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

[Alan L Tyree <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 08:14, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On 10 Jul 2003, Craig Warner wrote:

<SNIP>

> Although saying "We will only use OSS" in a piece of legislation does suck
> to some degree, it really is the only way to give OSS a decent chance.  If
> you say "pick on merit", you can rest assured that the decision makers will
> be merited to death in strip clubs and brothels all over the Bahamas by
> lock-in software vendors.

If by "OSS" they actually mean the software, then I agree. But there is
a *very* strong argument that all government documents should be held in
an open format. It is totally unacceptable that access to public
documents should be at the whim of a foreign monopoly. I believe that
this consideration was one that was driving the Chinese push.

Cheers,
Alan

<SNIP>
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Alan L Tyree
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