March 9, 2004

Open Source policy

Hot on the heals of the Swiss, the UK government published the second draft of "Open Source Software Use Within UK Government". Find it here. The key points (emphasis is mine):

  • UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements
  • UK Government will only use open standards / open specifications based software for interoperability
  • UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary products and services
  • UK Government will consider obtaining full rights to bespoke/off-the-shelf software
  • OSS licencing will be the default (if no other route is specified)

It's a good start.

Posted by savs at March 9, 2004 4:50 PM
Comments

Is it a good start? Addressing your bullets by number, 3) is plainly common sense and ought to apply already, similar arguments apply to 4).

1) and 2) also already apply, so no change there.

So, 5) - the default route - is the only new thing here. I guess that's a step forward.

(BTW - you say it's a "second draft" - it's not, it's a draft of the second version of the policy. Version one is already out there, and is basically the same points except 5) is weaker)

Posted by: Alex Hudson at March 10, 2004 10:44 AM