS has huge potential for use by governments. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a research group made up of representatives from governments, companies and organisations at the forefront of global technology and based at Harvard University, has recently produced a “roadmap” for what they call “open ICT ecosystems” - a wider concept encompassing and complementing OSS - aiming to “provide policymakers, managers and other stakeholders from industry and civil society a user-friendly tool for understanding what open ICT ecosystems are, why they are embraced and how to evolve them.”
Denmark, for example, is using open standards in e-government and looks set to save 160 million Euros per year by doing so.
You can read more about the roadmap here, and download it in PDF form here. Perhaps the State Services Commission and Chapman Tripp would do well to read it!
March 7th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
that’s an interesting interpretation of “recently” frog!!!
I would agree with Chapman Tripp that OSS is “infectious” though. Once you experience safer, better, cheaper (even free) software you just can’t stop!
March 7th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
There’s very little trouble in managing the OSS licensing. If you read the terms and understand them you recognize these folk’s FUD for what it is.
respectfully
BJ
FUD = Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
Nandor = further proof the use of Cannabis stimulates neural growth
( I know you got that link Frog…)
March 7th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
But wait, there’s less.
At http://www.e.govt.nz (http://www.e.govt.nz/resources/news) there is a news item about the availability of open source code for a Government Web Guidelines compliant Content Management System.
Used by http://www.mwa.govt.nz/, and the underlying technology (Plone) is used by http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/, http://www.electricitycommission.govt.nz/, and apparently http://www.nzx.com/, and no doubt many more.
I’m sure that there are many more examples of open source software in use in government, for example check out the OS in use for all those infected govt.nz websites
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+ends+with&host=govt.nz &lookup=wait..&position=limited
And don’t even mention that open source web server that serves up 68% of thw worlds websites including http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=www.govt.nz
March 7th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Plone is also used by the Australian Greens to run their website
http://www.greens.org.au/
(well worth a look, with great in-depth weekly content by their web editor Elena)
lets hope that many more local and national governments take up the Plone offer. MoH comes to mind as one that definately needs a redesign.
“We were looking for an open source solution that had the requisite functionality, an established track record and a ‘critical mass’ of developer support. Plone met all those criteria. Other government agencies can now build on our experience and resources, to ensure they get a Content Management System that meets their business requirements, is Web Guidelines compliant and is a very cost effective solution,” Mr Millar said.
I wonder what other OSS CMS they tried out before settling on Plone?
March 7th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
nice links skiwi
interesting that biz.govt.nz is one of the few national govt sites to use windows as a server.
March 8th, 2006 at 7:16 am
IMHO this is storm in a tea-cup:
(a) This document is not meant for lay-people, it is a guide for IT decision makers within government. It’s great that people will question why OSS is being used and look at where it is being used. That will lead to a discussion about how much money it is saving them, what open means and why it is good, and open up the (ongoing debate) of cost-of-ownership. OSS often doesn’t get much face time at the executive level, this might just do a whole lot of good in terms of exposing execs to the benefits (and risks, yes there are risks) of open source.
(b) Of all the organizations within the NZ government the SSC probably has some of the strongest proponents of the appropriate use of open source. For example; take a look at the OS that http://www.govt.nz is running (and there is more OSS software on top of the OS):
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=www.govt.nz&position=limited&looku p=Wait..
(c) How many people actually understand the difference between LGPL, GPL and BSD style open source licenses? Big difference, it’s worth understanding that GPL is in fact “viral’ in so far as if you include it as a library in your code you need to follow GPL for your code as well. That’s very different from a BSD / Apache / Eclipse / IBM style open source license. So if not ‘viral’ then what analogy would you use?
March 8th, 2006 at 11:03 am
For people who know what they are doing ‘open source’ is a very good way of going.
However, for non-IT people I think there are some very big risks in downloading ‘free’ stuff off the internet.
My experience of the average user is not very good - a mate of mine asked me to come round as his PC was not working. He said his screen was blank when he turned his PC on.
I went around and checked first if the power was on and saw immediately the plug was no longer in the socket.
March 8th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
The problem I have with people calling Open Source “viral” is that they never mention what the proprietary equivalent is.
Sure, if you use *some* open source (GPL or the like) in your own products it wants to spread the license. But how about if you use proprietary software in your own products? Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Not without hefty licensing fees.
And since when was the government in the business of producing and selling software anyway?
To me, GPL is “share and share alike”, compared with the proprietary “pay through the nose”. I can’t see how that’s a bad thing. And it’s only one of many open source licenses, most of them a lot more open.
The report reads like it was written by Microsoft. They’re about the only ones who use that particular terminology.
NZ seems to be part owned by Microsoft. It’s one of the least progressive countries I’ve seen in that regard. Which is a shame, we do have the potential and attitude to produce or localise our own software quite successfully.
- MugginsM
March 8th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
The “viral” analogy is quite flawed. This is not just a “terrorist” vs “freedom fighter” disagreement of terms.
In real life, once you catch a virus, the infection is passed on, and cannot be removed simply by getting rid of the thing that initially gave you the virus.
By comparison, all that you have to do to avoid the linking-is-deriving nature of the GPL, is to remove the GPL components and replace them with other non-GPL components.
Calling it “viral”, and using words such as “quarantine” and “infectious” puts across the impression that the process is irreversable. The excuse “this document is intended for middle managers” simply does not cut it. The terms are simply wrong, and in any case it is Copyright Law that is “infectious” in this way.
If Open Source is “infectious”, it is infectious as in laughter, not disease.
But the document has several other serious flaws. Most of the complaints it raises about OSS actually apply equally (and, in practice, more so) to commercial software, especially relating to things like IP claim exposure, right to use, warranties, etc.
It is quite clear that the lawyer that wrote this - who claims to have never worked on the MS account while at Chapman Tripp - seems to have got all of his material from one side of the fence. The terms he use are certainly “etymologically incriminating” evidence of this.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Nice comments, stuey & skiwi,
my thruppence-worth, luddite that I am, is to give respect for the nice youngsters at VUW orientation, who were representing the computer club on campus, and giving away disks of freshly downloaded OSS and commercially prepared Ubuntu, both for pc and Mac architecture.
Who says yoof today have no community spirit?
As for Chapman et al, those guys are being paid to bark for their client, pure and simple. Of course they’re reporting badly about OSS, Gates stands to lose a chunk of market share if the world allows open source unlimited proliferation.
consume & divide, people…..
cheers, Katie