[chat] Federal Open Source Legislation Democrats to introduce IT Bill

[Raena Lea-Shannon <raen7@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This and the SA propsed legislation is too focused on the idea of cutting 
costs to Govt by compelling them to use what is to them perceptibly cheap 
software. This seems imho to be a purely politically motivated attempt to 
close the gate after the horse has bolted. It panders to public complaints 
about over spending without actually taking responsibility for it and 
distracts attention to a *sexy* aletrnative. 

It has been fairly well publicised that all Govts stuffed up their IT with bad 
outsourcing.  This I believe was mainly due to laziness and ignorance. IT was 
sloughed off to *outsourcerers* with no oversight of projects from anyone 
within the Govt Depts ensuring the task was economically and technically 
fulfilled. Just because Govts are compelled by some law to adopt what is 
perceived as "free" they have missed the original notion that this does not 
mean Free as in Free Beer Most Govts and for that matter Journalists seem to 
have never heard of Richard Stallman. I guess Linus Torvalds and Linux is a 
better grab. Anyway, a bad IT solution will blow out budgets whether it is 
opensource or proprietry.

IMO a better focus for legislators and would be on improving competition 
between open source and proprietry software and the quality and availability 
and cost of all software development by passing amendments to the Copyright 
Act that retired copyright in source code (ie put in public domain) in 
software that is no longer supported by its proprietors and shortened the 
overall duration of copyright in commercialy developed software. Copyright 
was originally intended to reward authors of artistic works and subject 
matter other than works (ie films and records) not Redmond. Giving a 
multinational a monolpoly for 70 years after the death of an author (ie 
Redmond drone) has had the obvious results that are before the US State 
Justice Commissions.Then perhaps there would be more interoperability and M$ 
would not control business and govt simply by its absurd reliance on its 
bloated M$ Word and Office apps. Truly free trade.

-- 
Raena Lea-Shannon