Re: looks like it's happening everywhere but the US.

Tom - Please trim your posts down to the relevant pieces.

Please post just one example of a LAW or even a regulation that states 
"Vendor X cannot bid for this work" Excepting cases where the vendor 
is excluded for reasons of conflict of interest, criminal history,
or has already been selected to audit or supervise the work, or has
already been eliminated from the selection process in a previous bidding
round.


On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 01:15:09PM -0500, Tom Adelstein wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
>  > You misunderstood. I'm saying that the US is moving to Open Source, > 
>  > but
>  > that we can't enact laws that prohibit specific vendors from competing
>  > to do the work for the government.
> 
> I understood what you are saying and I assert that we can prohibit 
> specific vendors from competing to do work for the government and in 
> fact do it everyday. 

No. We don't.   Show me even one law that says "Vendor X Inc. is not
allowed to compete for doing work <insert body of Gov't here>."

We do put requirements on the bids.  But those are NOT laws.  
Laws are NOT regulations or bid requirements, this distinction is
critical.

All any vendor has to do is meet those regulations or requirements
and they can get the bid.  Certainly not all vendors can meet all
requirements. So what?

Yes -Corrupt pols and bureaucrats do manipulate bid requirements to try
to make sure certain vendors win the work.  We recently here in Mass had
a case where a woman was awarded a significant chunk of back pay because
she refused to rig some bid requirements to ensure that a specific
person won a bid. (She refused to do it and eventually lost her job
but ultimately has prevailed).  We can also think of a certain
construction firm doing almost all the work in Bahgdad......

We can even do away with competitive bidding.
Yes, under special circumstances.


> 
> The misunderstanding that seems universal in the software community is 
> that our government(s) must obey the laws of commerce. That is one 
> mistaken certainty.
> 
> The government has no obligation to "level the playing field". Federal 
> Acquistion Regulations (FARs) are interpretations promulgated to to 
> provide government procurement officers with guidelines. A court could 
> wipe them all out with the use of a pen. But they work for the most part 
> and they establish guidelines that prohibit many vendors from competing 
> for government work.

FARs are not laws and I doubt any of the FARs state "Vendor X Inc. is not
allowed to compete for doing work <insert body of Gov't here>."


> 
> In fact, the General Service Administration has moved to Open Source 
> Software and is holding trainings to educate procurement officers 
> through the country on how to acquire Open Source Software for Federal 
> Agencies.

None of that prohibits any vendor, including microsoft, from bidding for
the work.  Its unlikely that Microsoft will want to meet a requirement
that they be open source but that's their choice.

> 
> Our last Texas bill, SB 1579 aimed to amend the state's acquistion 
> procedures to include OSS in the competitive bidding process. The next 
> round might aim to eliminate competitive bidding when OSS exists.
> 
> SO, yes. We can enact and unenact laws and choose to exclude vendors.

No. You're confusing Laws and the effect of vendor's own choices when
confronted with bid requirements and regulations.

> 
> Another point, I don't think the US is moving toward OSS also - like 
> other countries - but instead my research indicates we've been their 
> before anyone else. Certainly Richard Stallman was the first one doing 
> it and before him, DARPANET and ARPANET (now the Internet) passed OSS 
> around as early as the 1960's.

On a per computer basis the US has a pretty low ratio of Open Source
based machine versus non-OpenSource machines.  It will take a while to
catch-up to the ratio levels already in place in countries which started
using more computers less recently.


> 
> I don't want to seem argumentative, but "other countries" aren't the 
> reference point.

The thread's author's post was about how "other countries" were moving to
OSS faster than the US, so, in fact, "other countries" were the main 
reference point.
> 
> 

-- 
Jeff Kinz, Open-PC, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA.  [email protected]
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