On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
Yes, these are big plusses. However, the predicament that we are currently in -- the government currently using non-open source solutions that _already work_ and open source solutions (locally grown) that work but not as well as I personally would like -- we need to be pragmatic about it.
I question that representation of the current situation. The current proprietary solutions are NOT working or cost too much to maintain. That's why government is still bidding out software projects. Sticking to proprietary software in many (if not most cases) is just NOT pragrmatic.
Then a bill favoring Free Software license is not the solution: the solution would be a bill/law that will require that all software developed for government under a valid contract have as part of the stipulations the source code be turned over and made available for reuse and modification by the government, or a third party found to be suitable to extend the software in the future.
That would be good for software developed entirely from scratch. But it's better to simply modify already existing, working software. Since much of that software is GPL or under some other open source license, then the sensible thing to do would be to require open souirce software and allow the use of proprietary only when suitable open source solutions cannot be found.
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