Hi, Once again, thank you for the enlightening discussion on this.
First off... Bayan Muna has three representatives in Congress and we assure you guys (and gals) that we are covering all bases. Hence, consulting with you is "one of our more important things to do." After all, that is what democracy is all about. The logic is simple, it's better to have policy than not at all. CICT commissioner Lallana believes so, participants in the forum yesterday believes so, people at DOST ASTI believes so, RedHat managers believe so, Stallman believes so. Filipino industry players of FOSS technology that came in the forum believes so, academicians (at least from UP who attended the forum yesterday) believes so. I think that would carry. Do you know that government cannot exactly transact with FOSS VAS companies because it does not fully recognize GPL and got into some legal difficulties arising from interpretation of "transfer of copyright" of free software? That is the reason why Section 5 of the bill is there. Without it, we are giving FOSS VAS companies are hard time to transact with gov't. Paolo, I've got Stallman's comments and we're going to incorporate some of them in the bill. Please tell him a seat is reserved for FSF for the Committee. We were allowed to do amendments before it reaches the Committee on Rules come Monday. We intentionally asked some considerations to incorporate the group (not just Stallman's) suggestions. I'm going to post the to be re-filed HB 5769 over the weekends. Oh, the answer is yes Danny, use of proprietary software is allowed under exigent circumstances subject to limitations. As per your suggestions, we are going to ask CICT to regulate the "asking of exigent circumstances" for agencies resisting migration. There are three ways to legislate FOSS bills. The Latin American model (Oh yes, Latin America and Africa have FOSS bills, while we, #4 in SE Asia in ICT talents doesn't have one. Another point to think about) took the "mandatory" path. Most countries in EU took the "cost-benefit" + promotion path. Others such as China and Malaysia took the "Encourage and educate" path. We took the mandatory path because our representation believes that there is no time. Time is running out. Even as we speak, M$ already redefined it's licensing to at least match the cost benefits of FOSS. Hundreds of thousands of IT students are being "compelled" by some private HEI to take MCP and CCNA courses before graduation. This is a distortion of technology education which is supposed to be neutral. If we do not mandate some things, these MCP, CCNA trained individuals, who will later on take on positions in government WILL resist migration making our efforts fruitless and this bill a piece of scrap. As per strategy, THIS BILL WILL BE WATERED DOWN in Congress. Hence it's better to gun the maximum then negotiate until we reach acceptable points (I hope the final outcome is acceptable). On the comment that nothing will happen unless the people who wrote this bill knows what FOSS is all about? We assure you that we have at least basic competence on the matter and consultants for some. We will not pose as experts nor we won't act as if we have a monopoly of knowledge because we don't. Like most of the common Filipinos, we are striving to understand FOSS and trying to legislate an anti-monopoly, anti-vendor dependence bill. FORGIVE US PLEASE FOR OUR SHORTCOMINGS. HAVING SAID THAT, THAT IS WHY YOU FOLKS ARE HERE. TO HELP US OUT. AND SO FAR YOUR HELP WAS FRUITFUL. FOR THAT I THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS over here at the office of Rep. Casiño. _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
