[CS-FSLUG] Australian Government to use open source to break lock-ins

["國產 Wei-Yee Chan (Made in Chinar)"]

http://www.computerworld.com.au/pp.php?id=214305056&fp=16&fpid=0


  Government to use open source to break lock-ins

Julian Bajkowski

11/04/2005 13:52:59

IT vendors pushing costly proprietary software lock-ins have been warned
that feeding at the $4.2 billion IT trough of the Australian taxpayer is
over and a strict and a new procurement diet for vendors will be
personally enforced by the Special Minister of State, Senator Eric Abetz.

A copy of "A Guide to Open Source Software" prepared by Australian
Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), exclusively obtained
by Computerworld, reveals new guidelines that state if an equal or
superior open source product adequately fits the government's needs, it
will be expected to be objectively considered by public servants
alongside proprietary offerings.

Due to be officially released at the Open Computing in Government
conference in Canberra next week, the government guide to open source is
the most exhaustive analysis and evaluation of open source for use in
government to date.

"This is an important document for both the government and for the open
source community. For the first time, government agencies will now have
access to an explanatory document about open source software," Abetz
told Computerworld.

"The aim of this document is to explode some of the myths surrounding
open source software and to acknowledge it as a viable option which
should be considered when undertaking government software procurement,"
he added.

The document's forward from Abetz states, "All solutions - open source
or proprietary - which can meet an agency's functional specifications
should be considered by an agency when it is undertaking software
procurement."

The document also cautions that government agencies preparing "requests
for tender need to take care to avoid introducing unintentional barriers
that may discourage or inhibit open source vendors and resellers from
submitting responses".

Specifically, agencies are advised to avoid specifying products by name
or mandating that solutions be delivered using a named proprietary or
otherwise named solution.

On the licensing front, the guide goes as far as to provide a matrix as
to what sort of open source licence is most appropriate for various
government uses. This includes not only the development and sharing of
open source solutions (presumably applications) by and for the
government, but clear guidance that government agencies can "link open
source product with internally developed code and distribute beyond the
Australian government as a proprietary product".

However, it is on the subject of lock-ins that the open source guide by
far delivers the strongest warning yet the government will not tolerate
being led by the nose by vendors at taxpayers' expense.

Under the heading "Risk analysis and risk management", the document
states: "One high-level risk associated with proprietary software
technology (particularly software only available from a single publisher
or supplier) is the financial risk of potentially high termination
costs. This risk arises for a number of reasons, but the most important
issue is the lack of alternative support for the software in question.

"The result is a lock-in scenario where an agency is tied to a
particular supplier with little room for negotiation. This stems from
the prohibitively high cost of moving away from a particular piece of
technology for which there is no functional or interoperable equivalent
from an alternative supplier.

"Such scenarios allow the current vendor to increase future product
pricing, support cost structures or other contractual terms," the guide
states.

It also refers to previous advice from AGIMO that, "...agencies develop
a transition / termination strategy during the original procurement
process to reduce the risk of future problems for the agency".