Chris Rowson wrote: > The bit that jumped out at me personally was the legal definition of > open source as a product rather than a feature. I wondered if this > might make it difficult to specify open source as a requirement in a > tender (because it seems that as far as the legal definition in the > UK goes, you're then specifying a product)?
I suspect it's mostly down to government procurement not really understanding software - there's little else that the government buys which comes with a license other than standard copyright law. When government does buy software, traditionally it's proprietary software, where the license is specific to each product; it almost makes sense to treat it as part of the product. If some tender request specified that software must be made available under the Microsoft SQL Server EULA, that would quite specifically limit responses to MS SQL Server, and I can see how someone might misapply this to *all* licenses, irrespective of what they actually say. I can also understand a general unwillingness to disconnect software from the license under which it is made available; I don't see what's gained from splitting them. Why would you wish to be able to ban non-Open source products from tendering? -- Avi -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
