NRC's GovNet 03 - report (and letter to ITBusiness.ca)

"Open Source: Choices for Government"
http://govnet.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/govnet03/sessions_e.html#sess5

  The program mentioned that Bruce Parens would be there, but he could not
make it and I was substituted in (I got a call Monday morning ;-).  

  Joseph Potvin from PWGSC spoke first and gave the perspective of the
Government of Canada. I spoke next and gave the citizen perspective (based
on some of my notes for RealWorldLinux http://www.flora.ca/rwl2003/ ).  
Eben Moglen spoke last.

  Eben was amazing to hear speak.  He articulated the reasons for
Government support of Free Software in 4 broad categories, starting from
what he felt was the least important to was the most.

  - Government shouldn't be subsidizing monopolies.  This is the common
economic argument suggesting that since Free Software has a better
bang-for-your-buck than non-free software that governments should take
this opportunity to lower costs.

  I believe we are all aware of some of the numbers from the incumbent
monopoly players on this (BSA, CompTIA, etc), and just how little
credibility they really have.  It is hard to believe that people who have
a hard time adequately counting licenses for software audits or for piracy
studies could ever have an economic argument against Free Software.

  Even if they were the same amount of money, the other public policy
issues then come into play from competition policy to fair government
procurement (NAFTA Chapter 10), and so-on.

  - Free Software works better.  This spoke of the scientific and
accountable public peer review process, the ability to have open
competition for support contracts, and other related issues such as
security (by public review, rather than security by obscurity which is no
security at all)

  - Educational angle - with Free Software people can learn by doing, and
are given the right to look at existing software.  Free Software is a form
of human resources development that, among many other benefits, allows
self-taught practitioners to participate in the software economy in ways
which closed-source software simply does not allow.  Free Software is a
key form of technology knowledge transfer, something that should be an
important part of government policy.

  - Freedom.   The Free Speech, Free Software, Free Government connection.
    Free software grants citizens the freedom to run software, to
understand how it works, to modify it, and to share software -- each
having very important public policy purposes that should become part of
Canadian policy.


  Hearing Eben speak he just puts things into such a logical presentation
that it would be hard for anyone to disagree.  To disagree with him is to
try to argue against "motherhood and apple pie".


  A few questions were asked by the audience:


  One person asked if software is free, then how do software developers
make money.  I offered myself as an example as I believe FLOSS changes the
industry from being product based (Software Manufacturing) to services
based.  Joseph always brings his water-bottles as props to remind people
that water bottling is big business even though water is free (as in
speech) and everyone knows the H2O source code to water!

  I truly believe there is more money for software developers in a
software services economy than software manufacturing.  With software
manufacturing you often have developers working for larger companies with
the considerable overhead that represents.  Free Software scales from the
smallest volunteer organizations through self-employed and small
businesses up to the largest multinational corporations.


  Two other questions were of a similar theme.   When listing a large 
number of public implications of FLOSS, a question was asked:  shouldn't 
governments also have the choice to procure non-free software?

  While our short answer was that none of us in the panel would suggest
governments categorically exclude non-free software, that if governments
evaluate all the merits of software we are certain that non-free software
would only be chosen in the most special of circumstances.

  We don't want a categorical exclusion of non-free software, we just want
the current categorical exclusions of free software removed.  We believe
that software should be evaluated on all the merits and in a broader
economic and public policy context, not just those few criteria that give
the appearance of non-free software being comparable.

(Attached at the end of this message is a related letter to the editor I
just sent to Technology in Government.)

  An additional question asked:  Are we not just needing open standards, 
not Free or Open Source software?

  While having open standards should be a requirement for government
support, this only captures a small subset of the public policy value of
Free Software.  The current situation of government departments being
behind the times and still supporting closed standards and non-free
software needs to be stopped, and the support of free standards (not just 
open, but free of licensing barriers to implementation in 
free software) is a good start.  Support for free standards in government 
should be seen as a mandatory stepping stone, but not the final 
destination.

  Private sector and private individuals should be free to do whatever
they want.  The freedom of choice for citizens should also include the
freedom to give up a subset of their freedoms.  Governments are special
entities entrusted long-term with the public good and should not be
granted the ability to give up the freedoms of their departments, agencies
or citizens.




To: Shane Schick <[email protected]>
cc: Kathleen Sibley <[email protected]>
Subject: The Debate: Open Source.

Reply to: http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=51935

  Lowering the costs to a specific department should be recognized as the
least important reason for governments to make software choices. Our
Free/Libre and Open Source Software sector is quite willing to go
head-to-head on government software services against Software
Manufacturing, but only if the full benefits and costs of each model are
adequately evaluated!

  Bob Kramer claims that he would be opposed to categorical exclusions of
software based on development models, but this is exactly what promoting
(or allowing) mis-named "standards" with components licensed under RAND or
any other royalty-bearing license really is: a categorical exclusion of
Free Software from participation.

  He also claims that he believes that software decisions should be made
on merit, but suggests an extremely narrow set of criteria for evaluating
merit that keep non-free software looking comparable to free software.
Where are the hugely positive educational, knowledge transfer, human
resource development, competition, innovation and creator/citizen rights
protection implications of Free Software in his minimalistic criteria for
merit?

  The government is also not just a user of software, but also has
considerable in-house software development as most large organizations do.  
Where existing Free Software does not meet the needs of government,
procuring out-sourced software services to add value to existing free
software, or doing free software work in-house with existing government
employees, should be considered a valid option.

  The full implications of the software choice to the economy as a whole
should be considered, not just the special interests of any specific vendor
or small sector. It must be remembering that for the vast majority of the
economy that software is a cost of doing business.  Any cost reduction for
ICT enabled by government seems to me to be a greater economic stimulator
than the various calls to lower taxation that pay for beneficial
government services.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

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