On 7/6/06, kaloy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
hey!
i'm a legislative staff of a partylist congressman in
the house of representatives. we are in the process of
drafting a bill on open source, compelling the gov't
to adopt open source software, among others.
I personally would think this is a bad idea (forcing the government to
adopt open source software) and I will outline my reasons below.
as a measure of goodwill, we will be migrating to a
linux distro this month until august 2006. we're
considering ubuntu, bayanihan and redhat, though i'm
more familiar with redhat.
Congratulations on making this choice. I hope you can influence other
people in government with this choice you're making.
i'm soliciting opinions, suggestions/recommendations
on the proposed bill, on the linux distros to use and
anything that you want us to consider.
Here are a few things to consider when drafting the bill:
1) Restriction of Trade -- whenever the government becomes biased for
or against a certain class or type of any
device/service/product/anything of value in the free trade market
(like software for instance), you might run into issues like the
restriction of trade with government. The bill will be hotly
contested, and since cost is an issue that will always come in
whenever open source software will be considered for any purpose, you
need to remember that people need to make money too -- especially
Filipinos.
2) Licensing Issues -- please do _not_ restrict the license to the
GPL, because there are many other open source licenses out there to
which a lot of quality software are released under. The GPL looks
good, but it's really bad in so many instances, it doesn't even make
sense anymore. Consider using correct terminology -- do _not_ get
bulldozed by the Free Software Foundation and the hype surrounding the
GPL. Instead, use relaxed terms for general "source-available" and
"redistributable-source" software. A good idea is to clearly define
what the government means by "Open Source Software" if there isn't any
current legal definition for it in our country.
3) Copyright Enforcement and Infringement Protection -- which really
is an augmentation of the current laws on intellectual property and
copyright law. It might not be within the scope of the bill, but
referencing the laws on copyright and intellectual property protection
will be prudent at the very least.
4) Support Licensing and Standard Support Contract Guidelines -- which
should set the ground rules for software development firms that will
engage in creating customized software for the government. There are a
lot -- maybe too many contracts currently active, and previously
concluded -- which didn't operate under a framework for open source
development.
5) Quality Assurance and Control Guidelines -- with adoption of open
source software, there should be in every endeavor of the government a
provision in the contract awarded to third party entities which
clearly defines/states the level of quality expected by the Philippine
Government on the open source software that will be developed in the
given endeavor.
6) Open Development Protection -- the bill should think about giving
recognition, grants, and even support to local open source development
directly and indirectly benefitting the government. That means, if
there are any local developers that have a project that will benefit
the government (think, open source locally developed election
software), there should be formalized rules and guidelines, and even
contracts with monetary value appropriate and proportional to the
current industry rate -- accompanied by appropriate pricing surveys.
This will protect the government from being duped, the developers from
being coerced and exploited, and the code being buggy and half-baked.
The government should also be aware that Open Source is not just Linux
-- there are other development projects there that are locally grown
that also need the support that Bayanihan Linux is currently enjoying.
If the bill is about open source software and open systems adoption in
the government agencies, this should be recommendatory and not
absolute -- otherwise, it won't be fair for commercial software
development firms, as well as the local software development industry.
My advice would be to get in touch first with the stakeholders of the
proposed bill -- the software industry leaders here in the
Philippines, the DTI, representatives from the representative's
constituency, and the relevant resources like the PLUG board, PLUG
constituency, Open Source Development groups, and educational
institutions.
I still have some more input, but I fear that the list is not the
appropriate venue for me to air my concerns about open source
development here in the Philippines. Perhaps if you're still
interested in reading/hearing what else I will have to say, please
send me a private email.
Hope This Helps!
thanks and more power!
You're welcome, and more power to you too!
--
Dean Michael C. Berris
C/C++ Software Architect
Orange and Bronze Software Labs
http://3w-agility.blogspot.com/
http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com/
Mobile: +639287291459
Email: dean [at] orangeandbronze [dot] com
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