[governance] CS Statement: FOSS

[karen banks]

dear all

here are ca's comments on the FOSS language - i'd appreciate it if folks 
concerned could work on agreeable text, taking ca's comments on board (two 
sets)

karen

>The point is: in many countries (Brazil included, and I bet in all 
>developed countries as well), if a public office bids for something 
>(whatever this something is, tangible or not) which involves public funds, 
>selects a particular bidder's offer, and there are grounds to prove this 
>bidder's offer is more expensive and could be replaced with another which 
>would be as effective and would cost less, then the public (the taxpayers) 
>can sue. This also applies to the purchase of any licence to use any 
>virtual service or good, including software licencing.
>
>It is not that they are forced to use FOSS, but they legally should if the 
>other alternatives are more expensive for equivalent service.
>
>This would not preclude contracts for proprietary software even if in 
>principle FOSS is ready to be used as replacement -- it must be the 
>subject of a careful analysis of the real situation. Example: Brazil is 
>now replacing its systems belonging to the National Social Insurance 
>System. Most of the software developed for it along many years is totally 
>Windows-dependent, and the change will take some years to complete. In the 
>meantime, they need to keep the system running and to expand. So the 
>federal government licences Windows for this maintenance and expansion, 
>even if the policy is to opt for FOSS whenever possible, while development 
>of the alternative system is still in the works. So there are no grounds 
>here for a public action against these specific purchases.
>
>In summary: the point is just to stress that there are also legal grounds 
>which could potentially put a public office (or officials) at risk if they 
>just keep buying Oracle, Microsoft and so on.
>
>It is essential to stress these aspects also in our campaign in favor of 
>FOSS in particular and freedom of knowledge in general. In Brazil, not 
>only the current policy might change in days if Lula falls or does not win 
>the next election, but also there are several divergin views within the 
>current government, ranging from believing FOSS is something like God to 
>saying FOSS is a "silly, secondary nuisance". So the struggle for freedom 
>of knowledge is a difficult one here too, despite all the advertising 
>showing it is not. Thus, scaring those spenders of public money a bit with 
>explicit arguments like this is never too much.
>
>Perhaps the phrase could be a bit more extensive to make this clear.
>
>besos y abrazos
>
>--c.a.

In addition: the argument that "it is cheaper, more secure and better" is 
too simplistic. It is not necessarily better -- it depends on the relative 
stages of development, on the particular application etc. Definitely in the 
world of multimedia, for example, we are still far from having 
professionally solid and all-embracing alternatives to replace the 
proprietary equivalents (ask any professional video producer to replace her 
Final Cut Pro or Avid package with a FOSS alternative...), and so on.

Regarding "cheaper", any specific contract or bid must balance the saved 
cost of licencing with the cost of migration, development and maintenance. 
Usually the balance is significantly positive in favor of FOSS, but 
unfortunately not always. Here it also depends on the local stage of 
technical development (availability of trained people, local competence in 
software development etc).

"More secure", definitely yes for the final user (at the workstation 
level), but at the server level we still have problems -- recently a hacker 
managed to use a buffer overflow exploit in one of our Apache servers for 
which the patch was just being made available. Lucky us that the FOSS 
community reacts rapidly, but we need to have software security expertise 
available in any case.

In a word, like in the governance debate (ICANN vs ITU), FOSS also ranges 
between polar views ("FOSS is God" vs "FOSS is unimportant"). We have to 
find the proper balance, fight for the essential concepts which clearly 
favor FOSS against proprietary, and recognize the complexities of harsh 
reality in applying them to practice.

-- c.a

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