Response to the Federal govt RFI

S P Arif Sahari Wibowo arifsaha-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Wed Feb 18 15:38:11 UTC 2009


On Wed, 18 Feb 2009, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> As many of you know the Canadian government has produced a 
> formal Request for Information (RFI) regarding "no cost 
> software" (which lumps together FOSS as well as 
> free-to-download proprietary).

For most people to be able to distinguish start by ability to 
name; so I suggest you more consistently throw the term "Free 
Open Source Software" and the acronym "FOSS". Not sure whether 
it is true that governmental entities do like acronyms, but when 
they start using the term FOSS around they may be able to see it 
easier that it is not just "no cost software".

As you already said the RFI treated as if requesting information 
from vendors. I think this is normal: they are customer, and may 
not yet ready to become more than just customer. So the answer 
should also provide for a customer, i.e. if for plain customer, 
what is the advantage of FOSS? That said, it can be mentioned as 
well that FOSS allow various degree of participation, from 
primary maintainer, a partner, to simply a customer.

As simple customer, in short term there is no much different 
between FOSS or proprietary software (they still need to find a 
vendor to provide service and support for the software), but the 
main advantage with FOSS is that there is much less (if any) 
dependency to any vendor: it will be much easier for the 
customer to switch vendor in the end of a contract, in some case 
with keeping all the installation intact. New vendor can just 
come in and take the service and support of previously installed 
software, since no vendor have exclusive ownership and knowledge 
about the software. This can go to Q8.

> They do not limit re-distribution;
...
> They allow and encourage (and in some licenses they require) 
> that modifications are also distributed with these same 
> charateristics

The last clause - when it is required - can be seen as some kind 
of limitation to the first.

> Q4. How should existing Government Furnished Equipment, 
> Services, Service Level Agreements and internal resources be 
> considered when evaluating the usage of No Charge Licensed 
> Software?

One thing I can think of is that FOSS work better with equipment 
which specification is open or known. So it may have issue with 
new equipment with secretive or license protected specification, 
but in the other hand it may more easily fitted to legacy 
equipment for which vendor does not fully support anymore.

As simple customer, SLA and resources should be the same as 
other software. Can point out again that they have choice to 
become more than simply customer and have their own internal 
resources provide part of the service and support in addition to 
vendor.

> Q8. How does the technology factor into the evaluation 
> consideration, such as ability to maintain and evergreen?

What is evergreen? As said above it actually easier to maintain 
FOSS, since it will much less driven by vendor needs (i.e. 
greed).

> Q10. What impact will No Charge Licensed Software have on 
> Government Licensed End-User Networks

What is "Government Licensed End-User Networks"?

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