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

[Craig Warner <craigw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

THE growing love affair of Australian governments with open source
software may sour trade negotiations with the US.

An anti-open source group backed by Microsoft is lobbying furiously to
stymie open source moves by some states.
The Washington-based and Microsoft-backed Initiative for Software Choice
(ISC) has condemned South Australian moves to introduce open source
preference legislation as "hidden protectionism" that discriminates
against US software companies.

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6678922%5E15319%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html




On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 00:14, Raena Lea-Shannon wrote:
> 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.
-- 
Craig Warner <craigw@xxxxxxxxxxx>