[clug] What sort of OSS legislation would you like to see

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 01:06:18PM +1000, Carl Jackson wrote:
> A second issue I'd like to throw open to the forum - if a pro OSS bill
> goes through the Assembly - what would you like it to be? What key
> wording in particular.  From a practical point of view I'm fairly
> certain that an absolute OSS mandate bill would not get the numbers.

Is an OSS mandate really a good idea? A government is in the business of
making its people happy, not to espouse our ideological point of view.

> Whats more even if it did get up it would have no chance of being
> adopted as model legislation for a federal bill, which is where the real
> action is.    I've read the Texas and Oregan bills and they seem good if
> a little soft - however my personal view is I'd like to be tough about
> Desktop OSs and Office packages, and my view as a lobbyist is that is
> not impossible to sell to the MLAs.   As a minimum language such as

I'd be in favour of initially skipping "open source" and focussing on "open
formats". It's a much easier sell with much more obvious benefits. There is
such thing as too much regulation.

I recently saw a comment about how the US IT industry made a mistake calling
the DoJ on Microsoft. Up until that point the Govt had stayed away from
regulating the industry.

> "fair and equitable consideration must be give to OSS alternatives in
> all purchasing decisions" in clearly necessary.  My current thinking is
> something that makes OSS options the "default" solution, and puts an
> onus on the Public Service buyer to prove that the default is not viable
> if he wishes to buy a proprietary product - what does the list think of
> that?

IMHO, you don't want to force it down people. That just gets people offside.
Better start simple and obvious and work your way up.
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog at svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> "All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good
> men to do nothing." - Edmond Burke
> "The penalty good people pay for not being interested in politics is to be
> governed by people worse than themselves." - Plato
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 232 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux/attachments/20030808/f9a172c3/attachment.bin